The process of Kyo-Yuzen 京友禅

If you can ignore the1980's elevator music soundtrack, this is a really helpful video explaining the steps involved in Kyo-Yuzen, Kyoto style Yuzen dyeing.
Everytime I watch this I am reminded how far I have to go! These people are amazing at what they do, no doubt about it.

アニマル・アート展 Animal art Exhibition @ Metropolitan Fukujyuso

Animal Art! From the 19th of June to the 1st of July, I will be showing some work as part of this group exhibition!

It's a kind of celebratory show because the Kyoto City Zoo, just next door, has done some refurbishments and re-opened to the public in April this year. You can actually hear the tigers roaring and the elephants from the open windows of Fukujyuso.

Metropolitan Fukujyuso is a cafe as well as a gallery space, in an old Machiya style house. It's a traditional style interior with tatami flooring, wooden beams and sliding doors onto small vernadahs and a Japanese style garden. I'm excited to exhibit such a interesting and unique space.

you can read more about at the Fukujyuso Blog.
http://metropolita.blog.eonet.jp/default/2012/06/post-c569.html

The Struggle.

How long does it take to design an artwork?...how long is a piece of string?

I have spent the last 5 WEEKS (!!) struggling with a design for a new two panel textiles work. This is the longest I have ever taken to create a design and its killing me! I love to sketch and fiddle around with paint but large scale drawing and composition is just not my strong point. I'm so ready to move on to the fun steps of cutting a stencil, making print paste and dyeing but I can't until I've got this foundation step right.

It's been an eye opening experience. I've added sections. Taken parts away. Cut it up. Pasted on new bits. Painted colours in. Started all over again. Moved parts around. Made it bigger. Doubted the idea itself. Taken confidence. Almost reached an end point.

various stages of incompleteness

In my designing despair, I came across this heartening video. It's from an interview with writer Ira Glass, where he says that artists starting out need to keep on creating even though they feel what they are producing is inadequate.

Hopefully, the time spent on getting this design right will mean that the resulting artwork will be mostly sastifying. I will post images here as the work finally, at last, at length, gets off the ground.