My new shop and website!

 Of all the things I thought I might do with my life, building websites was never one of them.  But here I am...

I have given myself a deadline for building three websites - mine; our joint Deckled Edge Press'; and Barry's  and can now say  that 2/3 ain't bad!  I still have a day or two up my sleeve to get Barry's published and then I can let out a really big sigh of relief.  For the time being I shall release a mid-sized such sigh.

Here it is...fionadempster.com

I mentioned a week or so ago that we had published the DEP website and the story is pretty much the same for mine.  Built around our Square sales point that we use in the studio and at fairs, markets, shows etc we can link our inventory from the studio to our websites.

Never before have I found having an online shop so easy. Who knew?

We also have the choice to sell things on one or all three of the websites.  Mainly we have things available on one or two - for example my feminist posters are available on both my website and on Deckled Edge Press' website.   But some of my artists' books and calligraphy are only on mine.  

It's tricky to get the balance right, but we are working our way through it all...

My site has very much the looking feel I was after - soft and gentle.

I have reduced the number of works in my gallery to six and hope that I will add some more as we go along.

By clicking through you can see more detail; and link to the blog posts which tell their story...

And I have given my blog it's own page. I have been blogging since 2009 and this places is a true record of my explorations, and my process and I really treasure it. Along with the company I get to keep here!

I hope you might pop on over and have a look. 

Let me know how it goes, if it has any major mistakes or foibles and if there is anything missing or anything you think should be there.

I really hope that it will also make it easier for folk to purchase things they might have seen me blog about and liked the look of!

Thursday Thoughts...

“Is that what writing amounts to? The voice your ghost would have, if it had a voice?” 

 Margaret Atwood

This one turned my head inside out a little bit. 

I think about ghosts appearing when you die; and so was not sure how how a present day person writing would ponder their words as the voice of a ghost.  In order to write you must be alive I assume? Even now I am still pondering!

The questioning of whether a ghost would have a voice made me wonder why one would choose this as a way to express something.

As I delved a bit deeper I realised that the words are in a novel called MaddAddam, and without having read the book, perhaps they make less sense to me - they maybe perfectly positioned within the novel and its characters and within that context make perfect sense!

Perhaps it is about the words being written being more like an echo through time when you die. That they are what remains of a person?

Perhaps that makes the most sense. I'm still not sure about any of it, but there you go!

Headstone, Canisbay Church of Scotland graveyard.

Women Friends

 I have mentioned previously that I was playing with some words by Scottish poet Pauline Prior-Pitt.

Her poem Women Friends is the loveliest honouring of women's friendships and it has warmed me from the moment I read it. My Dad was with me at the Scottish Poetry Library and showed me her book Be an Angel and suggested I might just need to buy it. True.

I wrote to her recently asking permission to use the words in some work; and she generously agreed and I feel so honoured to be able to do so.

I have begun working towards a showing around the theme of The Red Thread. Three friends and I are hoping, all things being equal, to be able to have a small showing in the Deckled Edge Press studio hanging space in October-November this year.  We all know that a thousand things can happen between now and then, but we are committed to giving it a go! 

I have been pushing ideas around and playing with things for a while and am only now beginning to bring my fuzzy outline thinking into some sort of focus.  This wee artists' book is the first piece that is finished.

I was actually doing something else when my eyes came across the tin.

Funny story - when we packed up our home and studio last year, I was going to throw the tin out. Barry thought he might be able to use it for something and it stayed. Last month Barry was tidying up his new workshop space and came across the tin again. Now knowing he wouldn't use it, he asked me if I could use it and I thought yes, I might just be able to! Circles.

But back to the tin moment. I dropped whatever mundane task was at hand; went and gathered up some scraps of the roll of paper Barry had been cutting (Arches Velin) and wondered if I cut them into tiny squares (2cm x 2cm) might they fit in the tin?

And then what to do with them if they did?

I thought about writing out the poem on large paper then cutting it up and stacking it; I thought about making each page of a stack a segment of the poem. And then I thought, what if I stamped the poem in four parts on the top sheet? So it could be read?

I tried to work what size type I would need to fit all those words on such a small page and found it was 8 pt. Tiny.

So I gathered the type together and taped it so I could hammer it in one go; rather than end up having bouncing letters with too many spaces.

And then there they were...

Four stacks of words,

Nestled in their tin, with the title and the poet tucked into the lid.

 

And the sunshine beaming in...

Starting the second six months of stitching

 Having made it half way through the year in terms of stitching, the next six months are looming.  It's funny how it works, being a month or so behind in stitching; I can look back over the whole month and try to work out how best to achieve it.

July caused me grief. Too much happened and I did not think I had a hankie big enough to handle it all.

What to do? Do I re-design, edit or stitch two hankies?

I ummed and ahhed a while and asked Barry's opinion.

We both agreed that it had to be one hankie not two. 

Here I am comparing my hand written notes, with two of the 6 hankies available. Seriously, all those words will not fit in the bottom one. The top one has potential; but I think it would be crammed.

The other four options...

Also not looking good when the words are alongside them.

In the end, we decided to re-design. Firstly, I combined a few lines (e.g. rather than 'Perth out' on one line, followed by 'Darwin out'; I combined them onto one line).

Secondly I edited (e.g.Worst day yet - with hindsight this was pretty superfluous and added very little - except the innocence and naivety of the statement, which I often try to note as a reminder that we didn't know what was coming).

And managed to fit the words on - in-between some of the decorative elements and not as straightforward as previous hankies, but that adds to the message of increasing complexity and messiness I feel.

This is my thread palette thus far. I am sticking with 6 colours and definitely NOT re-using the thread for January as it is way too pale.

The first stitch was made during the week, and August is looming like another biggie here.

 

PS that is NOT the stitch that was made! Laugh.

Thursday Thoughts...

“Some people say home is where you come from. But I think it’s a place you need to find, like it’s scattered and you pick pieces of it up along the way.” 

 Katie Kacvinsky, Awaken

The last time we visited the cottage in Scotland I spent a lot of time considering the notion of home and of place and what it means.  For the first time I really felt as if I had two homes. Contrastingly different, yet both deeply held within me. As I returned to Australia I thought upon it a lot, did a course called Poetics of Place and really went deep in my attempt to understanding this calling, this yearning.

Interesting then to have been forced to be in only one place for the last 18 months or so, and to consider and ponder is it really like a home if you can't get there?

This quote suits my thinking about home in a couple of ways.  It suggests it isn't fixed; it is not the one and only place you were born or brought up; or even the house you lived in. I like the way she introduces the notion of a traveller finding bits and pieces here and there - a gleaner of sorts.

So creating a sense of home is perhaps more about gathering things, experiences, and places and melding them together to create that feeling so associated with home. Feeling safe, nurtured, protected, understood...feeling as if you belong. 

And dare I say, you can find this in more than one physical place.

From the kitchen window in the Highlands...

New online shop and website

 Well, pottering away in the background we have been revising and renewing our websites.

We had both taken down our shop pages on our own websites - it was getting messy to maintain and keep track of things, and so we basically gave up on them.

When we opened this studio in town, we started using square as the sales tool - it has a great inventory and the ability to add discounts for events - all day long at the open studio; or family and friends discount etc.  One of the key wins is that we could both use it easily for sales at the studio and we are both fans of simplicity.

Drifting into my consciousness over the past few months, has been squareonline.  You know how you notice things, but don't pay attention. See them slide by in your emails or messages, but don't think they apply to you?

And then one day I realised it did!  So I investigated and discovered that we could set up part of the studio as an online shop. It meant we also redesigned the look and feel of our deckled edge press website, again we simplified it heaps, and off we went.

To see the new website head to decklededgepress.com

It looks a bit like this when you land...

And talks about the two of us a bit.

And the shop links to our inventory, and lets us have things on sale and all the rest of it!

And there is a place just to show some things we like.

We have been really happy with the ease of actually building and populating our very own website. In years past, with thanks to Katie, we have worked out what we wanted, she has designed and built them, and we have kind of sort of managed and updated them afterwards.  This way I know this site inside out (kind of sort of again) but am able to fix my own problems which is grand.

Another friend Kim helped me think my way through things and work out the trickiness of getting emails to work at the new website; and Sam from Concept IT in town published it for us. I am still too scared to take that leap!

The rebuilding and re-designing of my own website is underway and Barry has begun his process as well, so we hope by the end of the month to be live on both of those platforms too!

Please let us know what you think - we are trying to improve things and make it easier all round - for folk to purchase things as well as to simply see who we are and what we do.

Half a year of stitching

On Saturday I finished stitching my June Covid hankie.  Being in lockdown for a week helped as I stayed home and stitched in moments when I might otherwise have been out and about. 

That means half a year of documenting, recording, noticing, paying attention.  Interesting.

For me, we here in Australia are at another turning point moment; and I think we are learning all over again that the world has changed and that returning to normal is probably a nonsense idea. I spend time mulling what does it mean? What will it look like? How will we be? What do we let go of? What do we work hard to retain?

There is tentativeness, uncertainty and a yearning for simplicity.

This is quite a big project.  I had not realised how big it would be when I began with a quirky notion, and a hope to keep a funny little diary of sorts.

I have had to remind myself that this is real work and when complete, it will be quite a remarkable record. Initially I had thought of it as a fun thing to do on the sides; yet it has become quite a focal point for my 2021 work.  I like how the work leads you sometimes; and I like how things evolve and take on  new meaning.  I like that I don't know what I am doing nor where I am going at times!

Here are the first six months of hankies.  

I love their individual natures. I long for the casual capturing of February where not many big things happened. The intensity of the script in June describes the growing concerns.

The tactility of them is a precious thing. 

I love their edges and their individual characters. And I apologise for the threads from the rug that appear on them - I wild do better.

And the backs of them. The script has power on the other side as well. It is possible in places to decipher it.  I still need to tidy them up and snip threads etc.

 I am grateful for that flicker of an idea - of looking at my mother's hankies and thinking oh, maybe that!  And for friends who shared theirs with me.

And for knowing that the story continues and that I have work to do.

Thursday Thoughts...

“There is no line where art stops and life begins.” 

 Charles Eames

Says the man who co-designed some beautiful chairs.

I am not sure if everybody sees life as an extension of art and vice versa; but I know kindred spirits for whom these words hold true.

For these folk, and I include myself amongst them, it is an impossibility to say "that is life, but not art. That is art, but not life"  

Or at the very least there is a bell curve with very very tiny outer edges.

For me, making my way through the day I often stop to see the world as art and beauty.  When I get up in the morning it's the light that always draws me: the colours; the shapes of the clouds; the shadows; the sunbeams; the rainbows.  All are art.

From the flowers in vases to the companionable silence; from the rusty trinket in the gravel to the silhouettes of trees at dusk; to the design of clothes I wear to the way ingredients fall into a pan.

Life is art and art is life.

White daphne in a sun stream this week.

Peace gathering

 All the brown cutlery envelopes are dry now as well, so we are starting to pull together our peace packs for 2021.

I never seem to be able to just collect them, pop them in the post and send them off. No, I seem to have to lay them out, let their threads dangle together, photograph them this way and that... 

So here they are.

The stash on my desk, including the randoms which are not yet threaded, and the white envelopes for the group.

And because I was making gluwein for the first time, for a Christmas in July kind of thing, here I am getting distracted by the ingredients on the way through..

Good news is it worked quite well!

Letraset heaven

 Who ever really knows how things come about? How this leads to that and then...? 

And so it is with this letraset find.

I was reading about letraset which made me smile and remember how much fun it was.  I recalled I had some in the studio a friend had gifted me; and also that I had tried to purchase some modern equivalents recently.

I then went off on a google and found some for sale in Australia.  I really liked the used look it and lo and behold I was able to buy it and send it home. 

Isn't it gorgeous? What a stash!

So many lovelies.

As I look t it, I wonder which words have been printed using it? All the Cs and Ps are gone...

Some nice variations on the b and the g and some lovely ligatures - that ct is gorgeous!

I feel as if I am reading absences.

I quite like the tail of the R here; and that fractured T. And the way that part of one R is already detaching itself.

Lots of little ones too!

And this font reminds me of Hobo?

Bu this I really love - the marks left behind by rubbing off the letters. This is exactly what mine used to look like as a kid. What I would have called a blue biro rubbing it off!

I lie in bed at night dreaming of what these can become... so exciting!