Two Days Out

We've taken a couple of days out to visit friends in Derbyshire and we did things worth putting into my log.

Masson Mills Museum

This is a working textiles museum that offers demonstrations twice a day.  The mill was built in 1783 by Sir Richard Arkwright and is the best preserved example of an Arkwright cotton mill.  The mill was originally built to take imported bales of cotton and clean and card it ready for weaving elsewhere.  We saw a huge, evil looking machine nicknamed The Devil. The Devil was the first process the cotton went through to get out the bits of vegetation and generally clean it up. 

The Devil had massive "teeth" and was quite capable of taking off an arm or leg or even worse.  If someone was caught in the machine there was little hope of things turning out well as the machine took almost a minute to stop.

The machinery in the museum came from elsewhere in order to preserve it.  There is machinery to cover the whole range of processes and many are demonstrated.  Some of the looms were second hand in 1867 and are still running if rather noisily.

The loom in the foreground of this photo (with the yellow bar) is from the 1940's and is less reliable than the older machines.

An engineer would be fascinated by the complexity of the machines but all I could think about was the conditions the people worked in - the noise, the dust and the oily smells.  The idea of my six year old grandson crawling under the machines whilst they were still running makes my blood run cold.

I took several photos with an eye to some sort of future textile work; ironic really.

Old driving belts with mould

Spools

Pirns

Great Dome Art Fair

The Peak district Artisans is an association of artists based in Derbyshire.  There was some truly wonderful work on show at this art fair and it was a real struggle to keep my wallet in my bag.  I am becoming much more aware of the sort of work I like and I have selected just a few for my blog.  Al information and pictures are taken from the artists' own websites.

Keith Wright - Visual Artist
http://www.keith-wright.com/


Keith's work is created from his own collection of photographs and inspired by industrial landscape sand the built environment.  He crops and arranges the images into grids, removing all context, scale and location.  What he ends up with is something really abstract and almost always geometric.  It reminded me of the Matthew Harris work I saw last week and liked so much.

Peak

Louise Jannetta

http://www.louisejannetta.co.uk/

Amongst other things Louise was showing some collograph work and having tried this recently I was very interested.  She was very generous with her advice.  The image above seems to be a recurring one and because it is a plate the variations are incredible.

Steve Elliot
http://www.steveelliott.net/













Steve explained that his style is constantly evolving and recently it has become more abstract.  This was clear to see and I must say that while I love the more literal work I thought the more recent work was amazing.

Hills over Hathersage

Birchen Edge

Helen Meakin
http://www.helenmeakin.com/

Helen uses a variety of textile techniques but my favourites were the weaving using wire warp, multi material weft, sequins and beads to create her original and very attractive  work.  They are very textural and reflect the light.

Using a wire warp

 I finally succumbed and my friend and I organised a one day workshop with Helen in late August.  Can't wait.