Imaginary Invertebrates Galore!

Originally uploaded by MadeleineS.

RM Art gallery, at 51 St Stephen's Street, Edinburgh, is about to exhibit eleven of my twelve Imaginary Invertebrates. They'll be on display from Thursday 4 June. The twelfth one is purple so didn't look right in the set. It's on show on its own in the Coburg House Gallery and will get some pink and purple friends to join it in time for the Open Studios weekend on 7,8 & 9 August.

Calling these things invertebrates gives a pretty wide range to work in but they're really inspired by marine invertebrates like corals, sponges, starfish, sea urchins and nudibranchs among other things. No crabs or shellfish yet, never mind any land-based invertbrates. No two will ever be quite the same. I mix and match the yarns and improvise the shapes as I knit. The felting process is a mixture of machine and hand felting that also introduces scope for variation, deliberate or otherwise!

One of the pieces in this set incorporates some shibori techniques that have given me some very good texture effects. I will certainly be returning to that for the second set of these exuberant critters.

However I'm currently cleansing my palette by finishing off my festival photography show (all will be revealed eventually) and by making a set of classic, plain pots and bowls in undyed British fleeces and yarns - Black Welsh, Blue Faced Leicester, North Ronaldsay and Jacob sheep, possibly some Wensleydale too.

To the stars!

Both life and death have been getting more attention than the virtual world recently.

At the end of April I lost an old friend to a sudden heart attack. David Johnson first came into my life in the early 1980s as my brother's composition tutor at Napier College. He was a composer, musicologist, performer, teacher, arranger and a square peg in a round hole (a bit like me). We didn't always share the same outlook on life but friendship isn't really about being the same. It's the differences that make it interesting. To see the worth in those differences while recognizing the similarities is to find a friend. I'll miss David's singular opinions and his impressions of characters from the Goon Show. His obituary in the Guardian describes his public life at least as well as I could. This photo was taken in December 2007 (hence the Christmas party hat) and is the most recent photo I have of David. I may post more when I dig out the pre-digital archive.

As I said life has been active too. I share a studio with Astrid Trugg who recently gave birth to a baby girl. This has inspired me to do something I've never done before - knit baby things. Bootees are currently on the needles and two little hats are already finished. Not sure about anything larger as I'm so new to this type of work. Photos to come when the set is finished.

Also happening recently in real life were multiple successes on the the science communication front. The ICMS talks at the Science Festival were a sell-out - whoever thought you'd have to turn people away from maths lectures! The season of maths films finished on a high with an active panel discussion and a nearly full cinema.

I've been busy in the studio too - the new collections of scarves and pots keep growing so I never quite get round to sending them to galleries. Hopefully there will be news on that front soon.

Coburg House opened its own gallery last week. All the artists in the building were invited to submit one piece to display. The result was a very eclectic mix of work showing just how exciting open studios weekend will be when it comes around in August.

Also planned for August is Alba As Astra - a collaboration with Writers' Bloc which will be on display in Transreal Fiction for that month. The show will consist mainly of photographs supported by text will explore the boudary between documentary and imaginative story telling in the context of a possible abandoned Scottish space programme. Work on this is hotting up at the moment.

The downside of August is that I'm expecting to have my hip replaced towards the end of that month - if the waiting list really is 18 weeks. Recovery could take up to three months so I'll be unable to get about or deal with stairs for a bit. Plenty time for blogging and knitting but I won't get into the office or the studio for a while.

I have also been asked to write a regular blog column thing for The One magazine's web site. That should start in a few weeks and will probably address science/art issues from a personal point of view. There are ideas rolling around in my head about body modification as art and as medical necessity that might well be explored there. Watch this space...or indeed that one!

Art on hold as science steps up

My working life has more or less been taken over by the Edinburgh International Science Festival for the next couple of weeks. My "day job" at the International Centre for Mathematical Sciences includes arranging and promoting events for the festival and this year we have six of them! More than I've had to do at once since the glory days of the Edinburgh Women's Science Forum in 1995/6.

If you want you can find out more about our events on the ICMS website and blog. The press have taken much more of an interest in this year's offerings which is pleasing, though I'm sure it's the glamour of Hollywood attracting them to this talk rather than a new found interest in maths or juggling!

If you're at a loose end on Thursday 9 April it would be nice to see people at the screening of 21 in Filmhouse Cinema which I'll be introducing.

Of course art is not completely on hold - there's always something churning away in my head and there's always wool and needles in my handbag! The holiday weekend should afford some time in the studio but there are lots of distractions on offer at the science festival. I've already been to see this guy on Sunday.



Asimo, the world's most advanced robot does his party tricks to promote his creators' business but he's very impressive nonetheless. We also went to see the open air astrophotography exhibition in St Andrews Square. Lots of spectacular images and lots of people looking at them. Its so good to see a show like this in a non-traditional setting (not a museum or university gallery etc).

At the bioengineering/cyborg/transhumanist art/science interface there's Stelarc. I've been interested in his work since 1995 or so and he's doing two events at this years festival. The first clashes with our big night of maths talks so have booked tickets for this event. No doubt there will be lots more to distract and wear me out!

Knitting, Weaving, Love and Lace

Today is Ada Lovelace Day and I must fulfill my pledge to blog about women in science and technology. The brief for this plegde is very general and as a result I've drafted and discarded this post several times. I'm still not sure what I'm writing about but here I go again.

I keeping with the theme of this blog I thought I'd point up some connections between technology and fibre arts and the work of one of the many women I've encountered on my journey.

Having had a scientific education, I never really separated my art and craft from science and technology. A lot of knitting and weaving machinery is controlled by punched cards - so were computers for a long time. Knitting patterns are not unlike computer programmes in their coded language and logical structures. Dyeing and printing fabric requires a knowledge of chemistry. Spinning involves an awareness of physical principles. Many patchworkers have an instinctive grasp of geometry. I could go on - some of you may have heard me in the pub or the coffee bar...

Mary Harris got me started down this road in a much more formal way. I never met her but her book Common Threads explores the links between mathematics and needlework of all sorts and the gender issues therein. It was the starting point for my own research into the situated knowledge of mathematics in communities of patchwork makers (another blog post, another day for more on that). In 2006 Harris's archive was donated to the Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre at Goldsmiths College London. I urge you to look at this work and consider all the fibre-based technologies that are overlooked because they are the the work of women.

Needled whirls and waves in sea of kid mohair and silk

Spring scarves 2
Originally uploaded by MadeleineS.

This is the needle felted detail on the end of a medium length scarf - or what I hear the Americans call a comforter. I've found a couple of companies making exquisite light weight yarn in kid mohair and silk. The softness of the fibre belies its strength and the colours range from bold to delicate. This is my current working palette


The main part of the scarf is knitted as a tube of stocking stitch in one colourway . The ends of the tube are flattened and sealed by needlefelting complementary colours of roving from both sides. The open structure of the knitting lets the felt show through from both sides and the different textures add depth to the final work.

As with the tentacled pots below, I'll be taking some of these to exhibit at the Arts Market on Saturday. Its at Out of the Blue Drill Hall, Dalmeny Street, Edinburgh from 11am to 7pm on 7 March. Not sure where else they might end up.