Gosta Going

This week we say farewell to the Gosta Green BCU campus of Birmingham Institute of Art and Design.  I've worked part-time here since 1998 and have enjoyed the panoramic views from the embroidery workshop through the whole spectrum of climatic conditions.  Our equipment has moved and the last of the crates are packed ready.  This is my last day here and I wanted to record some of the remnants of our creative life which we leave behind.

 

 

 

 

Akiko Hirai at The Contemporary Ceramics Centre

'I make, so people describe, asymmetrical, imperfect and organic forms in ceramic ware for domestic use.  These words become a clichéd description of some types of oriental ceramic ware, and mine.  Yet, it does not explain why beauty manifests itself in such controversial forms.  Imperfection itself is not synonymous with beauty.  Beauty in imperfection only applies when it shows flexibility and balance between objects and their environment.  My practice over the past 10 years has been a journey to create this balance in every day objects.'  Akiko Hirai

 

 

 

 

En Paris

French material journeys...amassing, decaying, renovating, storing, delivering, developing, protecting, transporting...but also (a sad one) loosing.  One miss-guided Parisian Gallery baggage room decision saw me part company with my much loved and much travelled SLR camera, prompting a Gendarmerie visit to report the theft.  I am left with only the pictures taken on my HTC mobile...not quite as crisp but still a good record of the things that caught my eye...

 

   

  

  

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A knit from the past

I met an old friend a couple of weeks ago...a tiny jumper that I knitted for Mathew, then, the newborn son of a relative of mine... he is now 25!

I remember kitting the jumper, pre-ceramicpatchwork, pre-me-being-a-knitwear-designer, pre-degree, pre-foundation even.  I remember ad-libbing, working with no pattern.  I was impressed, Hickory-dickory-dock the mouse ran up the clock was knitted as a boarder running down the front, round the bottom then back up the front, numbers were dotted over the body and the raglan sleeves were fully fashioned.  All these design details I'd forgotten, but what I had remembered was the stuffed mouse that ran up the sleeve - squashed, but still perky after all the years.  The piece had been much loved as evidenced by the washed felted words.

Thank you Joanne for enjoying it, saving it and bringing it to the Mall Galleries to show me.  Mathew, you were too young to protest, but I hope you enjoyed wearing it as much as I enjoyed making it!
It is  ready for when grandchildren arrive...