MEDIMMUNE RESIDENCY WORK ALL COMPLETE

 I am pleased to be able to post these wonderful photos of my MedImmune residency artwork taken by Douglas Atfield. These are my wax and mixed media pieces, left- 'Cellular', right- 'Golden Section' and below- 'Thinking'.

This piece is called 'Close-up biology.' I know I have posted my snaps in the process of making these pieces but as the photos Doug has taken are so good I thought I'd post them as a whole body of work.

 This piece is 'Galaxy of Cells' and it hangs from the ceiling so that you look up at the piece and see the above layout. Each piece is a hand crocheted green wire cell with a separate turquoise nucleus floating inside it and covered with a network of fine red wire representing actin filaments. I made this piece after seeing an amazing image on an electron microscope that showed cells appearing in a formation a little like galaxies, fractals are very interesting to me and so the micro and the macro reflecting each others patterns became very inspiring.

'Sample(r)', above, is the piece I made inspired by histology slides and is my interpretation of cells on glass slides, some with mutations and some without. Although these mutations represent cancerous growth and the like, I couldn't help seeing beauty and pattern within these slides. I was intrigued by the idea of the visually attractive being so repellant because of what it represents. Also because cancer has become so prevalent and 1 in 2 people will experience it at sometime in their lives I wanted it to become less frightening and for people to have less fear attached to it as so many forms are treated so successfully these days and through work by MedImmune and other pharmaceutical companies treatment is becoming so very specific to the cancer type that it is so much more effective than before.

'Under Attack' is composed of small red bacterial cells crocheted in heavy gage sewing thread and then crocheted antibodies in navy mercerized cotton all of which are pinned to the wall in a fibonacci based pattern reflecting the cell form.

Here you can see it being installed as each piece has to be individually pinned to the wall.

 Here are my paper cuts left to right down the page are:





'Cellular', 'Membranes', 'Microvilli', 'Multiply', 'Thinking Cajal', 'Chains', 'Network' and 'Neurology.'

And finally the last piece in this body of work is 'The history within us'. This piece is made of plaster with epindorfs (small plastic test tubes used in the labs) set into it within a wooden frame. It is a floor piece and reflects archeological digs/fossils, DNA and cells. I was referencing the history that can be found in our DNA, the ancestry and genealogical information as well as medical data. There is an element of the same discovery and collection of data going on by scientists looking at DNA and the archeologist uncovering long forgotten historical artefacts.

Next step, find some galleries to show this work!!!

RETURN TO WORK

I have not blogged for ages I know and I must apologise but this year hasn't been great for me so far. For those of you who don't follow my Instagram or Facebook pages, the first three months of this year saw the very sad decline in my Dads health leading to his death in March and the three months since have been very hard. My Dad was wonderful, my greatest supporter as an artist , always encouraging and my biggest fan. He was always the same and had encouraged me to follow my passion all through my formative years, he never once doubted I would become a professional artist even when I did ( and some times still do!!). Due to these circumstances I have had several months of not being very productive and after his death I found the solitude of the studio almost unbearable - too much time and quiet to think about my grief. I am pleased to say that I have been back at work now for a few weeks and am being rather productive. 

I have been working on my knitted histology slides, I've been adding beaded nuclei and embroidering cell walls on each panel as you can see above. Almost five of the eight panels are complete.

Another way of feeling better has been spending time in the garden, here are some photos of the joys there; 

MEDICAL ART AND SCHOOL WORK

Since my last post I have been working on further pieces for my MedImmune residency and on teaching year 7 and 8's one afternoon a week.

These are pieces I am working on with Eppindorfs , based on lipids and DNA....





I have also been working on the knitted panels that I want to look like histology slides, there is still a lot of work to do on them but the idea is growing....

I may have mentioned before that I was working on a paper cut as gift for Christmas and so I didn't post any images in case the recipient saw it so here it is..

As for the project I am working on with the students .....

 We looked at the work of Kandinsky, Klee and Calder and then I asked them to make a relief like I have done in my sketchbook photos above. Below are a few examples of their work...

 

Next we're going to make gargoyle type faces!!!