Carole Ann Day - Artist Profile

Carole at Crate

This photo was taken at Cratespace in Margate as part of the Come As You Go exhibition curated by Aine Belton, April 2013. The photographers were Vincci Huang and Holly Skinner, who combined views from Taiwan with images of visitors to the exhibition in Margate.

I make extraordinary objects, incongruous organic forms that explore our relationship with the natural world and how we experience it, experiments that challenge our response to gravity, weight, fragility, ephemerality and the forms of nature.

I work with a range of materials to create sculptural pieces and installations. I am inspired by the forms of the natural world and use materials such as stones, ivy, flowers and twigs to create my work. I also use plaster, clay, muslin, string and wax and sometimes more unconventional materials: cling film, plastic webbing and toilet tissue paper.

I am particularly interested in the concepts of change and decay. As many of my pieces are made from natural materials, such as vegetation, they degenerate over time, changing their nature and metamorphosing into a different state. The leaves of the ivy wither, brown and curl, but in this process reveal another aspect of their substance and suggest the passage of time.

My practice is experimental and intuitive; my pieces evolve as a relationship between myself and my materials. As I work I learn from the particular qualities of those materials, which changes the course of the outcomes I produce.

There is a strong element of craft in my work; I use the techniques of weaving, twisting, winding and wrapping my materials to create different textural effects. As I weave with my material I am making hundreds of small decisions: how tight the tension with which I pull the thread, in which direction I manipulate it, to wind or wrap, to twist or fold, how much to vary the thickness to create texture in the surface of the form. The form evolves; a result of hand, eye, mind and material. The resulting object holds a thousand memories of learning how to make it.

There are two strands in my practice; as well as my studio work I have also worked on number of community art projects, inviting members of the public to participate in a community making event. Most recently I have run two workshops where people have made a Stefani, a Greek flower garland made at Maytime to welcome the spring and invite new love into their lives. As the participants wove their Stefani I recorded their voices and invited them to weave messages into their garlands. We displayed the Stefani to create an evolving communal art exhibition and the workshop itself explored the experience and significance of communal making.

MA Show - Works

MA Show - Works

Woven Form

I wove the form from long stems of ivy, pushing the leaves through the ivy strands to hold them in place as I wound them around. I noticed that the inside became covered in ivy leaves, concealing the method of construction, and making an interesting internal space.  I decided to leave a hole in the form so that the viewer might peer inside.

 

Woven Form

Weave detail

 

Woven hanging form with stack of Stefani

Stefani Stack

 

 

 

Looking into the hole in top of the Stefani Stack

 

 

I piled the Stefani up into a stack with the smallest Stefani at the top, so that there is a small hole. I inserted an MP3 player and portable speaker in order to play a recording of woven voices I had layered together from recordings of the Stefani workshop participants. The recording plays very softly so that as you pass by you might just hear the feint background noise of these woven voices, recalling memories of the workshop. 

 

 

 

Stefani Stack detail



Column of Stones





Column of Chalk Stones from the beach in Ramsgate

Base detail

Stem detail

 

 

 Forms woven from toilet tissue paper

 

These extraordinary forms look as if they are standing on fragile tentacles although they are actually hanging from very fine fishing line. I accentuated the illusion by running strands from the top of one stem section to another, connecting some of the forms together and diverting the viewer's gaze from the ceiling.

 

 

 

 

The fragility of the long stem sections echo the form of the column of stones placed behind them at the end of the corridor. Both suggest a backbone or an umbilical cord perhaps.

 

 

 

 

Detail of stem section

 

Recent Work - Hanging Forms woven from ivy

Recent Work

Hanging Forms woven from ivy




Woven Form in Studio

I took the technique of weaving with vegetation and created a piece woven with strands of ivy, a hanging form, spherical, suggestive of an organic construction; like the Stefani it holds a space within it, but this is now inside the form. What is inside? the viewer might ask, what might emerge from this object? Womb-like, it suggests a nest, or a home for an unknown creature. It could almost be a found object, discovered in a dense forest, rather than made by human hand.

As I pull and wind the ivy, I struggle to make it secure, my engagement with this material is quite muscular; I'm fighting with its limitations. The leaves that looked so attractive hanging from the oval frame of the Stefani are here a hindrance, getting in the way of my progress.  I push them inside the form itself… and in so doing discover a way to control the strands and make perfectly regulated coils. The seemingly fragile stems of the leaves hold the woody strands of ivy in place, and as they dry they become the warp that holds the weft together, exemplifying a contradiction, a surprisingly delicate strength.

Detail of weaving



 

 

Process of decay



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recent Work - Forms woven from tissue paper

Recent Work

Forms woven from tissue paper

Forms positioned in corridor

I made another hanging form, this time with soft toilet tissue paper, using the technique of winding and wrapping threads of the twisted paper around the form, but, because of the nature of the material, engendering an outcome that suggests extreme fragility and tactile softness.  I have to twist the tissue tightly to create a fragile thread with which to weave; and as I twist and wind my material I wonder what kind of creature would create this form. In a way I am simulating the growing of a living organism. My hands, eyes, mind and the material are together evolving it. As I work with the material I feel its haptic nature and tensile strength, the limits of its possibilities in construction, how it seems to create its own loops, whorls and inter-windings, informing my hands how to manipulate it. I am creating a form organically, in a way similar to a being that creates itself from its internal blueprint, its own D.N.A. For, when I begin to make I have no fixed idea of what that object will be in the end; I have the germ of an idea, but it always changes. Things happen along the way, a chance discovery takes me in an entirely new direction that I hadn't foreseen. This is the excitement of making. How strange to make something and not know what it will be, like a child playing in the sand, just experimenting, but with endless possibilities.

 

The outcome of this experiment is quite incongruous; the intricately woven ovular shapes, for I have made a field of them, seem to stand impossibly on insubstantial tendrils of cotton that could suggest roots rising into a vegetable seedpod or the filaments supporting a chrysalis. The complexity and fragility of the elongated stem prompts questions in the viewer: From what is it made? How does it hold together? What is stopping it unravelling?

 



Detail of stem section

Recent Work - Standing Stone Column

Recent Work - Standing Stone Column

Column of Stones

The column of stones is an outcome of my experimenting with the effect of different materials in terms of gravity and weight. The heaviest natural object I could think of was a stone. On the beaches from Ramsgate to Broadstairs beneath the chalk cliffs can be found chalk pebbles weathered by the action of the sea; these are interesting sculptural objects in their own right and sometimes develop holes that can be threaded through. Scouring the windswept shore I gathered as many as I could carry and threaded them on a line of string. The weight and tension was evident, the resulting structure suggested a backbone perhaps, and the string was virtually invisible. I extended the line and rested the column on larger stones at the base creating a form that is both elegant and incongruous. The evolution of this experiment into a final piece, a column of stones that appear to be piled on top of each other without support, was the result of experimentation and reflection, judgement combined with an element of chance.

 

 

 

Column Base



 

Column detail

Stefani Workshop at The Garden Gate

Garden Gate Stefani  Workshop - Friday 28^th June 2013

The Garden Gate, Northdown Park, Cliftonville, Margate, Kent

Workshop space at The Garden Gate

Following the success of the Stefani Workshop held at Limbo in Margate, I was invited to host a similar workshop  at The Garden Gate in Northdown Park, Margate. The Garden Gate is a community run garden, combining the cultivation of vegetables and herbs with creative pursuits and workshops using natural materials. Volunteers from the local community help to maintain the gardens and local people with learning difficulties and mental health problems are invited to experience cultivating the garden and participate in creative workshops. Throughout the gardens sculptures and crafted objects from previous workshops are scattered amongst the trees and vegetable plots; the atmosphere created is peaceful, meditative and magical, one can feel the connection with nature that has been mindfully developed by many hands over time.

 

 

Stefani hanging in the Gazebo

 At the event I attended activities included painting stones, making tie dyed fabrics using natural dyes and making small sculptures from clay as well as my Stefani workshop, where participant wove garlands using ivy and flowers. It was an inspirational experience. The participants varied in their engagement with making the Stefani; some approached the task with intense concentration and produced truly beautiful crafted objects, others needed careful instruction and others just wanted to chat and I ended up virtually making their Stefani for them. One thing was apparent in all, they took great pride in the objects they had made, or had been made for them. Some displayed their Stefani in the gazebo behind the greenhouse and others wanted to take their work home to give to loved ones as presents.

 

Participants weaving Stefani

My experience of this workshop underlined my belief in the value of community participation in artistic projects. I would certainly want to support future events there.

Stefani Workshop at Limbo Arts, Margate

 Stefani Workshop at Limbo Arts, Margate

Stefani Workshop and exhibition

Stefani Workshop and Communal Exhibition @ Limbo Project Space in Margate, Saturday 8th & Sunday 9th June 2013

The Workshop explored the idea of communal making. All kinds of people came along to make a Stefani, a Greek Flower Garland that celebrates the coming of spring and invites new love into their lives. As the participants wove their Stefani, they chatted and reflected on the process of making, the significance of the flower garland and life in general.  New ideas evolved from their experience of the workshop and I felt that the event was generating strands of creativity that would extend into future time like the creeping vegetation of which the Stefani are made, winding and weaving into future projects.  As they spoke I recorded their voices and wove these conversations together to create a cacophony of sound, reflecting the experience of the workshop and the many life experiences that had come together to create this unique exhibition. Some also wrote secret messages on strips of rice paper and wove or incorporated these into their Stefani in various ways.  The Stefani became intensely personal, intimate objects, to be felt and contemplated; they contain the memories of individuals, not just in the manner of their making, but in the messages they wrote and wove into them and in the accumulated life experience that has shaped those individuals, leaving its traces on everything they touch, everything they make.

 

In this moment someone weaves a strand into another strand and repeats the process until they have made a garland of leaves and flowers – this is what happens – but this is not all that happens – this is not the essence of the happening. What happens is that the memories and experiences of the many fragments of their life – the intertwined strands of their story – come together in the moment of making so that the object they create is completely unique, no-one else could possibly have made it. The form holds the memory of their making.

 

We hung the Stefani from woven garlands of vegetation to create an evolving communal exhibition. A beautiful expression of the memories of many makers.

Participants at the Stefani Workshop

 

 

Joanna's Message 

 

 

 

 

Carole's Stefani 

 

 

 

 

Mrs Papadopolous and her sister in law making Stefani

 

 

 

 

Aine's Stefani detail 

 

 

 

 

Carole and Sarah hanging her Stefani

 

Stefani - Woven Greek Flower Garland

Stefani - Woven Greek Flower Garland






Day, Carole Ann (2012) Stefani :  Honeysuckle, Ivy, White Daisies, Corn

The Stefani is a woven flower garland from Greek folklore and tradition, which has become part of my personal mythology. Every Maytime Greek women gather white daisies from the hedgerows and weave them into a garland with other vegetation such as ivy, grasses and cyress leaves. They hang them from their front doors to welcome the beginning of summer and to invite love into their homes and into their lives.

The Stefani becomes a powerful cultural object, an enduring symbol and potent metaphor for new life, renewal and the cycle of the seasons.

Last summer a sea of white daisies appeared on my lawn inviting me to make Stefani once again.

  

To weave:

To make cloth, tapestry, basketwork etc. by crossing threads, strands, strips etc. above and below one another; to interlace (e.g.: threads in a loom to form cloth); to depict (figures, a story, etc.) in woven work; to combine, mingle or work together into a whole; to introduce (an ingredient or element) subtly (into something); to construct, fabricate or contrive.

We weave, fold, layer, wrap, cover, uncover, reveal and embellish with the materials we use. Like many women, I have engaged in making things out of material, cloth and threads of cotton, silk or wool from an early age. These domestic pursuits are usually seen as craft rather than fine art, but any artist will use techniques and materials familiar to them in making their work; in modern and contemporary art textiles have become one of the many new materials used in creating works of sculpture, drawing, installations and performance.

Weaving can be executed  with many different materials, not just threads of cotton or wool, rope or string. In my Stefani I have used creeping plants and flower stalks to create sculptural pieces.



Day, Carole Ann (2012) Withered Stefani Detail :  Honeysuckle, Ivy, White Daisies, Corn

 

The Stifani is an object of folklore, a garland that is traditionally hung on a front door, much like a Christmas wreath. But as a sculptural object in a gallery, whilst retaining this original identity, it takes on new allusions. In Limbo I hung two pieces from a horizontal girder, one fresh, the other withering, referencing time, transformation and decay.  The oval shape suggests a frame or a mirror, but empty, a space through which the viewer can gaze. The opposing concepts of fragility and strength also reside in the piece, the structure is made of fragile strands of vegetation, nothing else holds them together but their own interweaving, and yet their construction is incredibly strong and durable. As the vegetation withers it becomes brittle and yet the tiniest strand of flower stalk and head survive intact. It looks vulnerable but is incredibly resilient. By its very nature it must be hung.



Stefani exhibited in Limbo Arts Gallery for Access 10 exhibition: June 2012

I continued to experiment with Stefani throughout the Summer in my studio space. I hung them in various ways, encased them in plaster and combined them with other elements attempting to incorporate them in a larger installation. Nothing really worked that well.

 

Day, Carole Ann (2012) Installation with Stefani, Plinth and String

For a time I turned to other hanging forms in my making but kept the idea for future development, waiting for the Spring time to try something new with the Stefani. 

 

 



Recent work - Installation

Recent work - Installation




Wall installation of Natural Objects and Strands of Cling film

This wall installation was a combination of five pieces, four using natural forms as a base and one woven with clear and blue cling film. The whole sculpture evokes for me my connection with natural forms and was inspired by a view of dark brown twigs  silhouetted against an intensely blue sky in my sister's garden one summer.

 

 

 

Detail of Cling film installation

 

 

 

Detail of Twig with Blue cling film
 

 

Christmas roses' flower heads coated in plaster

 

Detail of twig with blue cling film