Scallop textile, work in progress

Morley is back in full swing, so I'm tackling my design ideas based on the scallop sculpture.  Besides exploring pebble shapes and rust/ ochre/ earth tones ( more in another post), I've been extracting shapes from the sculpture.

cutting them out in paper and auditioning these against some of last year's tray-dyed fabrics.

The aim is to use these shapes to make a silk screen, and then print the shapes on 4 tray-dyed pieces of cloth, each dyed with a different palette to represent earth, air, fire and water. I'm hoping that these don't look too much like a hood from a super-hero film, but for now I'm convinced that they don't.

Lots of potential for overlaying and stitching in to the shapes, and stitching with different colour and texture mixes as a result.That's the plan for now.

The Aldeburgh Scallop

Last year, I had a magical weekend with my husband in Aldeburgh, when we went to hear our younger son play in a a concert at the end of a music course.  The course was in Aldeburgh, so gave me a way to combine the visit with a long-term plan to visit the sculpture of The Aldeburgh Scallop

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The sculpture proved to be as magnificent as I had hoped, and has many resonances with various points in my life such that it has been brewing into a textile project for some time.

I love the way that the sculpture changes as you move round it, and that the marks of the makers ( the Pegg family) are so visible on it.

I was very pleased to come across a book written by Maggi Hambling about the process of making and installing the sculpture, " The Aldeburgh Scallop". This is a beautifully produced book and the colour photography is stunning. Well worth a read, regardless if you like Maggi Hambling's work or not, to get some insight into how public sculpture is funded.

More thoughts to add to my planning of the textile piece.