Jane Wheeler's Blog dyeing with plants

more and more air and water

Posted jane -->on 23rd Feb 2020

and I’ve been even worse at keeping up this blog in the new year. still I have a stash of photos of more wet and watery so here we are.

just walking up the Sharrington road yesterday morning early with plenty of air blasting around my ears – and the clouds going at who knows how many miles per hour up there. the gusts down here were supposed to be around fifty three miles per hour; they felt pretty vicious, and it wasn’t even a named storm.

the soggy fields won’t absorb any more water so there’s plenty of this

and this

this

and this. some soaks away just a little – until the next rainstorm. however we don’t have big enough rivers in north Norfolk for flooding to be serious.

this morning the Glaven was looking twice as big as normal, after heavy rain in the early morning,

but here it has room to overflow into a wide valley of reed beds, sallows, sedges and rough grass which sops up much of the excess since dredging was stopped and raised banks got rid of.

several trees down; this is an alder

mayhem here in the river bed, with two more alders gone, one earlier in the year and one after Dennis. on Monday one had to duck under it but it’s been cleared up now.

but it makes the river gurgle and chuckle pleasantly, and the wren sings along. the cut alder wood is a bright orange-red. I wonder if it would dye fibre.

at the ford the level is very high. more wren song too.

but for most of it it seems the deeper it flows, the quieter.

up in the woods at Bayfield, the trees very dark and slick with rain, which had only just stopped as we got out of the car.

the sky clearing as the front swept on south east. the farrowing huts are all full again – the sows don’t seem to mind the weather – it’s quite exposed up here. in the distance you can see the woods that edge Holkham.

at home I’ve had a wonderful winter for snowdrops. they are almost over now, but this time last year they were brown with the sun and warm weather we had in February. this year it’s the wind that’s browned them I think.

wild daffodils were looking like this a week ago, they are fully out now. and all the nettles are coming up. some work is needed.

meanwhile Bims and I go to Holkham for her runs, where it’s quiet if we follow the horse entrance to the beach. there’s been a canine gastro-enteritis virus around, it’s really severe, with dogs needing veterinary care for several days, best avoided if possible. she doesn’t mind the light plastic basket muzzle at all. it means she can’t poke little dogs and make them squeak, and she can’t eat anything untoward which we know does sometimes fetch up on the beaches here – fish with paralytic shellfish poisoning, and palm-oil solids.

it’s more beautiful over on that side of the bay too

on Thursday the wind was ruffling the little waves.

and I found an asemic poem made by some lug worm ….

(2 comments)

the flowers of the forest

Posted jane -->on 25th Jun 2019

a well-timed visit to scotland in mid-June, where the weather was cool but sunny in contrast to saturated Norfolk

we had several beach walks, some here on West Sands in front of St Andrews’ golf course, early mornings before family went to work

low tides gave us plenty of room

although one of us is very sadly a bit too arthritic to play games on the beach

I visited Big Cat Textiles in Newburgh, on the Tay estuary, had lunch with old friends on the last day of Michel Garcia’s plant dyeing course. everyone was extremely busy rinsing, printing, ironing, drying in a fever of time limits, I pottered in the shop, bought some of Alison Mountain’s deliciously dyed merino/silk/yak knitting yarn.

Jeanette Sendler showed me a marvellous book from their library, of Sheila Hicks’ small tapestry works, Weaving as Metaphor, which ought to inform some abstract paintings soon; if I were not already doing too many projects it would have me going back to this art form which I tried in my twenties.

back at St Andrews – Bims is so much more grown up now she is three and there were no floor/carpet tragedies.

on the Saturday we went for a walk at Tentsmuir near the mouth of the Tay estuary – in fact between two estuaries, the Eden flows out to the south and the beach here at low tide appears to join up with West Sands, but in between are sandbanks, quicksands and a river. Tentsmuir forest is forestry commission, but the seaward edges are very au naturel, low sandy hillocks covered with some marram and some machair-type vegetation, full of flowers. this is an area full of ancient archaeology, which used to be turned up by rabbits until the myxomatosis disaster. it’s also next to a military zone. a place full of complications and connections.

to my delight this June it is full of northern marsh orchids, some flower heads five inches long. I was so excited by the orchids I didn’t take enough notice of all the other flowers.

Bims had another fantastic run and play

then back on the lead and into the woods

more orchids along the trail

woods in Scotland have totally different understoreys to english woods, fern, lichen, and moss are king

old birches growing out of mossy humps and cushions

someone had put a painted stone in a hole in this tree – green with red lips and white teeth, a kind of baby dinosaur face.

on Sunday we went further afield, into Angus, near Forfar, Montreathmont Forest.

it’s Forestry Commission like Tentsmuir, but much of what we walked was open like this, some spruce but a lot of scots pine and forest floor covered in a mixture of ferns, mosses, heather and bilberry.

there are supposed to be capercaillies, but I think you would have to be up at dawn to hear them.

more flowers – a lot of bugle – occasional orchids – beautiful dark blue speedwells

and this which I now think is wild grape hyacinth – I found the native version in Simon Harrap’s very thorough Wild Flowers, although the flower head is usually more like the garden variety, except that it’s a really dark smoky blue, and in this photo the blue is too bright.

we followed some marked paths through open meadow (where the bugles followed lines across the grass) with alders and birches, and then through more of the “Caledonian Forest” style woods, delightfully not forest trails.

Lucy had downloaded the OS map for the walk, and there was supposed to be a path near here, in an open strip similar to this, with a little burn/ditch, but no sign of the path, in very long wet grass

then as the grass was so long and wet we tried the edge of the wood, but the moss and heather cushions were knee high, so that was not any easier

we crossed the burn/stream/ditch – luckily there was a ledge or the remains of a bridge where the path had been

through drier/shorter grass and a landscape of fern clumps growing out of their own humps/stumps and some birch, alder and then heather and broom. then the open landscape ended in a wood. the path was supposed to go through it, parallel to a straight forest ride. we had to push/crawl through small spruce and gorse, ended up soaked and our clothes and hair full of pine needles. the spruce branches low sharp and painful. at last we fought our way through to the high gorse edge of the trail, I had to sit on a gorse bush to allow Bimba through. real forest bathing – and my hip has still not recovered completely.

the trail also petered out, but that was marked on the map, and the path it turned into had recently been tended with some branches cut. finally we were back on track to where the car was parked.

(1 comment)

Scottish woods are different

Posted jane -->on 25th Jan 2019

(more…)

(1 comment)

more folded books – Orkney part four

Posted jane -->on 1st Dec 2018

here are our lengths of paper, painted and drawn on in the dyeing shed, brought indoors to fold and cut;

put together the whole is more. we used japanese ink sticks rubbed onto flat stones from the beach with water, and peat from the burn banks, making brushes or finding twigs and other materials to make marks.

we had embroidered squares and dyed them to make book covers

padded with pieces from the floor-covering old blankets that had been used to protect the billiard room carpet from our activities. however, on advice I left my book uncovered, and used those pieces of silk joined to other pieces to make another tsunobokuro bag. which has since gone to wrap my daughter’s birthday presents ….

but there was more –

we stitched papers into the book

from the selection in our first present of materials, from Alison – old map pieces

tracing paper, and the rubbings I had done of George Mackay Brown’s words around the pool in the garden

sewn in with linen thread

a new artist’s book. an interesting technique which needs none of the usual materials for book binding beyond aul, needle and thread.

then we worked with Alison with colour again on our last afternoon

by this time I had loosened up a great deal.

I used the watercolour tubes I’d brought, on papers from Alison’s contribution

and on this one, the vegetable dyes and oil bars she’d brought.

then I added some colour to the sketchbook from our trip

it melted the fountain pen ink

and is rather gestural instead of “filling in”

but in some cases I think I did a bit too much

however on the whole I’m pleased, and

intend to make more sketchbooks in this way

perhaps on the writing outside courses; the next one starts in January.

a slow look at the sound on our last morning, and a slow look back from a grey seal. a place to stick in the mind, and a wonderfully productive week with “sister stitchers” – keeping in touch via instagram –

I have already obtained a copy of George Mackay Brown’s A Portrait of Orkney, and ordered his collected poems.

on the subject of poems

my poem is out in the Rialto, very exciting

(no comment)

standing stones; Orkney three

Posted jane -->on 27th Nov 2018

I had not expected the opportunity to meet up with any standing stones or other historic sites on this trip, but to everyone’s delight India and Alison arranged a minibus and driver, designed a route, made sandwiches and off we went.

clever India had a folded book for us to make beforehand, an uphill and downhill island book, so that we could sketch as we drove along, preferably without looking down into our laps but taking in the stunning Orkney sinuous hills, lochs, sounds, firths and islands in a right brain drawing (that is, looking at the subject rather than the paper) the view changing rapidly meant that your hand had to swoop about, sometimes layering several viewpoints.

first on the itinerary was the broch of Gurness, just up the coast a little from Woodwick. it used to be the Knowe of Gurness, a green mound, until someone discovered a hole leading down into the remains of the broch.

probably trowes (Orkney version of troll) were thought to live in it before it was opened up, but in fact it was built by Picts in the iron age, and has the remains of many houses around the central tower

all built with slabs in a very similar way to Scara Brae in the Neolithic, which the Orkney stone lends itself to, splitting easily into large thin rectangular pieces

the entrance to the broch has many gateways and buildings stretching across the site. life here would have been crowded in a smoky claustrophobic environment.

we continued to Birsay, to the remains of a palace built about two thousand years later, by a very unpleasant man, I think life might have been considerably worse than in the iron age for his peasants.

huge kitchens and brewhouse, plenty of chimneys, but this was fortified, and the Stewart earls, an illegitimate branch of the family, were hanged for treason in the 1600’s. by 1700 it was abandoned. a much shorter life than the broch.

just across the way

on a flat cap of land separated by a tidal causeway, the Brough of Birsay, (and how did our dear leaders know the tide would be out?) Thorfinn the Mighty, the viking earl who ruled Shetland, Orkney, nine earldoms of Scotland, and parts of Ireland from 1014 to 1065, had his base here. there are low walls designating the foundations of the settlement, complete with steam bath houses and drainage. it seemed quite basic and small for such a powerful man. but before the vikings wiped out christianity three hundred years earlier, there was a small Pictish church on the site.

then we had a scenic route around the coast

before turning inland for the climax of our trip

the Ring of Brodgar at sunset

the Viking story about these massive stones

is that a group of giants came to drink at the lochs and were caught out by sunrise, frozen into stone.

they are so huge that it’s hard to imagine how neolithic people got them there and stood them upright.

some are very tall indeed

and some are flat on the ground

we had wonderful light

it caught the heathery hills across the loch with a tinge of fire

and painted the sunward side of the stones

a lot of people have decided to leave their mark

including my initials ….

I would not dare to try to own them in such a way

even if I could

it’s like standing next to a remnant of a gothic cathedral

the mystery is clear and tangible

whether fallen or upright

(2 comments)

the colours of the land; Orkney part two

Posted jane -->on 26th Nov 2018

some people assumed that there would not be much in the way of leaves to dye with here in Orkney towards the end of November, and that the weather would be too awful to get outside much. but in fact the weather was mild and open; some days the sun shone all the short hours it was up.

the low lying islands make the sky huge, and there is light reflected from the surrounding and interlocking water of sea and loch.

at the bottom of the garden at Woodwick House the island of Wyre is a low hump across the sound, and the sea constantly changes colour

and the bare trees form a patterned screen – in this case

Rousay is the pink land under the pink cloud on the horizon, caught by the setting sun.

in George Mackay Brown’s book Magnus he describes this group of islands, ten including the mainland which he gives its old name, Hrossey (horse island) “the islands shift their places around the firth, Hrossey, Eynhallow, Rousay, Gairsay, Shapinsay, Wyre, Eday, Sanday, Stronsay, Egilsay” as Magnus and his men sail/row across the sound towards his martyrdom on Egilsay

on the beach there is a thick wreath of seaweed, coloured from ochre to rust to deep wine-purple, amongst stones that are lighter versions of the same colours, and at low tide, fine grey sand, ripple marked.

from the beach you can walk back up beside the burn, as it pours over the rock steps and pools in treacle brown depths

on a path through shrubs and trees

with secret spots to hide and read a book or draw,

leant over by tree branches. from the name I suppose there must always have been trees here.

quaint post and rails – the seabird skull my addition, a find from the beach –

snow drop bulbs everywhere in bare earth and humous, already starting to sprout green horns.

at the top there’s what they call in scotland a doo-cot – a dove cote

with compartments for all the pigeon nests, providing baby pigeons for pies. whether this is a genuine really old one is hard to say, but it’s been made into a sort of pagan chapel

a quiet contemplative place

beside the sound of the rushing burn

at the gate before the bridge

and at the other side of the house there are castellated turrets – a late Victorian fancy. the gates are missing, anyway, and the path down the to the sea is public.

the hens are the rightful owners of the garden, six of them, and with no foxes they don’t have to be shut in at night.

this one is the boss, she’s twelve years old. one day they laid four eggs!

inside we had been hard at work stitching on paper, watercolour, or other special paper – some hand made. I had brought heavy weight watercolour, and it was brutal to stitch on, so mine was quite minimal. others filled up their three pieces with masses of abstract stitching and pieces of fabric.

then we made folded books, into which we inserted leaves/and seaweed

wrapped them into parcels with cloth

and after a brief cook

opened our little treasures, at the same time adding to our drip-sheets/abstract paintings (Japanese inksticks ground on beach stones and peat from the burn-side, using sticks and home-made brushes, and yes, fingers)

they looked gorgeous when wet

though this lovely rusty brown

dried to something a bit duller.

the drip-lengths were made into something very exciting on the last day.

when you work with leaves and stitches your eyes get tuned into all the fine details of the landscape

things you might walk past before, suddenly shine out at you with their beauty.

(2 comments)

sister stitchers in Orkney outlands: part one

Posted jane -->on 23rd Nov 2018

another magical place in the space of four weeks – Orkney – and a wonderful retreat led by India Flint and Alison Mountain of Big Cat textiles in Newburgh (where I have been for several really good courses, taught by the likes of Michel Garcia and Larry Thomas as well as by India)

arrived in the dark after a flight from Aberdeen to Kirkwall which caught the last of the light with views of the Moray Firth, Caithness, the Pentland Firth (complete with ferry ploughing a pale blue wake) and the interlocking islands, sounds and firths of Orkney, so when I parted the curtains at seven am and saw this out of my window I was in love with the place.

we stayed and workshopped in Woodwick House, an Edwardian very Scottish looking country house with a kind of tower attic and stepped gables and crenellations wherever possible. it still has its beautiful but draughty sash windows, but also bits and pieces of more contemporary text and some quite good paintings, in a simple plain decor that felt comfortable and un-posh, not imposing anything except an awareness of the Orcadian tradition of ancient and contemporary art and poetry.

the fact that there are quite tall and old trees in two shelter belts running down each side of the garden to the beach of this little bay (“wick” means bay) is unusual on these bare and windswept islands. they are mostly sycamore, salt-hardy and tough, a non-native tree which thrives all over the UK. the pool in the photo is part of an installation of sculpture and poetry (not sure when this was made) and around its rim are words written by George Mackay Brown, one of Orkney’s most famous poets. some letters are sadly missing, but part of it reads –

drink here voyager about to depart
on the salt sound
Eynhallow

Eynhallow is one of the smaller islands in the group just off the main island here.

we began with a fancy-restaurant-standard supper made by Alison and India, setting the ball very high for the rest of the week.

the next morning down to the serious business, working on paper with Alison, splashing vegetable dyes about on paper,

and continuing to layer up with pastel, oil pastel, gesso, more paint until the whole thing a bit soggy, then we folded our large sheets into books

put more onto the nicely reduced and framed sections

I discovered that pastel in layers with the translucent dyes and also darker ink-depth mark making

and then working over the top with more pastel

gave very pleasing results. I am wondering about a bit of fixative when I get home though.

for the first textile phase, led by India, we were given a strip of old wool blanket to stitch and add more fabrics to.

I was really quite minimal in my stitching compared to most. one had no idea where this was leading, by the way!

by the end of the morning however far we had got, our rolls of blanket went into a pot or rather a huge fish kettle of burn water (a burn runs down under a bridge at the entrance to the garden and along its edge, the water a coppery clear caramel from the peat) and a little “iron water”, to steep and relax in some heat.

we had the afternoon to wander, and bring back leaves, seaweed, stones, twigs and anything else we found to add to the stitching.

bundles duly went back in the kettle for an evening boil-up

identified by tied on additions which make these little objects full of character before you even start

by the morning they had cooled down and we had our christmas present moment of unwrapping, with many oohs and aahs, much excitement.

as India fished them out

starting to unwrap mine

then they all dripped on the line

you can see how much of the landscape is imparted

eventually dried in the boiler house

we made bags. here is mine, a tsunobokuro bias-stitched envelope or sack on our expedition to some of Orkney’s ancient sites later in the week.

the stones of the Pictish broch at Gurness

their lichens and weatherings

echoed in the colours and textures we were able to obtain with the dye processes and the pigments and paints on paper during the week.

(3 comments)

print and words week 2

Posted jane -->on 29th Jun 2018

so when you have strips like this and your tutor says she thinks you should slice them into even narrower strips …

you think for two minutes and then you take the risk ….

and stick words on and fold …

and then the print looks even more like manuscript illumination

and you cut up your poem

and find the words are so much more brilliant isolated on their long narrow pages

like jewels

and you print more in an afternoon of adrenalin

and more ideas are offered

that you need days more to explore

and at home

you tear and fold what you printed

and cut up another poem

that you are in the middle of writing

hoping this process will clarify

its labour-pains

and then

you have two more concertina books a little more resolved

being pressed between boards

to flatten and many thoughts towards more.

(no comment)

print and words week 1

Posted jane -->on 29th Jun 2018

I’ve just taken part in two workshops with Tara Sampey and Jonathan Ward (he leads the Writing Outside courses I’ve been doing at the Cley Wildlife trust visitor centre)

these centred around a walk through fields and a holloway in Edgefield, Jonathan’s home patch.

we collected words and plants

and chatted

sharing a sense of wonder at the small details – overnight rain had collected on these funnel spider webs and turned them into a constellation of shining drops around the black hole of the spiders’ traps

it seems that we have not had rain for weeks and weeks, but there had been some showers (that was about ten days ago)

and the swallows were hawking low over green barley fields

linnets and whitethroats singing in bushy hedgerows

a sad very dead pair of elms loom over a small meadow pasture full of insects

the hedges full of pattern making us greedy pickers beautiful things to print with

back at the hall we were shown how to roll ink onto the gel plates to make monoprints

the mind-bending part is how to make use of the negative image produced by the first print, and the delicately detailed positive which comes after you peel the plant material off the plate

some of the images reminded me of medieval manuscript illuminations

the really exciting part is when you start printing a negative in a different colour over the positive, off-setting

and generally playing about with part of the plate …

so we went home excited, to play with words at home and make some texts which could be combined with the images

(1 comment)

more slow pots

Posted jane -->on 30th May 2016

there have been more pots in the running, despite lack of blogging, but an awful lot of other things happening

such as decisions on how to finish these slow coiled pots

with a plain white slip over the textured surface?

unglazed and oxide painted on was really disappointing

besides causing unforeseen accidents with kiln shelves

so what to do? inspiration from the post war generation of studio potters is all very well, but different times breed different ideas

oxide painted on and scraped off again in patterns is pleasing …

inspired by natural things found

and seen

but what to do

to fire them? in my gas kiln with reduction the oxides seem to lose the softness

I want – here I have just bisque fired a little higher to try to fix the oxides for slipping/glazing

in between I have been to Devon for a wonderful poetry writing course with Anne and Peter Sansom – which sent me spinning off in all sorts of other directions

then I have been printing plant materials onto textiles …..

David Pearce Pinching Seeds 36 x 45 cms
meeting up with this wonderful painter who is selling my pots with his paintings see his gallery here and he has the only coiled pot I have glazed with the chun and slip

I have to say his work is quite inspirational and some little threads of drawing might leak onto my pots soon

I have also been taking part in a landscape writing course which I am sure will influence the pots

and learning how to put together some different shapes

which ended up as this

and is cooling in the kiln as I write

thoughts of my painterly oxide application

and my having begun to paint again –

so looking at landscape with different eyes (more in a subsequent blog)

considering textures

even the textiles like this piece of silk velvet which reflects light

and the shimmer of light on water in the reed beds and dykes on the coast

I decided to stick to what I am doing well already with the chun glaze …..

awaiting results – also a following blog as I’ll be opening the kiln on wednesday

(2 comments)