UK Tour Day 3- Horniman Museum & Gardens

Karen Dodd’s “Coral:Fabric of the Reef” installation

Karen Dodd’s “Coral:Fabric of the Reef” installation

When I plan my trips, every once in a while I throw in a ‘ringer’ – some place I may have heard obscure reference to, I’m unsure about what I’ll find and decide to try our just for kicks.  It’s also good to plan some things which might really appeal to my husband Randy, who’s sweet and tolerent enough to accompany me on my textile exploits.

I read the description of the Horniman Museum and Gardens as a “quirky Victorian collection of artifacts” and thought it sounded like a unique adventure.  Not only that, but they also have an aquarium, which appeals to both Randy and myself, having both studied marine biology in our pasts.

The Color Wheel Summer Bedding Garden at the Horniman Museum & Gardens

We arrived a bit before the museum opened, so first toured some of the elaborate gardens, including this “color wheel garden”, which was planted to complement one of their current special exhibitions “Colour: The Rainbow Revealed.”

 

The original Arts & Crafts style museum

The museum was founded in 1901 by Frederick John Horniman. Frederick had inherited his father’s Horniman’s Tea business, which by 1891 had become the world’s biggest tea trading business. The cash from the business allowed Horniman to indulge his lifelong passion for collecting, and which after travelling extensively had some 30,000 items in his various collections, covering natural history, taxidermied animals and birds, cultural artefacts and musical instruments.

Victorian era natural history exhibitions seek to explain and confirm Darwin’s theory of evolution.

 

The original museum was designed by Charles Harrison Townsend in the Arts and Crafts style.  The collection now exceeds 350,000 objects.

After viewing the gardens, their lovely aquarium, and the interactive colour exhibit (geared towards children), we moved on to the natural history gallery.  We were greated by a fabulous sculptural textile collection by artist Karen Dodd.

Pinpoint by Karen Dood From Coral: the Fabric of Life

Pinpoint by Karen Dood

Karen’s work explores the beauty, fragility and vulnerability of coral and coral reefs.  Some of the pieces are brightly colored, showing the vibrant interdependent reef life.  Other pieces are subdued, representing the destruction of the reef and lifeless coral skeletons.

Karen uses hand-dyed and discharged (colour removal) wool blankets, which are folded, twisted, felted, wrapped & bound, and stitched.  The discharging of colour, corresponds to the bleaching of coral in our oceans, as the coral comunities die.  She uses fragmentation, shadowing, felting processes, stitching, and holes or gaps to increase the textural nature of each piece, while representing the loss, deterioration, and (hopefully) possibility of regeneration of the coral reef.

Pinpoint, detail

‘Crinkle Return’ by Karen Dodd

‘Crinkle Return’ by Karen Dodd

‘Crinkle Return’ detail by Karen Dodd

‘Crinkle Return’ detail by Karen Dodd

‘A Stitch in Time’ by Karen Dodd

‘A Stitch in Time’ by Karen Dodd

‘A Stitch in Time’ detail by Karen Dodd

‘A Stitch in Time’ detail by Karen Dodd

‘Lighting the Shadows’ by Karen Dodd

‘Lighting the Shadows’ by Karen Dodd

Check out https://www.karen-dodd.com/ Karen’s website to see more in this incredible series!

I’ve had a love of the ocean and shorelines for most of my life.  The tidepools brimming with life, seaweeds washed ashore, and piles of driftwood to climb and explore.  So when I saw a class offered several years ago on “Driftwood Art”, I was intrigued and wanted to try it, not even knowing what it was.  I suppose I imagined that I would make pieces of driftwood sticks into finished wood that I would hand my quilts off of.  Was I ever wrong!

I finally got started in my first class last spring.  It’s an ongoing class; many of the students have been doing it for year.  The Northwest Driftwood Artists are the group behind the classes which I take. They have a specific method (the Luron Method) of taking driftwood pieces and bringing out the inner beauty of the wood, rather than carving or changing the wood’s nature.  

The process is rather painstaking.  You clean and scrape the piece of driftwood, removing all the dead outer wood, until you get to the rich inner heartwood and can see the wood’s grain.  Next, you sand (and sand, and sand) the piece.  Finally, you rub the finalized sculpture with a beeswax-turpentine mixture to bring out the color.  Sound easy?  I’m still working on my first piece after about 10 months!  Maybe I’m a slow learner….

What I am good at is finding some incredible pieces of driftwood.  I probably have enough pieces now to last the rest of my life, at least at the rate I’m going now.

While the photos here are of beautiful raw driftwood (much of it too large to get home to my studio), the exemplify what is looked for in making driftwood sculpture: an interesting pattern and grain of the wood, and hopefully some luscious coloring .

To see some of the fabulous completed pieces, go to the Northwest Driftwood Artists website.  I hope to have my first piece completed in time for the annual show in May.


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