I’ve been somewhat lax in posting here but time seems to have flown by and now it’s time for the Red Knots to fly.
It’s going to be a busy couple of weeks starting tomorrow when I travel up to London to deliver my installation, returning on Tuesday to hang it, then Friday for the Private View, Sunday to steward and the following Saturday to take it all down again! Phew!! Exciting times…
Well since the excitement of having an article published about my Red Knot installation, on the WHSRN website, I have been told it’s also appeared on their Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/WHSRN and is linked to ‘The Friends of the Red Knot’ Facebook page too.
More exciting news is that I have been offered both Licentiate Membership of the Society of Designer Craftsmen and the opportunity of exhibiting at the Mall Galleries in London next year.
A bit closer to home; I am currently working towards a site specific exhibition at Manor Farm, so lots to do. Will keep you posted about things as they progress.
We had an wonderful opening night for our degree show, with a huge number of friends and family turning up to support us. Everyone enjoyed the diverse range of exhibits and the compliments were overwhelming and I had a lot of interest in my ‘B95 Red Knot Migration’ exhibit. It’s not an easy installation to photograph but hope to get some more done and will put on the website soon.
Well I can hardly believe it but our FdA Degree Show opens this evening, (6:00pm – 8:30pm at Desborough Campus, Eastleigh) and I’m looking forward to seeing friends and family there.
The threads of yesterday are now 40 flight paths – dyed, coiled and ready to take flight …
With less than 2 weeks to go I thought I’d better start cutting the lengths of thread for the B95 migration path; it’s surprising how tangled a 5m length of thread can get! It’s not going as straight forwardly as I would like – having measured 20 lengths of threads and carefully winding them up so as to avoid the tangles, I had to unwind them to measure and mark up how far the dye needed to go.
Anyway one set is ready for dyeing just another set to go!
Only 3 weeks to go! With one module still to complete and my exhibition piece to make the pressure is really on. Time flies when you’re having fun or when you’re trying to meet a deadline! With over a thousand red knots done there’s still so much to do…
Breaking news from the ‘Friends of the Red Knot’ Facebook page:
“He’s Back!! Here’s the news we’ve been waiting for!! B95 was found this morning at Reeds Beach, by Patricia Gonzalez. Truly amazing!!!”
I’m so pleased to hear he’s alive and well.
Well the Red Knot installation for the end of year Degree Show is underway at last. Having made a number of revisions to the initial idea I’m now more or less back to the original one! It’s based on the migration of the Red Knot birds; B95 or as he’s now known ‘Moonbird’ has made this journey every year for around 20 years now and it’s his remarkable story that has inspired me to create my final piece of work for my FdA stitched Textiles course.
Working on the red knots:
Had a fun afternoon today experimenting with dying yarn, in preparation for my final piece for the Degree show.
I’ve been researching the Red Knot bird and one in particular, known as B95 or sometimes called the Moonbird. This is the basis for my installation and one thing I’ll need is lots and lots of orangey red yarn. Having found a suitable yarn in white, I need to dye half of it red/orange, hence today’s experimentation.
Wendy Fleckner 