Blog

July 7th, 2018

New Collection of Art Prints

Find a selection of limited edition art prints on Clare’s new site C F McEwan Studio.

Artworks include imagery developed from the Darent Valley Project – which started life as a photo walk in Dartford, Kent.  Read more about the project and artworks here


May 30th, 2018

Tea Green Design and Contemporary Craft Market, Glasgow

Find C F McEwan scarves at the Design & Contemporary Craft Market at The Botanical Gardens, Glasgow

Hosted by Tea Green Events who create “inspiring & dynamic selling platforms for Scotland’s creative talent to showcase their work.”

Sunday 3rd June, 10am until 5.00pm

The Kibble Palace,The Botanic Gardens,  730 Great Western Road, Glasgow, G12 0UE

Image by Friends of Glasgow Botanical Gardens


January 24th, 2018

Bespoke Curtain Designs in Hove

In 2016 I began work on a commission for a private residence in Hove, East Sussex.  The project included two curtain designs featuring the architectural highlights of Montpelier (the client’s local neighbourhood) and Falmer Campus at Sussex University (the site of the client’s former studies).  Measuring 15 square meters each, this large scale project involved photography and sculptural elements to create a bespoke textile digital print onto linen fabric. The curtains would provide a dominant decorative feature for two rooms; the bedroom and living room, each curtain to cover the floor to ceiling sized windows.   

3.IMG_7996c

Completed curtain installed in bedroom with imagery created from Falmer Campus photography

The project begins with a collaborative activity, walking with the client around the two sights of focus for the curtain designs.  We spend a couple of hours exploring the Montpelier neighbourhood in Brighton & Hove.  My client shares his visual interests in the area for me to photograph.  Montpelier is described in Wikipedia; ‘Developed in the mid-19th century, it forms a high-class, architecturally cohesive residential district with “an exceptionally complete character”.  Stucco-clad terraced housing and villas predominate and two of the city’s most significant Victorian churches.  

eIMG_7612

Walking down to the seafront, the architecture changes and we decide to include the modernist 1930’s Embassy Court in our photo walk.  The eleven storey residence is described as “something like a great ocean liner” and is in great contrast with the surrounding regency buildings.

eIMG_7655

A week or so later, my client and I repeat the photo walk activity, but this time focusing on the Falmer campus, part of Sussex University.  This was home to my client’s Philosophy PHD.  A place of great personal significance along with a strong visual identity to explore. ‘Writing about the creation of the University in 1961, founding architect Sir Basil Spence said: “The whole precinct should have the ‘sense of a university’ and should, if possible, grow out of the soil of Sussex to become a natural part of this beautiful site”.  Its campus was praised as gorgeously modernist and groundbreaking, receiving numerous awards.’   For me the stand out elements are the strong lines of red brick and open green spaces which connect the modernist buildings.  My client notes his preferred features; pathways throughout the campus, the trees, open squares and quiet corners.

IMG_7755

IMG_7761

With these two sets of original photographs for Montpelier and Falmer, the client and I make an initial edit of the few hundred images to about ten images per site.  I get to work with each set of ten images; transforming, developing and merging the imagery together to create new, vibrant compositions.

sevendials2

I like to use digital projection as a light source for re-photographing work in a space.  I want to interrupt the original architectural images and re-arrange how the familiar locations are perceived.  I use paper collage, concrete and transparent materials to act as surfaces for the projection.  In my studio, I re-photograph the surface projections, building a new collection of distorted and transformed imagery.  I then move into Adobe Photoshop as a digital tool for editing and resolving the imagery into the two curtain designs.

IMG_9010

IMG_8842ddv

IMG_0053

IMG_0024

nbv

I start to layer these new digital compositions together, gradually forming a large scale composition for each curtain design.  Mid way through the design process I present some design drafts to the client and make notes on preferred colour palettes and motifs.

MontpelierGroup

Final edit for curtain panels for the Living Room window with imagery created from Montpelier photography

Before the last stages of image editing, the client and I meet with the soft furnishings technician to discuss fabric choice and curtain hanging mechanisms.  I share some fabric samples of hemp, linen and silk and we select a heavyweight irish linen.  Because both windows will receive large areas of direct sunlight we also agree on a UV protective backing layer to preserve the digital print and enhance the drape of each curtain.

FalmerGroup

Final edit of curtain panels for the bedroom window with imagery created from Falmer Campus photography

IMG_8000

During one more final meeting, I present my completed digital designs and make notes for any last adjustments.  We confirm  measurements and timescales.  The work is now ready to send for digital printing onto the linen using UK fabric printers.  Once printed, the fabric is sent to the technician to assemble the curtain panels ready for installation.

IMG_6490

Client pictured with new printed curtains for the living room, installed February 2017, Brighton & Hove, East Sussex

ClareMcEwan.Digital-print-on-linen.Hove-Curtain-Commission.Lounge.2017


January 17th, 2018

Creating Original Colour Palettes

I’ve been writing about my own approaches to art and design for a year now and I’ve just realised I rarely talk about the creation of colour.  I’ve mentioned the idea of ‘finding’ colour, through photography, printmaking, photo walks and maybe using Adobe Photoshop, but never about how I instigate colour.  I’ve kept it quiet, mysterious somehow, even to myself.   

This probing about creating colour was prompted by some rest between Christmas and New Year.  I was thinking of writing a blog post about the connection between wellbeing and a repetitive creative task.  The idea that we can offer our time towards something and find peace, even with a laborious task.  A lot of creative work is repetitive and can quickly become a chore, 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration, and all that.  I’ve been wondering if by reframing the notion of ‘time’ around the chore, it can be transformed.  The way that mindfulness tells us we can find gratitude in washing dishes.  Rather than worry about how long something will take, we accept the task and pour energy into the action, not the thought of its burden.

Colour came to mind when I was thinking about past creative projects – times of work that have felt repetitive and a struggle to complete.  In the first year of my textile design degree, our group studied Josef Albers’ colour exercises for a whole term.  12 weeks dedicated to colour, can you imagine?  I remember our tutor emphasising what a unique moment this was in our creative lives, we would refer to this time, this learning, again and again and again.  I’m not sure we were convinced, but we accepted.  Now I have come to think of that allotted time very much as a gift. 

We spent days mixing red to green, blue to orange and yellow to purple –  finding their most beautiful midpoint of grey in each complementary pair through minute adjustments of hue.  I was never to make grey from mixing black and white again.  Because here was a richer, complex kind of grey, made up of red and green but looking like neither.  A kind of magic potion to apply to all future colour palettes. 

This precious bit of memory lane is to introduce my new video on colour.  Last month I gifted myself a mere afternoon of colour mixing, without Alber’s rules this time, just a bit play and discovery towards some original colour combinations.  Was there well being in my repetitive paint mixing?  Yes.   And with it, a reminder to focus occasionally on the merit of an exercise.

                 


November 14th, 2017

Journey of a Few Found Objects

It starts with my own journey, not my usual photo walk, but a hunt for discarded objects that I will claim as my found objects.  Objects discovered by chance and ‘considered from an aesthetic viewpoint’.  I swap my camera for a carrier bag and proceed to scan the ground with an unexpected self consciousness.  I’m in Glasgow, I walk from Buchanan Street bus station to University Way, which is more or less a straight line, heading west through the city for thirty minutes.  This is a clear start and end point, which is helpful for my concentration and limits any extra decision making – because to blink would be to miss the low lying treasure.

I’ll admit this activity amounted to voluntary litter picking.  Which sounds admirable, if it wasn’t for leaving most of it on the ground as I reviewed debris from the newly required ‘aesthetic viewpoint’.  It felt odd at first, to pause and idle around kerbside, whilst regular folk pass by, moving through at speed.  I think about how a walking pace is one of my safety indicators – and if I saw me from a distance I’d be very suspicious.  So I channelled Rauschenberg as I walked and collected, taking on his optimism.  He’s quoted at the time of 1950’s, when making his combines and living in New York; ‘“I actually had a kind of house rule, if I walked completely around the block and didn’t find enough to work with, I could take one other block and walk around it in any direction—but that was it. The works had to look at least as interesting as anything that was going on outside the window.”

SID55621_510px.jpg.510x10000_q85
Dylaby, 1962, Robert Rauchenberg

 

Ten minutes in to my walk, I started to gather some of my own interesting stuff, I relaxed, my eye tuned in, filling my bag with materials, trusting I’d find enough to fulfil this unknown project ahead.

AIMG_9436

 

I see this collection as another way ‘in’ to a creative process, a starting point.  Just like a photo walk offers a chance to explore and be surprised, a ‘found object walk’ offers the same.  Starting with nothing and having faith in the act of discovery, controlling only the method, not the outcome.  What began as an exercise on questioning aesthetics, was also humbling and freeing, with an unintended survey of Glasgow’s consumption.

The ‘finding’ of the objects is step one.  I’m following direction from Jasper Johns for this month’s project; “Take an object.  Do something to it.  Do something else to it.  (Repeat.)”  I’ll share my own journey of the found object through a series of steps.  I draw on influences from artists, some intentional and some having seeped into my practice over time.  Which is an interesting outcome, to notice again where your artistic leanings are by working with new materials.

group

Found Objects, Glasgow, October 2017

 

“Take an Object…”

I run a bath and pour the contents of my carrier bag into the water.  I soak them for a few hours, scrub them and leave them to dry, cleansed and anew.  Who knows if Rauschenberg washed his objects, nae matter, I’m creating my own sequence of events.  My objects move into a neutral space – the impersonal studio, ready to be examined.

I photograph each object in turn, in daylight, sitting on white paper, capturing shadow and definition of each piece.  Mostly as a birds eye view camera angle.  Questions of value and status dissolve as each object is given equal time and space to be documented.  I start to consider the sculptural possibilities, how objects might combine, by colour, material or shape.

AIMG_9449 AIMG_9546 AIMG_9568 AIMG_9584 AIMG_9490

 

I begin by arranging by hue, altering quickly the way the objects are understood.  I get drawn into the group of white, cream and beige.  How their sum of parts can suggest an elegance and simplicity, a world away from their isolated origin in a street puddle.  Here is where the artistic control returns.  I get immersed in moving these objects of whiteness around the page, enjoying how small variations create a new scene, questioning what makes an arrangement more ‘right’ than another.  The camera being vital to capture this activity.  Here’s a short animation of these compositions…

 

“Do Something To It…”

I proceed with the project, looking for ways to transform the object itself.  I look to how I can create my own assemblage, a term described as “art that is made by assembling disparate elements – often everyday objects – scavenged by the artist or bought specially” Tate.  Joseph Cornell was famous for this.  There’s a beautiful essay dedicated to Cornell written by the artist John Stezaker, he writes: “His (found) images have a previous life in circulation where, in their legibility, they have been universally overlooked, treated with indifference and eventually cast out. Like orphans, Cornell gives them new homes in his boxes. In these final resting places, they take on a second life, a visibility within the dark aura of fascination.”

With the likes of Joseph Cornell or Louise Nevelson on my shoulder, I explore the materials by hand, looking and feeling for ways the items can fit together – how they can create a match.  Binding and wrapping seem to be my choices.  I don’t want the method of assembly to overwhelm the objects but become integral to the combination.  I use surgical tape, cello tape and thread to fuse pieces together.  As I work, I start to recall an exhibition at the Wellcome Collection a few years ago called Memory Movement, Memory Objects by Alice Anderson.  Obsessively wrapped everyday objects in strands of copper wire, offering an exquisite new way to observe the very familiar.

alice-anderson-turntable

Memory Movement, Memory Objects by Alice Anderson, 2013, Wellcome Collection

My Assemblages

AIMG_9675 AIMG_9628 AIMG_9609 AIMG_9669 AIMG_9637 AIMG_9648 AIMG_9600 IMG_9604 IMG_9699

 

It’s a period of trial and error.  Except there’s no definitive clue about right or wrong here.  My assemblage evolves one way and I wonder the outcome if in another’s hands.  With a free styling approach in mind, I stumble my way through, connecting the contours or the scale of various objects together.  I’m looking for some synchronicity perhaps, parts that add up to a new whole.  Each unit transformed simply by being placed with another to ignite fresh sensations or stories.  More dramatic examples lie elsewhere – Merett Oppenheim’s Object in 1936 or Picasso’s Bull Head, 1942.

b06d8534b0d5c5a4593904250d7ba60032ae21dc

Object, 1936, Fur-covered cup, saucer & spoon, Meret Oppenheim

 Pablo-Picasso-Bull’s-Head-1942 Bulls Head, 1942, bicycle seat and handlebars, Pablo Picasso

Their extreme editing of objects paved the way for Duchamp’s readymades.  My own task here is limited by materials and scale, but this restriction feels good.  It’s a useful challenge to stretch my sculpting ideas and try out unfamiliar materials.  A big influence in my approach to assemblage is Eva Hesse, who’s distinctive sculptural hand writing always makes her objects feel connected, creating a unique space in their presence.

kc_femart_hesse_15  Eva Hesse,Photograph of Hesse’s studio, early 1966 

I’ve held onto this image of her studio since first seeing Hesse’s retrospective at the Tate in 2003.  It was around that time I began devising my textile degree show, the final collection of work before finishing art college and her impact is lodged in my mind.  Hesse led my interest towards plastic and resin, inspired by her experimenting with opaque and translucent materials.  I started collecting carrier bags to paint as objects and photographed them against light.  I painted resin onto fabric to make textured hangings.  Her legacy for me is repetition, consistency, do the same again but slightly different. Variation on a theme is probably the constant in my own visual practice.  If Rauschenberg is behind my spontaneity and experimentation, Hesse is behind my ability to handle the outcome, how to create a sense of order through editing.

Moving back to my own objects, I get tempted to stay digital and begin to view the photographs of the assemblages in Photoshop.  I start to layer the images and get pulled in to new compositions like below.  For me, creating digital artwork will be an inevitable step in the process.  It is a way to transform work quickly and dramatically.  And although tempting to continue, I want to push the physical work a little further first.

IMG_9630

“Do something else to it.  (Repeat.)”

How to transform my found objects outside the digital realm?  I consider changing their environment – covering them in paint or placing them in water to photograph them again.  Water made me think of ice, solidifying my objects and watching the thaw.  A way to make a major change without damaging or permanently altering the assemblages.  Freezing the objects also feels like preservation, halting time on any further deterioration –  and about as far from the street as they could be.

IMG_9757

IMG_9754

 With my tupperware collection ransacked and filled with water, I place the objects in the freezer for a day or two.  I notice how the direction of the frozen blue rope will be dictated by the shape of the container, a process imposing itself onto form.

And then one sunny Sunday morning, with glee, the ice objects are removed…

AIMG_0033 AIMG_0052 AIMG_0056 AIMG_0139 AIMG_0162 AIMG_0166

Photographing the frozen objects became an immersive few hours.  I leave them on baking trays in sunlight as I work with each one in turn.  Rotating the blocks until I’d exhausted ideas.  To photograph each object, I use a large sheet of white paper as a base, turning up one end of the sheet to form a backdrop.  The opacity of the white paper makes it ideal for capturing the texture and contours of the translucent ice.  I use a mixture of macro lens, flash and no flash, moving the camera around the object to capture variations of image.  I use back lighting from sunlight and direct light from an overhead lamp.  I am absorbed in seeing how light moves through the ice, sometimes blocked by the object, forming ice bubbles and flecks and orderly crystals.

To help convey the feeling of discovery, I recorded a video of my camera scanning two sides of a frozen object.  The sound you hear is a recording of the room where the ice objects are melting.  Listen out for tiny sounds of water drops, spaced out every ten seconds or so.  The high pitch sound of the water droplet is so slight, I quickly set up my microphone in the hope of harnessing the moment.

By moving the camera close, the object and ice become one world, the story of the object on a new trajectory, away from confines of scale and place.  The introduction of frozen water with object forever alters the way I know these objects and sharpens my curiosity for how materials can interact.

 2AIMG_9903

2AIMG_9979

22AIMG_0042

2AIMG_0144

2AIMG_0159

2AIMG_0166

2AIMG_0263

2AIMG_0179

22AIMG_0090

2AIMG_0079

2AIMG_0380

The Thaw

Needing to reclaim my freezer, I leave the ice to melt fully, feeling a little sad to see the end of my ice objects.  Slowly, the found objects reveal their original state, with no harm done.  I document a few stages of the thaw.  As ice melts around the surface of the objects, I am able to extract the items from the ice, leaving indents and gaps around the ice structure.  The remaining thawing ice becomes the thing to photograph, in the daylight, its surface is reflected in the increasingly soaked paper background.

0AAIMG_0502  0AIMG_0497   0AIMG_0512

0AIMG_0451

0AAIMG_0486

Beyond Objects Transformed

What will I do with my imagery of the transformed found objects?  I’ll certainly be moving into Photoshop and working digitally with the imagery as layers.  Something to return to in another blog.  I also think about repeating the activity of the original walk over a series of months, collecting objects along the same path.  Perhaps I’ll investigate new ways of transforming the assemblages, using different mediums besides water to see the objects anew.

Before I find a home for my own found objects and reflect on their journey, I delve into research about artists who continually work with object, material and their transformation.  I’ll leave you with a few examples of painting, installation, sculpture and sound all incorporating the sculptural elements of water and light…

Bomb Falling into Water 1942 Leonard Rosoman 1913-2012 Presented by the War Artists Advisory Committee 1946 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N05729

Bomb Falling into Water 1942 Leonard Rosoman, Tate Britain

leandro_erlich_4

Single Cloud Collection, 2012, Leandro Erlich

f27913951c500d5ed24a06c5f8198b20

Fake Swimming Pool by Leandro Erlich, 2004, 21st Century Art Museum, Japan

5

Aerial, 2012 by Baptiste-Debombourg, Abbey Brauweiler, Germany

22828963_563460333995981_7169041366109643977_o.jpg.gallery

AquaSonic, underwater concert at Tramway, Glasgow, 2017, photo credit Herald Scotland

If you are interested in hearing more about Clare’s creative projects and how you can join in for yourself – sign up to be notified about The New Creative free mini course launching in January 2018.

Oh no...This form doesn't exist. Head back to the manage forms page and select a different form.

 


November 2nd, 2017

Christmas Events

Find C F McEwan scarves at The Lighthouse in Glasgow this December…

The Lighthouse and Granny Would Be Proud are coming together to bring you The I.D. Pop-up Department Store, Glasgow’s first Independent Pop-Up Department Store!

The new alternative pop-up marketplace of the High Street, where creatives of all different backgrounds gather to provide that unique cultural and shopping experience within one of Scotland’s most important design centres alongside  Granny Would Be Proud market lovers.

The I.D. Store will be a weekend takeover of the five floors of The Lighthouse.

9th & 10th December
16th & 17th December

12-5pm

11 Mitchell Lane, Glasgow, G1 3NU

“The Lighthouse, Scotland’s Centre for Design and Architecture, is a visitor centre, exhibition space and events venue situated in the heart of Glasgow, just off the Style Mile. The Lighthouse acts as a beacon for the creative industries in Scotland and promotes design and architecture through a vibrant programme of exhibitions and events.”


September 21st, 2017

C F McEwan at Handmade at Kew

“Following the storming success since its launch in 2015, Handmade in Britain will return to Kew Gardens for the third edition of HANDMADE AT KEW in October 2017!

This four-day international contemporary craft event offers you the opportunity to meet and buy directly from over 200 extraordinary designer-makers working across all disciplines including: ceramics, jewellery, fashion and textiles, glass, paper, furniture, metalwork, sculpture and interior accessories.

It’s a really special chance to invest in beautiful, unique products at a show where you can buy, browse and commission directly from the maker; unearthing the stories, inspirations and processes behind the exquisite work of some of the world’s most talented craftspeople. Most of the work on show can’t be found on the high street so it really is a one-off opportunity to shop for unique products and gifts in very picturesque setting.

The event is housed in an elegant pavilion next to Kew Palace and tickets to the event include entry to both the event and Kew Gardens, allowing you to enjoy the Gardens and crafts to the full. It’s a truly a unique shopping experience and great day out for all the family!”

Tickets are on sale now for only £16 in advance, including full entry to Kew Gardens.

Find C F McEwan scarves in the Craft Central group stand at E17-E21.

Handmade at Kew 2017 digital flyer

September 12th, 2017

Finding the Value in Mark Making

What do you do?  This question I know can make some of us hesitate, I’d rather talk of many other things; pets, recipes, the latest good telly, not to hide anything, just because it’s easier.  I scan the asker’s face and consider what details to share.  What I often say is, ‘textile design’ or that ‘I design and make scarves’.  Which is true, but perhaps like many professions it feels like the tip of the iceberg.  It’s a broad stroke of a sentence that still conceals the basics: I make marks, I collect marks with my camera, I’m obsessed with irregular shape and have ongoing curiosity to rearrange and repeat variations of a mark for ever more.  It can be hard to talk like this if you can’t see examples.  I think I’m writing this post to make up for my lack of mark making small talk.  So I’ll make the big talk here and give some attention to my occupation.

You might call it drawing and painting, I call it mark making, I’m not sure when that began, but it feels a more accurate description for me.  I’m often treating marks in isolation and certainly in the abstract.  Mark making conjures up the moment to moment of the creative activity, focusing in on the act itself rather than a final outcome.

During my textile degree I found myself in discussions about ‘quality of mark’.  Terms like this became my new world and vocabulary.  What is it about a mark or a group of marks that suggests ‘quality.’  Do not all marks have equity?  Do they not all just bring up the proverbial five year old comparison?  I haven’t read it myself, but noticed in a bookshop the title, ‘Why your five year old self could not have done that – modern art explained.’  Reading the cover made me smile, what would be the arguments put forward I wondered and would they convince anyone?  I decide to offer my own thoughts here, on the value of mark making.

Historic Marks

cave_of_forgotten_dreams-big Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Written and directed by Werner Herzog, History Films, 2010

If I ever feel my vision narrowing while creating new work, or wonder unhelpfully about what I’m trying to achieve, I think back to the eerie documentary by Werner Herzog about the oldest known cave paintings in the world.  Cave of Forgotten Dreams shows how humans have used mark making to communicate a mind blowing 32,000 years ago, on the walls of caves in Southern France.  I use the word eerie, because as I watched the film unfold, the marks in these paintings felt strangely familiar to me, gestures and use of layers I enjoy today.  I’m bolstered by the historic scaffolding my ancestors have built – I feel akin and connected but also humbled.  Finding myself declare – what more can I offer?  It’s all already here!  When my mind embarks down this road, I try to relax and just start.  Getting inside the act of mark making is always transcendent, absorbing and heartening.  It can be like a ritual, a practice to trust and return to regardless of expectation. 

Practicing Mark Making

If the act of picking up a paint brush or pen is frightening, then I recommend an approach that could compare to the musician’s practice of scales.  One can ‘practice’ a mark away from composition or context.  We can get to know our own language by using repetition and variation.  Repeat the same mark across a page.  For each new row, vary the mark by changing the scale, the texture, the tool, the pressure and the shape.  Keep going with new rows of marks until the whole page is filled and we start to exhaust our ideas of original mark making.  It is a mind clearing activity.  Forced to tune into the physical and concentrate on the ways of a pen or brush or pencil. 


Participatory Mark

Screen-Shot-2017-09-11-at-22.11.51

Image from Roanna Wells Instagram of The Tracing Process exhibition at Yorkshire Arts Space

The artist Roanna Wells recently led a collaborative exhibition called The Tracing Process at the Yorkshire Art Space.  It was all about the mark, inviting the audience to add their own repetitive brush stroke across the gallery wall.  The sum of these many parts created a set of unique hand made marks in an exquisite order.  The participatory nature of the exhibition made me wonder if the term mark making may have a different meaning or impact for the practitioner compared to the audience.  Is Wells offering the audience a new way of looking at making marks now they have played a part in their creation?  I’m sure the use of repetition and clear direction was encouraging and perhaps soothing to a first timer.

Physicality of the Mark

paul-jackson-pollock1

Jackson Pollock at work, image by Life Magazine

‘Behind the scenes’ of mark making got me thinking about the biopic Pollock, based on the abstract artist Jackson Pollock.  Ed Harris plays the artist, sweating and heaving heavy tubs of paint across the floor, creating the famous drip paintings.  It is the close up depiction of making this work that helped me imagine the physical energy spent to create these seemingly chaotic paintings.  What exhausting work to attain such harmony and rhythm from his ‘throwing of paint’.  Attention has been much directed to the radical act of his dripping paint on the canvas floor.  Pollock himself said “It doesn’t make much difference how the paint is put on as long as something has been said. Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.”  For me, understanding his technique does play a part in appreciating the outcome.  I know Pollock would prefer us to to focus on the painting itself, but I find the experience of his work is enhanced by holding on to the human effort involved.

pollock-blue-poles-1952

Blue Poles by Jackson Pollock, 1952

I wonder if there is a natural break or distance between practitioner and audience that occurs once work is edited, framed, mounted into it’s ‘viewing’ rather than ‘making’ state.  I think we have come to expect it as consumers, judging the work in our clean gallery attire, a world away from the studio.  I think we assume we will see this level of presentation.  However, I also believe there is a power held in the act of making marks that dissipates by the time it reaches the gallery wall.  I think there is huge hunger for understanding how work is created, permitting us to be involved somehow.  Attending the Giacometti exhibition recently at the Tate Modern, I couldn’t help but observe the very attentive mood of the crowds gathering and lingering for the video of the artist at work in his studio.  The dual presence of his completed work and fly on the wall of work in progress is perhaps one way to tackle the distance. 

Screen Shot 2017-09-13 at 00.48.45

Giacometti’s world through the photographs of Ernst Scheidegger

Hierarchy and the Unseen Mark

TWOMBLY-jumbo

Installation view of the red spirals of Cy Twombly’s “Bacchus” paintings displayed at the Gagosian Gallery in 2005.  CreditRob McKeever/Gagosian Gallery

Scale and intention I’m sure play a huge role in carrying the power of the mark over this cavernous space between maker and viewer.  Walk into a room of giant Twombly paintings and dare to question ‘why bother?’ before simply uttering ‘wow’.  Feel the weight of the marks towering above you.  His enormous works help us imagine an artist at large – a looming presence in the art world, impressed upon us by his verve to use such scale.  It makes me think about the idea of hierarchy of mark alongside the quality of mark.  What is is that makes some marks more visible and more important than others?

We cherish and marvel at the large pieces by the likes of Pollock, Twombly or Monet.  We celebrate their brave and gestural energy.  I propose we all have these bold marks within us and carry them out more routinely than we realise.  Imagine if there was invisible ink attached to every cleaning cloth in our home.  When darkness descends and a torch shone, consider the furious, chaotic and aggressive marks scrubbed over floors, cupboards and surfaces.  Imagine the window cleaner with paint instead of soap in her bucket, travailing the vast glass tower block.  What display there would be of bold, uninhibited mark making to be seen from afar.  In fact now I’m thinking about the mural making duo Gilleard and Garner who have created the UK’s tallest street art project in Leeds this year.

These are the marks I like to think about, actions carried out by all of us, the technical abilities we hold of which we are unaware.  What would be the impact for us if we could clearly see our own ‘works’?  Maybe that’s why people talk about the satisfaction found in cleaning, the manual labour of paint to canvas not so far away from the movements towards a squeaky clean kitchen.

LeedsBID_Staff_July2017

Athena Rising by Joy Gilleard and Hayley Garner (Nomad Clan), 2017

Learning Through Copying

olive-orchard

Olive Orchard, Vincent Van Gogh, 1889,Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo

It’s not a surprise to me now looking back, that my early favourite artists were Post Impressionists – the time of innovative painting, a new personal freedom of making marks to capture a scene and mood, moving art on towards expressionism.  I wrote an essay about Cezanne’s trees and painted replicas of Van Gogh olive groves.  The act of studying pre-existing marks on canvas at an early age still remains vivid.  I was immersed in Van Gogh’s lyrical, jubilant upstroke.  “Swirling clouds in violet haze” writes Don McLean in his beautiful song Vincent.  I knew an olive tree through the eyes of Van Gogh before seeing one in real life.  

cc3a9zanneinterieurforc3aat1899

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), La Montagne Sainte-Victoire vue de Montbriand (Mont Sainte-Victoire, View from Montbriand) (1882–85), oil on canvas, 65.5 x 81.7 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.

Of Cezanne, I loved how his strokes required a different sort of paint brush – square, to best copy his angular marks of natural forms.  These two masters distinct and teaching me the power of repetition and consistency of mark.  They showed me how emotion within whole vistas can be governed by the direction and scale of mark. 

Mark as the Meaning

antoni_tapies_embolcall_web Antoni Tàpies, Matèria rosada (Pink Material), 1991. Collection Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona.

In my twenties I was drawn towards Tapies and Rauschenberg.  Artists who made marks look like a hurried simplicity.  Loose and large and sometimes aggressive.  I like the way their marks become the composition rather than background texture or suggestion of form.  Tapies uses a mark as symbols and messages, playing with cross and line within space.  Rauschenberg is master of control in combining the hand made mark with found image and object.  His way of using paint most closely resembling for me what those window cleaning paintings might look like in real life.

95

Canyon, Robert Rauschenberg, 1959

Marks into the Future

So what of mark making into future, how will it develop?  How does the digital mark enter our vocabulary of mark making?  I’ve always held onto a remark made by Grayson Perry during BBC The Reith Lectures in 2013.  He talked about what sort of work the likes of Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci would be creating if they were alive today.  Still painting the ceilings?  He reckoned not, more likely to be delving into 3d printing and virtual reality – pioneers of new technologies in their own time.  I tend to agree with Perry, with so many tools at our disposal, an innovator such as Da Vinci would want to use them all, and in doing so, create new qualities of marks.

https-cdn.evbuc.comimages328969422187038791581original-1

With the ‘what would ‘Da Vinci do’ question lodged firmly in my mind, I’m looking to see how artists are now using new technologies and consider where I might join in.  Last week I went along to the MA Computational Arts degree show at Goldsmiths University, a course uniting the best of art and computing practice.  A whole range artists of artists are exhibiting their new work: dancers, architects, puppeteers, fine artists, photographers have entered the course with little or no programming experience and within the year are creating works that cross bridges between sound, taste, movement, robotics, algorithms, big data and user generated artworks.  I saw mark making created by computer, through ever changing algorithms to direct line and shape.  I read instant, personalised zines developed from searching dominant keywords in participant’s sent email.  I watched projected patchwork imagery developed from a collection of personal memories.  I had a go at digitally drawing my own jewellery to be realised through 3d printing, using algorithms determining how line and curve can interact in 3d space.  These were just a few of the twenty six artists taking part.        

Screen Shot 2017-09-11 at 23.16.18   ME|MORE|Y, Alix Martinez Martinez, Overlap Show 2017, Goldsmiths University

Transition of Marks

What happens to all our mark making exercises if they are not to be contained within traditional painting frameworks?  Sitting idly on computer hard drives, safe from ageing perhaps.  Or being pushed and pulled around into new outcomes both digital and physical.  How I manage my mark making, describes they way my own role moves through artist to designer.  I hope a mark can be carried through various processes and retain its essence.  My C F McEwan logo is itself a former brush stroke on paper, a carefree afternoon of mark making in the studio more than ten years ago.  Now scanned in, it’s been turned into a vector file to be stretched and squeezed into necessary sizes, stamped across web and print materials ever since.  It’s an easy reminder to self about where my roots are within art and design.  The hand writing in the logo belongs to my Dad, who’s own way of making marks as letters has always been very distinctive to me.  I asked him for five minutes of his handiwork one evening and here it is, cemented into my own textile journey.   

logolayercolour2


September 8th, 2017

Designer Pop Up at The Lighthouse, Glasgow

The Lighthouse and Granny Would be Proud are uniting to bring The I.D. Store Pop Up to Glasgow this September 2017.

It will be an alternative to the high street, where creatives of all different backgrounds gather together to provide a unique cultural and shopping experience within Scotland’s most important design centres.

The I.D. Store will take over five floors of the Lighthouse and offer jewellery, interiors, fashion, children’s goods and vintage, all created by local independent designer makers.

C F McEwan scarves will be there!  Meet Clare and try some scarves on the 2nd Floor of the Lighthouse.

Saturday 16th September 10.30am  5pm

Sunday 17th September 12pm – 5pm

The Lighthouse, Mitchell Lane, Glasgow, Scotland


August 13th, 2017

Selvedge Fair Edinburgh 19th August 2017

The team behind the cult magazine Selvedge bring a curated collection of fifty merchants and makers to Edinburgh.  The exhibitors sell a range of rare vintage fabrics,  covetable haberdashery and skilfully handmade textile treasures.  Find C F McEwan scarves here!  Looking forward to joining in.  Dovecot Tapestry Studios, 10 Infirmary Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1LT, 11am – 5pm.

The venue
Having had a slightly nomadic life since its establishment by the 4th Marquess of Bute, in 1912 Dovecot Tapestry Studios moved into Edinburgh’s Infirmary Street Baths in 2006.  Built in the late 19th century in response to the cholera outbreak, this building’s restorative history reflects The Dovecot’s core principles of preserving traditional craft in a contemporary world.

Make a day of it
Enjoy a guided walk in the historic city centre with the September issue of Selvedge. Relax with a cup of tea or a delicious lunch in Leo’s Café.  Learn about the history of the Tapestry Studios on a free tour.

Drop in workshop
Throughout the day we will be running a drop- in workshop inspired by Fiona Rutherford’s mini tapestries. No need to book, simply turn up and drop-in. Tickets will be available at the door.

Getting there
Dovecot Studios are prominently located on Infirmary Street in Edinburgh’s Old Town, close to the National Museum of Scotland and are a 10 minute walk from Waverley Train Station, Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Palace.

I am offering up to 8 free VIP tickets for free entry to this Selvedge Edinburgh Fair.  Get in touch by email to request (calre@cfmcewan.com), on a first come first served basis.  Otherwise, you can order your ticket here..

See you there!

IMG_7022