Trip to Gallery Oldham

I had a nice visit to Gallery Oldham today. The Fairies exhibit by Samantha Bryan is what tempted me out there. (Yes, it’s only 15 mins on the train, but still I had to be tempted out.) Her work isn’t exactly my cup of tea, but I find it interesting to see what she’s doing. She uses paper clay to sculpt the heads, and all sorts of bits go into the sculptures. I did like the buttons used as wheels. Possibly the problem I have with Samantha Bryan’s work is that she makes sculptures rather than toys. “Do not touch” tags bug me.

The next gallery along was a pleasant surprise, as I’m not familiar with either artist but really liked the sculptures. An Englishman, a Scotsman and a Tree: Paul Aston and James Castle, is only at Gallery Oldham until 27 June 09, but I do recommend it. The work and the gallery space was just refreshing. Photography was permitted in that room, so here’s a favourite of mine:

It makes me want to put dots on all my furniture.

Also, the exhibit called A Lost Landscape: Roger Hampson was very interesting 9on until 25 July). Hampson was a Northern, post-WW2 artist, who seems to have known that the common lifestyle in his native land was dying out. Fascinating from a socio-historical perspective: the clogs, the Walking Days, workers in mills and mines. It would have been nice to have more description with the images, but a whole book would have been more appropriate.

Last note: I did get slightly lost and ended up in the education area inside the library, where one of the craft displayes featured painted plastic bottle tops, and another had a quilt of apliqued hands with embroidered decoration. Neat!

Very bad day

I'm sickened by the fact that I live with 132,094 racists who voted for the BNP, and that means their leader is now one of my MEPs.

I'm not a British or EU citizen yet, but I've booked my Life In The UK test, and I'll be saving up the £750. Next election, at least I'll be able to vote.

Manchester Fab Lab

Tuesday, I went to a very interesting talk by Dr Eddie Kirkby, head of charitable operations for the Manufacturing Institute. He's in charge of setting up a Fab Lab in Manchester, and hopes it will be up and running by the end of this year. I made notes, but can't say I took everything down correctly or completely, but the project does sound really cool.

The Fab Lab idea started at MIT. Very open source ethos influenced. I think the set up is generally enough to go from idea to prototype, but it also seems to be a place to make stuff. Not a factory, but definitely somewhere you could build a one-off piece of, well, whatever you can think of.

The current plan for fitting out a local lab includes:

• CAD/CAM software


• lazer cutter


• lathe


• moulding and casting facility for stuff made of plastics, silicon, chocolates, etc., but not metal


• 3D printer and scanner


• vinyl cutter


• maybe something for printing curcuits (can't see this in my notes, but I think it was mentioned)

It won't have anything to work hard substances (iron, granite), so if your idea called for something like that, either that component would have to be made elsewhere, or you could do a prototype in available materials, but you wouldn't be able to stress test it.

As I understand it, the fab lab would be free to use with agreement to the fab lab charter. Users need to know how to use the equipment (or learn by sharing knowledge), and document the design and process for other fab lab users (this is a world-wide network- not just Mancunian). If you want to work in secret, you will be able to rent the space (cheap, if Dr Kirkby's estimate proves correct) and work all on your own. Staff time can also be purchased (at the moment 'staff' means a manager and an assistant manager, but volunteers are being sought as well), and they plan to do workshops and team-building events to generate income, and participate in open innovation challenges (no- I didn't understand what that means, but one involved new crisp flavours [what's wrong with salt and vinegar? I say]). I think Dr Kirkby said funding was already in place for 2 years.

The proposed site is currently somewhere on Oldham Road, but this isn't confirmed yet. And the Manchester Fab Lab website isn't up yet either, but the nice eddiek said he'll email a load of us with updates.

I'm excited about it. Even though it is a 'manufacturing initiative' the ethos is weloming to arts/crafts endeavours.

The talk was organized by the Manchester Inventors Group.

Comic sketch success!

Honestly, I didn’t think placing a time limit on the comic book buscrafting would work, and I’m not sure how it did, but on the Friday commute to work I finished roughing out the last page! Magnifico! Still not sure what the next step will be with the comic, but it feels good to have the whole 22 pages roughly sketched out. I’m thinking the next stage is to actually figure out how to take it to a finished product, then decide if that’s do-able.

My next buscraft ought to be to try out tatting. A woman at the knit club that meets at the 8th day was showing me how to do it earlier this week. As I decided to try new things this year, it would be ideal to start on that next week. But I don’t have a tatting shuttle, a pattern, or a clue how to start. So again, I need to figure out what

to do.

Which is nice in a way, because it will give me a chance to do some of the weaving projects that have been building up- my DIY Weaving Club Membership Card, a postcard and, assuming I finish the second clanger, a clanger dress.

Screen printing: not a buscraft

Yesterday, I went to one of the Handmade socials at Urbis- it was a session about how to screen print run by Ayesha Ansari, an enthusiastic community artist. I knew I wanted to make a stencil from one of P's photos, but Ayesha thought it was too small, so I added the house to it.

Screen printing is really fun. Ayesha's enthusiasm for it is catching! I'm glad I went to a session where I could try it out, because I've read about it but didn't understand the process until yesterday. The whole point of the screen is to hold the stencil in place. We just used thick paper for the stencils, but I can see how a plastic one would be more durable. I'm now wondering about using confetti, leaves or feathers; and could you use a thick screen, like a bit of hessian, to have a patterned painted section?

It is tempting to buy some basic equipment, but I think I need to let the ideas brew for a while. Lots of other stuff in the pipe already, but if I can find space for a screen in my craft area I suspect it will go on my wish list.

And for the buscraft report: I've now roughed out 11 pages, but finding it very slow. I hadn't realised how mentally taxing the layout of the comic book would be, and honestly, I'm just not at my sharpest first thing in the morning or right after work. Twice I've thought I should just put it away and try something else, but then had fresh ideas and made progress with the comic again. Frustrating. I'm going to stick at it this week (just 4 days) and maybe next weekend try to finish this stage off.

This comic writing malarkey

Tuesday to Thursday, I did rough sketches of seven consecutive pages, Friday I did nothing, and today I've decided that pages 4-7 are too rough and need re-sketched. I'm also flummoxed about how to show an aerial battle scene. Also, the comic is going to be much shorter than I originally thought.

As a buscraft, the open A5 ring binder is just a bit big- I held it so it was sticking out into the aisle by accident one morning. There's no way to draw or write neatly, but my scribbles are recognizable to me. I'm not sure if I'll ever develop them into tidy drawings, but it would be possible.

Note- here's my not-ill-gotten gains:

It doesn't look like much, but that's £104 of art supplies and stuff. I'm making a note here, because I'm curious about how long it will take for me to use any of it.

Almost there...

A suitable title for a Star Wars Day post, but it also refers to my progress on the DIY Weaving Club Rag Bag project. The buscrafting bit is done, and the basic bag is complete, but I still need to do a lining. Will I ever get around to that?

The weaving was a good craft for the bus. Bits of learning:

• it's easier to get the shuttle through if there's not too much yarn wound on it, this is more important as the weaving reaches the top and there's  less play in the warp


• near the top of the weaving, basically the bit that goes up over the comb, using the chip fork to lift individual warps and then shove the weft thread underneath was much easier than trying to put the chip fork through a shed


• weave up to the top as much as possible- I left too much of a gap and ended up filling it after taking the loops off the comb (I suppose if I had used a really thick string or length of fabric, it would have worked alright without in-filling)


• people are nervous of sticks waving around


• string falls out of upturned carrier bags

Now that the weaving is complete, I'm going to try something different: drawing a comic book. I'm tired of thinking that I can't draw well enough to do the style of comic I'd like to. It discourages me from drawing at all. So, I'm going to take my sketch book on the bus, and just have a bash at it. The idea is that there's no way to draw neatly on a bus that's jostling its way through rush hour traffic, therefore the pressure to draw neatly disappears! I'll be lucky to have anything recognizable at the end of the journey, but anything I do will be better than just feeling bad about not being able to draw how I want to.

And I'm a bit overwhelmed by all the fabric crafting that I've built up. Joyce at the Embroiderers Guild was advising finishing one thing before starting another. Awfully good advice.