For the last few months I have been experimenting with woodworking. I started off with some old timber samples from work.

One of the first things I tried making was buttons. Nice buttons are hard to find so I thought I would make some myself. It proved to be quite time consuming but I will definitely try it again.

Buttons

One of the first pieces of jewellery I made was a wooden pendant. I roughly shaped it with a saw and then filed away for hours. I got the finish with fine grade wet and dry paper and then a coat of wax. The wood is river red gum (eucalyptus camaldulensis).

Eucalyptus wooden pendant
I have been experimenting with different pendant shapes. I also got a Dremel multi-tool thing which the rough shaping much quicker. The example below is made with acacia wood.

Acacia wood pendant

I  have been experimenting with more complex designs with interlocking overlapping segments. The example below is made with beech wood.

Beech wood interlocking segments Another experiment with interlocking segments. I am still working on ways to join the segments. The example below is made from oak.Experimenting with oak interlocking teeth

I’m not sure what this is going to be yet. I am making another one for a symmetrical necklace perhaps. The wood is probably African rosewood.

Rosewood scroll work
This is an unfinished pendant design with spiral design. The wood is upcycled parquet flooring from the Bristol Wood Recycling Project.
Spiral-loop-SMALL
Next, I hope to find ways to combine wood and silver.

Dairy-free AUTUMN APPLE JOY

Apple pastry thing - cake porn

The finished thing

Finished apple pastry thing close up

 

Ingredients

pastry

200g flour (I have tried this recipe with plain flour and spelt flour. Both worked equally well)

100g Pure dairy free spread (or dairy equivalent)

4 tablespoons of water

½ teaspoon of vanilla essence

A bit of lemon zest

Filling

apple butter See recipe here (It would be interesting to try it with damson or blackberry jam)

3 grated apples (or finely chopped)

Recipe

1. Put the flour, lemon zest and dairy-free spread (or dairy equivalent) and rub together with your hands

2. Mix the vanilla essence with the water.

3. Add water until flour fat mix holds together and looks like pastry.

4. Put the pastry in the fridge until you need it.

5. Peel, core and grate the apples.

6. Roll out the pastry into a rectangle

7. Spread a layer of apple butter over the pastry rectangle

Pastry with apple butter spread
8. Spread the grated apple over top
Pastry with grated apple
9. Cut the pastry down the middle into two long thin rectangles

10. Roll the pastry up into two Swiss roll type sausagey things.
Rolled up pastry
11. Line a cake tin with baking parchment

12. Pre heat your oven to gas mark 3.5 /155°C.

13. Carefully cut the rolled pastry into segments and arrange in the cake tin.
Cut up and arrange Cut up and arrange segments

14. Bake your pastry thing in the oven for an hour or until the pastry is a nice golden brown.

15. Eat it. Enjoy.

I love this stuff. If you’ve got loads of apples then this is the thing to make. It’s great on toast or in tarts or pies.

Ingredients

1.5 kg of apples or crab apples
500ml water
500ml dry cider
Sugar (I usually use demerara or raw cane sugar)
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 heaped teaspoon ground cloves
1 heaped teaspoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon of ground cardamom
2 star anise pods (optional)
Zest of 2 or 3 or 4 lemons (I like it zesty)

Method

1. Peel the apples and cut into pieces.
2. Place in a stainless steel or enameled pan with the water and cider.
3. Bring to the boil then simmer until the apples are very soft.
4. Use a sieve to strain off excess liquid and then purée the mush with a hand blender.
5. Allow ¾ lb (340 g)of sugar to each l lb (450 g) of pulp.
6. Return the pulp to the pan and simmer.
7. Add the sugar, cinnamon, cloves, allspice and lemon zest.
8. Simmer, stirring frequently, until no liquid remains.
9. Spoon into clean, dry, warm, sterilized jars.

This gallery contains 3 photos.

This dress design started out when I was experimenting with sewing curving pin tucks in to a rectangle of scrap fabric. I found that it fitted nicely over the breast when placed at an angle. The pin tucks reminded me of the rib cage. I liked the slightly anatomical look of the form. The skeletal …

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technographic

A modern day ritual

Where is ritual in our modern lives? Where has this major part of human life for millennia gone? When I asked myself these questions I began to wonder has it actually vanished? Have I been using too narrow a definition of ritual? I had been defining ritual in a purely religious/spiritual sense. A set of actions that the ritualist believes will invoke some kind of response in the physical realm. A dance to make it rain. A sacrifice to make it rain. A prayer to make it rain.

How has science altered the nature of ritual? How is a prayer different from pushing a button? The ritualist sacrificing a guinea pig expects a response just as much as the person pressing a button. You might respond with the observation that the difference is that we understand the mechanism behind the button. It is a human construction. I would respond that this is no different to a religious ritual. It is again a human construction involving an interaction with the physical realm. It has a mechanism that is understood by the ritualist. Back to the button. We no longer live in a world of simple mechanical buttons. A device such as a mobile phone can contain millions of transistors, endless lines of code and can react to interaction in an infinite number of ways. Do you understand what happens when you push a button on your phone or computer? It has stopped being a mechanical process that can be understood by any one individual and has become an act of faith. I press the space bar on my computer in the hope that it will add a space to my document.

We have come from a world of scientific understanding and we are heading for a world of mystical ignorance. Does any one individual understand how the phone in your pocket in its entirety works? Its microchips contain billions of transistors designed by teams of people. It software contains tens of thousands of lines of code written by different teams of people. It contains minerals sourced from all over the world chosen for their physical properties. How could any one individual comprehend this system in its entirety? Even if there are people who can understand it then we are just talking about a phone of today. Technological systems are steadily moving beyond human comprehensibility. Moore’s law suggests that the complexity of technological devices will continue to increase but the human mind does not increase in its ability comprehend complex systems. The use of computers to aid design and manufacturing is well established. The next step, if current trends are to continue, will be technical systems designed by computers. Technology becomes the intermediary for understanding technology and the human moves further away from comprehension of their world and their technological means of survival. This is not just the average individual not being able to understand the technological world around them. This would be a future where no one understands the technological world around us.

In the past a person could hope to understand their environment and how they could interact with it and how it would behave. The future looks different. With scientific and technological advance our everyday environment will move steadily beyond our comprehension. We will once again be like our ancestors sacrificing a goat to the mighty sky god.

Don’t worry. Everything will be fine as long as you keep pushing those buttons.

Fruity Seed Cake

This is a sticky, fruity cake that’s dairy and gluten free.

Ingredients

100g ground almonds.
100g sugar (I use demerara)
25g mixed peel.
50g sunflower seeds
50g golden linseed
50g sesame seeds (optional)
50g raisins
25g hemp seed (optional)
Zest and juice of half a lemon.
2  medium sized eggs.

Recipe
1. Put all the dry ingredients in a bowl then add the eggs and lemon juice.
2. Mix them up.
3. spoon the mixture into a  lined or greased cake tin. I use a shallow 20cm cake tin.
4. Put in an oven for 30 minutes on a low heat. Gas mark 3 on my oven. Until nicely browned.
5. Leave it to rest, The cake will be very crumbly when it has just come out of the oven. Leave it covered overnight. It will then be less crumbly.

 

The Lines of Descent exhibition started today at Hamilton House.

The title of the exhibition refers to the method of drawing I have used for the artwork on display. It is an organic process, like doodling. Each line suggests the next. Each line is influenced by that first line. A line of descent exists between the first line and the last line drawn. It is a journey. With some of the artwork the general composition was planned out in advance through sketches, with other artwork the process and composition were entirely organic.

I am interested in exploring the boundaries between beauty and ugliness. When does beauty tip over into ugliness? I use methods that are traditionally synonymous with beauty in art; pattern and symmetry, and then push them through iteration and distortion. I have also made occasional use of compositions from classical art.

Many of the pieces explore machine forms. I am intrigued by the ambiguity of technology as our saviour and our destruction. The technological form has been the poster child for progress since at least the beginning of the 20th century. It also has a rich tradition within the dystopian future visions of science fiction. Technology is so absolutely human but often disowned as inhuman. It forms are only limited by our imaginations but like a mirror it shows us what is within our imaginations. The beautiful and the ugly. E = mc2 becomes the atom bomb.

The exhibition runs from 15th – 26th October.

The private viewing is on Thursday 18th October from 6pm to 8:30pm.