Rare Breeds Project (working title!)

As if I've not got enough on at the moment as it is... I've decided to go ahead with a little (huge) project that I've been mulling over for some time now. 

I love making my animals but do sometimes feel that it's all a bit disparate and lacking a particular direction. It's hard to do a 'range' as each piece is always going to be different but I've been looking for something that will give me a goal to work towards and in turn create a unique and beautiful collection of pieces. The main aspects I wanted to involve were wool (obviously!), heritage, Britain and the idea of a circle of creation... And this is what I've come up with, and am about to embark on...

The Rare Breeds Project (a better name may make itself known soon...)

Boreway Ram

In Britain there are 22 breeds of sheep on the Rare Breeds Survival Trust's Watchlist ranging from Critical to Minority (risk). My felting mission is to make wall hanging sheep heads of all 22 breeds using the fleece of the breed. Some should prove reasonably simple such as the Manx Loaghtan whose wool I use a lot already. Others such as the Critically endangered Boreway (less than 300 breeding ewes) may be more problematic...! 

I'm really looking forward to using such a wide variety of fleeces for felting. Some I know work quite well, others are pretty untested, especially for needle felting so it may be quite surprising, definitely enlightening. I can't wait to get started and will be posting about my progress. I'm doing this alongside making my normal pieces and running the gallery so it may take some time but in the end I hope to have an amazing collection of 22 pieces representing the wonderful variety of native breeds we have here in the UK. In turn I also hope I can use the project to raise awareness of the RBST and the sheep themselves as well as felting and the possibilities. 

Wensleydale

The eventual plan is to show the collection in a show alongside a curated selection of other handcrafted pieces relating to heritage, natural materials and native animals, but that's a little way off yet! 

And finally, as I will be selling the pieces eventually, 10% of all profits will go straight to the RBST to help them continue their work. It costs £700,000 a year to run their conservation projects so every little helps. It would also be wonderful to hear from any Rare Breed farmers, spinners, felters etc. who may like to get involved. I'm looking for raw fleece and tops for all the breeds so if you know anyone who can help please put them in touch! 

Playing with Clay

Last Thursday I jumped in the car and headed off into deepest darkest Dorset. (Very deep and dark at one point during an altercation with a roadworks lorry, an incredibly narrow lane and a range rover...!). I was on my way to the home and studio of Clare Trenchard, a fabulously talented sculptor to have a go at a bit of animal sculpture. Though this is what I do most days, I really fancied trying my hand at some different materials and Clare's 2 day courses offer the chance to work with wax, clay and plaster. 

A hound by Clare Trenchard in her garden

The first day was all about Chickens. Clare's friend Elizabeth had kindly offered some of her family's animals as models and we ended up with a Welsummer and 2 Silkies as well as a 102 year old female tortoise called Bramble! To get us started we worked with wax on small armatures of aluminium. 

The armature for a chicken

These are what I ended up with. I was quite pleased with them but found the wax a little odd to work with and wanted to make something bigger.

Two wax chickens

On day two we changed animals and had two Indian Runner Ducks. These were much more exciting to me and I set about making an armature big enough for a lifesize bird and decided to work with clay. 

Mr and Mrs Duck admiring my work

This all felt much more 'me' and I really got into the flow of things. I'm really pleased with how the piece turned out and have bought some clay to have another go with at home. 

Me hard at work!

The (almost) finished piece

I really like working with clay, but am definitely not going to give up the wool! I'm thinking about various ways of combining to two but haven't had any amazing ideas as of yet... I'll let you know if I do!


Clare runs both animal and human sculpture courses and they're very popular so book soon if you want to have a go yourself. She's a great teacher and everyone else on the course were lovely people and a pleasure to spend a few days with. Visit her website here.

Dorset Art Weeks

Dorset Art Weeks finished on Sunday. Two weeks of having my own work on show in my own gallery. I'm not sure I'll ever get round how professional and real that sounds! The reality is far more knackering, stressful and emotional. A year ago, even 8 months ago I had no idea I'd be doing this, and it's been so tiring that I'm still not sure whether I am happy with how it went. 

In terms of numbers it was great. Lots of people found me thanks to the great brochure that DAW produce and the website, and hopefully a bit of my own promo. There were plenty of visitors that didn't know the gallery was here so the exposure has been well worth it. I got the feeling my work was quite quirky for the usual visitors, the odd one walking out when they realised there were no paintings...! But the absolute majority seemed to really enjoy and appreciate what I'm doing. So many had never seen needle felting before, and if they had they hadn't seen large pieces like some of mine. I must admit I did start to tire of explaining it all by the end so am glad to step away from the felting for a few days. But the other side of that is the chance I got to explain needle felting to so many! 

There were lots of amazing comments left in my visitor book and I think that will be a good thing to look at when I'm feeling a bit down about my work. One thing I did wonder was whether describing it as 'sculptural needle felting' is too niche and I need to look at changing that to something like 'wool sculptures'... I'll keep thinking about that one!

I could have sold a few more pieces; even though I'm quite happy selling other's work and promoting our other makers to customers, when it came down to it being my work I buckled a little and perhaps didn't sell myself as well as I could. All good mistakes to make and learn from. And I did still sell a number of pieces including my showcase pheasant that was in the window, so am really chuffed with that. 

Now it's over, I'm going to have a few days away from the wool (I'm actually going on a clay animal sculpture course with Clare Trenchard so that will force my hand!), take a rest, recuperate and start to think about what next. I'm also going to the Craft Festival at Bovey Tracey on Sunday and I'll aim to blog about that next week. 

I've just been reading some great blogs that are all under the title of 'Things I'm afraid to Tell You' influenced by Jess Constable and started by Ez at Creature Comforts blog about being honest in blogs and online. In a comment on The Jealous Curator's post there was the below quote which I feel sums up quite well where I am with my work at the moment, so I'll let that do the talking...

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through."
― Ira Glass

Blandford Georgian Fayre

This May Bank Holiday we braved the rain and opened the shop for the Blandford Georgian Fayre. In order to not have someone random outside the shop we had also booked the pitch, so I found myself putting up a gazebo in a windy downpour at 8.30am on Monday morning!

Did I mention we had to dress up?!

Thankfully the rain did clear by lunchtime and the usual throng of crowds appeared. It's quite a mad day, with fairground rides, country events (ferret racing and the like!), stalls, traditional music battling with a battle of the bands, a beer festival, dancers, a town crier competition and very randomly, Stormtroopers...

The wonderful Rachel Dyke and her ceramics

As we were open I didn't really manage to escape this year but we did get a sneeky half at the beer festival after closing :)

All in all it was a really fun day, and I was helped loads by the wonderful Lou and Rachel who manned the stall and the shop all day, and Ben and Owen who helped with the heavy bits, and bought coffee and biscuits so a vitally important role!

More of Rachel's pieces. We sell her larger work all the time in the gallery

It's only on every 2 years so there's a little wait for the next one. And after a long day I was up at 6.30 the next morning to go to the Craft Council Hothouse Taster Day, more on that in my next post.

If you fancy sampling the Georgian delights of Blandford, the beautiful buildings are here all the time and the wonderful Fashion Museum with their Georgian Tea Rooms is well worth a visit.

The sun did eventually break through and the crowds showed up!