Ok, for ages and ages my proper website has been offline due to a changeover in hosting packages but I am pleased to say it is now back!
You can find the up to date info at www.Rachel-Grant.com

Making Sense Exhibition with Jane George

"hopes and dreams" mixed media by Rachel Grant

Making Sense

Bilston Craft Gallery: Dec 6th 08 – Jan 3rd 09

Private View: Saturday 6th December 12:00pm – 3:30pm

This saturday sees the opening of my collaborative show with fellow textile artist Jane George.
It has been an incredible journey and I hope you will come along if you're able to. It is in the first floor gallery at Bilston which is up a staircase just to the left after entering the building. For more information please visit the link above or email georgeandgrant@groups.msn.com

"Black Coat" By Ted Hughes

"I remember going out there ,
The tide far out, the North shore ice-wind
Cutting me back
To the quick of the blood - that outer edge nostalgia,
The good feeling. My sole memory
Of my black overcoat. Padding the wet sandspit.
I was staring at the sea, I suppose.
Trying to feel thoroughly alone,
Simply myself, with sharp edges -
Me and the sea one big tabula rasa,
As if my returning footprints
Out of the scrim of gleam, that horizon-wide wipe,
Might be a whole new start.

My shoe-sole shapes
My only sign.
My minimal but satisfying discussion with the sea.
Putting my remarks down, for the thin tongue
Of the sea to interpret. Inaudibly.
A therapy,
Instructions too complicated for me
At the moment, but stowed for my black box for later."


The first part of my favourite Ted Hughes poem from the "Birthday Letters" collection.

The beach

I know I have talked about my feelings about beaches on here before but with all the recent soul searching I've been doing for 'Making Sense'(see below) I have once again been reminded of how drawn toward the sea I am every time I need to think.

This week I turned 32(eek!) and on my birthday I spent the day by the beach. Here's a couple of photos and also one of me a little younger in the place where it all began.

Making Sense

In 2007 I joined the Midlands Textile Forum looking for like-minded textile artists to engage and exhibit with. Little did I know that I would meet such a kindred spirit and that we would collaborate on a project that would become so life changing.
At the beginning of December I will be exhibiting a collection of work at Bilston Craft Gallery, produced in collaboration with Jane George, exploring our parallel journeys through motherhood and the effect that this has had on our own identities. The title of the exhibition is 'Making Sense' and indeed this was our initial aim through a process of mutual support and dialogue to make sense of the issues that we felt were facing us as we learnt how to retain or restore a sense of self without compromising our selfless devotion to our children.
Working on this for the last year has led to a lot of soul searching for me and this is ongoing as I am bringing together the thought processes into final pieces for the show.
I have learnt things about myself....some things that were difficult to face....others were unexpected and life-changing...some will only be fully realised in time. Not all of this will make it into the final pieces. It's been interesting working out the boundaries of exhibiting and how much you should express through your work without becoming too exposed or vulnerable. I wanted this exhibiton to be a cathartic experience and in some way come to terms with my sense of unease but as the show gets closer I realise that there are some things that cannot be shown, some elements of people that will always be hidden and that friendships are just as important as art in expressing and working through life's ups and downs.

"Read All About It"!

I am easing myself back into work after the summer break with a commissioned panel for a buyer who saw the "Heirloom" show at Burslem. It is a very personal piece and I am feeling a real connection to it so am loving working on it and it feels brilliant to be back with my tools making again.
I have also just found out my proposal has been selected for a project next month...more on that and other projects later....but for now, if you're interested, I have written a short article on the Longhouse Website titled "Inheritance and Communities" and this month there is an article that has been written about my practice by curator Charlie Levine and features in this months A-N collections publication titled "Community Engagement". If you are an A-N subscriber you can read it here!

More 'Heirloom'

I am feeling like my blog is being neglected during my summer role change so I thought I'd just add a couple more images from my solo show in July.

Won't be long now until I'm back on the ball though, the girls return to school next week and I have so much to catch up on!

Newcastle-upon-Tyne

We decided last week to have a quick overnight break in Newcastle. We were looking for somewhere to go that we'd never been before and I found the idea on another knitter's blog. Not that this trip had anything to do with knitting, although we wanted to call into Sheffield on the way back for the 'Get knitted' exhibition there wasn't time in the end.

I was incredibly disappointed with the photos when I got back as I realised I had the camera set on lo-res. which is really bad for my camera which isn't particularly high res. on the highest setting. Am looking into a new one but they send me into a confused state every time I look at them so it's still on my to-do list.

We went to the Baltic Centre, stayed over night in a cheap hotel overlooking the Tyne and went to Seven Stories childrens book centre the following day.

I was shocked by the size of the river and the bridges and the buildings although I couldn't put my finger on why seeing as they are the same size as in any other city!

I think it was to do with the road we went in on and the way one minute it's just some random road and then it turns a corner and wham - you're underneath the Tyne bridge and it's all just...huge!

I was impressed with the Baltic as a really accessible and interesting place to visit with plenty to do with the children and they were really interacting with the work and the environment in which it was shown. I also thought there was a really good mixture of 2d on the wall stuff and more unusual 3d type stuff, with a bit of film/installation/other things mixed in.

So aside from this, with my show long gone and the children still off school there is little progress being made on my own stuff. I have loads buzzing round my head and maybe a bit too much really to achieve any kind of focus right now. But there's plenty of time for work in September, I'll sort it all out then I think.

Summer

Well the show is in its last week now so anyone wanting to visit needs to act now! The last day being Monday 4th August.
The children broke up for summer holidays over a week ago now and things have come to a standstill workwise as a result.
I am hoping to get a couple of days in here and there because I have a number of projects in the planning but apart from that I am focussing on spending time with my little girls. These are days I can never get back once they're gone and know I must make the most of every moment. Sometimes this is difficult to appreciate, so to keep a few moments just for me I have my knitting and two books on the go, to be able to say this would have been only a dream a few years ago. The children really are at a lovely age where I actuallyhave a few moments in between the madness!

The first book is Ted Hughes collection of poems "Birthday Letters". I bought this as a present to myself for graduating uni. in 1999!!! I have been dipping in and out of it ever since and as time has gone on I've realised the biographical nature of the work means it really should be read cover to cover like a novel. So that's what I am doing. You have to read it really kind of fast and furiously in parts to absorb the pouring of memory onto the page. It is very moving(think love, loss and death!!) but takes me to a whole other place in my mind which is just what I need when sitting in the playground with my brain slowly melting into oblivion.

The other is "Dear Tom" by Tom Courtenay. This was a gift from someone at a workshop I did earlier this year, again this is biographical, a combination of the author's life story but with an equal emphasis on his mother's life story. It's basically a story of living in a place that feels like home and yet doesn't reflect who you are or what you want from life. Belonging and not belonging all rolled into one.

This is how I feel about my relationship with Stoke-on-Trent, full of strange contradictions.

Last weekend we went away to Borth near Aberystwyth. After the initial sense of panic that's developed every time I leave home had passed I was so thrilled to be by the sea.

Having lived by the sea when I was young there is something about it that I just cannot explain that leaves me feeling balanced and refreshed just by being near it. For me it is the only thing that Stoke-on-Trent lacks.

I was also very pleased to find a couple of crumbling buildings to feed my addiction.

Show's UP!

Ok it's a been a few weeks since I posted but the 'Heirloom' exhibition is up and I am pretty pleased with how it looks. Less cluttered than last time and I actually brought a couple of pieces back home with me because I didn't want to hang one above another.
I like to think that this collection is more considered than previous work and therefore wanted a more minimal layout.
It is on at Burslem School of Art until Monday 4th August 2008 and here's the pic's!




Extracts from the accompanying written piece which is available at the gallery or by emailing me via the website http://www.rachel-grant.com/

"While creating this collection of new work I have been interested in the questions relating to the ‘evidence of our past’, from buildings and homes right through to tiny artefacts and found items, many of which are on display in varying ways within this exhibition. Wallpaper removed from terraces in the process of being demolished for example, shards of pottery embedded within felted knit, a 1929 sixpence sitting amongst thumbnail images of a scarred city and family history correspondence hanging without apparent function.
Both as individuals and communities we are faced with the decisions of what we should preserve and what we can safely discard, and equally who should be responsible for these decisions."

"We cannot live in the past but equally we cannot live in the future. It is easy to perceive the regeneration programme as a remedial process, with a defined beginning and end. Indeed the funding may have a clear start and finish but improvement is ongoing and cannot be defined by any one set of indicators. This idea is expressed in the two linen panels titled ‘Unfinished’. The first, Winchester Cathedral, was passed to me from a Great Aunt who had begun to embroider over the transfer background, and my grandmother had then continued it. Included with the embroidery was a skein of matching thread, with the intention that I pick up where they had left off. In the same way I have created the second panel with a transfer of the Sadler’s Park housing development in Burslem. The initial stitches are made, the matching thread attached, it is now ready to be passed on to the next generation for them to make their own mark." Rachel Grant ©2008