Tuesday 21 July 2009

Tea and No Sympathy


Two pastel drawings from Saturday’s CHADO /Japanese Tea drawing day with Akemi Solloway. Our classes are always so enjoyable, not only for the art practice but primarily for the fantastic company, we’re a lively and interesting group. Akemi was not only a good model but also most interesting about her culture and country. Shame I mangled her hands in the above drawing, but you live and learn. The quick 3 x 10 minutes sketches more successful as always, no time to over work the drawing. Added a little collage material from some origami papers I had lying around instead of trying to reproduce the beauty of the kimono.

As always, this is the time for artists to open their studios or grab an exhibition space for their annual show. One of our group has built himself a cleverly designed studio at the bottom of his garden but it’s certainly no garden shed.
I returned home inspired by the work on the wall and the studio itself and asked Nick if he wouldn’t mind building me such a desirable workspace.
“So, that’s an allotment shed, a yoga/meditation pagoda, a fruit cage and now a studio, I might just build you a cage, you can draw and meditate in that!”
Demanding, moi? It is his own fault and a complement to him that I believe he can just about make anything, I’m the divine inspiration, and he’s the oily rag ;-)!
I have always been drawn to handmade buildings. I have a great little book called Handmade Houses: A Guide to the Woodbutcher’s Art, very much a product of the San Francisco hippy movement of the late 60’s early 70’s. Written by Art Boericke, (himself, what he calls a ‘ticky-tacky’ builder) and photos by Barry Sharpiro, one of which I have reproduced below showing you where I got the idea for my meditation pagoda all those years ago. Unfortunately, still no manifestation.

3 comments:

Celia Hart said...

Beautiful sketches Fay - and I love your idea of collaging the Japanese patterned papers onto them.

I agree - there's something about small hand-made spaces that's very appealing.

Celia

Phoenix C. said...

I love those pictures, especially the second one.

The book sounds good. I always wanted to build myself a living willow house when I was very young.

sweetbay said...

Lovely drawing and sketches.