From Spikeworld. | Spikeworld - The blog of Spike Dennis | Artist, Maker, Curator and Colloaborator

21st Century Embroidered Sampler Competition

The Royal School for Needlework are running the 21st Century Embroidered Sampler Competition to coincide with their current exhibition of samplers which runs until July 2014.

The challenge is to design a 21st century sampler which will become part of the RSN Archive Collection for future generations to enjoy. There are no limits as to what elements the sampler may or may not contain but the maximum size for the design is 45cm square.

The winner will get the opportunity to make up their sampler design for the RSN (with some help if required) so that it becomes part of the RSN’s Collection for years to come.

The closing date for entries is Friday 20 June 2014. You can download the full brief, terms and conditions, and an entry form via the Royal School of Needlework website here.

The current exhibition of samplers should provide a great source of inspiration if you’re tempted to enter this competition. The show features work from 1731- 2013, from band samplers to ABCs with Bible verses, patterns and motifs, map samplers, darning samplers, long sewing and stitch lesson samplers from school days to doll-size costumes to illustrate stitching, making-up and patching.

Visist www.royal-needlework.org.uk for more information.

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From Spikeworld. | Spikeworld - The blog of Spike Dennis | Artist, Maker, Curator and Colloaborator

void setup() {
  size(screen.width, screen.height);
}

void draw() {
   background(0);
   fill(255);
   rect(mouseX,mouseY, 100,50);
   rect(mouseX+10,mouseY+50, 20,50);
   ellipse(mouseX-60,mouseY+140, 250,125);
   rect(mouseX+10,mouseY+180, 20,100);
   rect(mouseX-150,mouseY+180, 20,100);
   
   fill(0);
   ellipse(mouseX+30,mouseY+15,12,12);
   
   fill(136,0,255);
   triangle(mouseX+40, mouseY, 
            mouseX+60, mouseY, 
            mouseX+50, mouseY-60);
}

Processing Unicorns

With the recent launch of my Unicorn Dating project I have been creating web based content in addition to my embroideries. This is the content which viewers will be able to engage with via the QR codes stitched into the physical work.

So far this content has included videos, animated embroideries and more interactive content such as the opportunity to sign up with your own profile at www.unicorn-dating.com. This idea of providing more interactive rather than passive content appeals to me and so I’ve been poking about in the world of Processing.

Processing is a programming language and development environment that promotes software literacy within the visual arts and visual literacy within technology so it should be the ideal platform from which to start exploring interactive aspects of my work.

I’m pretty competent with a number of digital languages such as HTML and PHP and I’ve dabbled with programming Arduino’s too which meant that the Processing environment was not at all daunting; there are definitely similarities between some of these languages.

I’m still at a very basic level with Processing having only been exploring the platform for a few hours but I thought I’d share this first (very rough) sketch. The code above was used to generate this drawing over at unicorn-dating.com.

It’s a very crude sketch of a unicorn – but we’ve all got to start somewhere! The unicorn will follow your cursor (or finger on a portable device) around the screen. The plan is that this content will be optimised for portable devices but at the moment the sketch is working better on larger screens.

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From Spikeworld. | Spikeworld - The blog of Spike Dennis | Artist, Maker, Curator and Colloaborator

Memory Cloud by Minimaforms

I’ve been exploring more digital means of producing art work of late and my enquiries led to the discovery of Memory Cloud by Minimaforms aka Theodore & Stephen Spyropoulos. Through their Minimaforms platform they have created a number of wonderful interactive artworks such as Memory Cloud which is described as “animating the built environment through conversation“.

Memory Clouds was presented at Trafalgar Square, London, in conjunction with the ICA in 2008. The work was based on smoke signals – one of the oldest forms of visual communication – and for three nights the public was invited to participate by sending text messages that were grafted onto plumes of smoke with light.

It was the use of mobile phones as a point of interaction in this work that particularly grabbed my attention having been using QR codes in my own recent works.

Whilst I’m not encouraging quite such collective participation within my own work – in so much as participants will have their own personal experience on their own device – mobile technology is now so massively prevalent in our culture that it does make it an easy point of access.

My programming skills are way off being able to create something as complex as Memory Clouds but having recently delved into the world of Processing I’m excited by the possibilities that these digital technologies can provide.

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From Spikeworld. | Spikeworld - The blog of Spike Dennis | Artist, Maker, Curator and Colloaborator

Green Screen Filming of Unicorns

I’m currently making a new video for my Unicorn Dating project which will be accessible through the QR codes embroidered into my work.

This video will be a call to arms to save our beloved unicorn from extinction so if you encounter these works being exhibited scan the code and join the cause.

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From Spikeworld. | Spikeworld - The blog of Spike Dennis | Artist, Maker, Curator and Colloaborator

Hand Embroidered Photo Album Cover

This is a gift I made for Mother Spike for her birthday this year. I hand embroidered the text onto linen which I then used to wrap the photo album to create a unique book.

The words were embroidered using split stitch for the large graduated text and back stitch for ‘photographs’ beneath that.

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From Spikeworld. | Spikeworld - The blog of Spike Dennis | Artist, Maker, Curator and Colloaborator

David Catá’s Hand Embroidery

David Catá is a Spanish artist who works with embroidery and uses his own body as a canvas. He has created a series of portraits of people who have had an impact on his life by stitching their faces onto the palm of his hand. These temporary embroideries have been documented in a series of photographs and videos entitled “Under the Skin”.

I picture the people who, somehow, have marked me throughout my life; family, friends, couples, teachers… their lives have been interwoven with mine to create a story. Every moment lived stays in the memory to finally be forgotten. somehow, this fact is painful, since there are only material things and traces that people leave behind.

I really like this idea of stitching into human skin, but like Nina Falk’s work (posted previously here), the video documentary is quite an uncomfortable watch.

There’s long been an association between cloth or thread and ideas relating to memory and this is a unique approach. The idea of creating a temporal embroidery relative to these thmes seems to me to be particularly poignant.

You can view more of the artists work on his website: www.davidcata.com

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From Spikeworld. | Spikeworld - The blog of Spike Dennis | Artist, Maker, Curator and Colloaborator

Sieze: Overtime Exhibition – Art and the Office, Leeds

26 – 29 March 2014
Wellington Park House
25 Wellington Street (entrance via Thirsk Row)
Leeds
LS1 4WG

OVERTIME is an exciting new art exhibition that explores the difference between office spaces and the artist’s studio. SEIZE Leeds ahs invited 26 artists, including myself, to respond to an office space – to explore the tools and working methods common to such spaces through making art.

Occupying a disused floor of Wellington Park House, in Leeds’ busy financial district, the exhibition will bring together a diverse range of artists showcasing both emerging and more established practitioners from across the country.

Expect a lively mix of artworks reflecting the broad range of contemporary artistic practices including: image-based work, sculpture, digital projections, installation, painting, performances, participatory projects, and of course my own hand embroidered textiles.

OVERTIME Opening Night: 26 March 7.00 – 9.30pm
Opening Hours: 11.00am – 6.00pm (Saturday 11.00am – 5.00pm)

Participating Artists include:

Lilly Ackroyd-Willoughby | Mike Ainsworth | Anachron-Gen | Alice Bradshaw | Lydia Catterall | Spike Dennis | Natalie Drenth | Emma Hardaker | Phil Hopkins | Edward Hurst | Luc Jones | Ellie MacGarry | Bess Martin | Tom McGinn | Emma Moody-Smith | Julia Miorin | Shanie Mor | OFFCUT Collaborative | Leo Plumb | Ned Pooler | Stanley Quaia | Alec Shepley | Will Turner | Philip Welding | Matt Wheeldon

For more infromation visit www.seizeleeds.co.uk

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From Spikeworld. | Spikeworld - The blog of Spike Dennis | Artist, Maker, Curator and Colloaborator

The Spring Knitting and Stitching Show, Olympia

This weekend just passed I attended the spring Knitting and Stitching Show at London Olympia. I was volunteering with Mr X Stitch on his Inspiration Station along with students from the Royal School of Needlework and fellow manbroiderer Lord Libidan.

I was at the event all day Saturday helping to teach visitors to the event how to cross stitch. We had lots of interested participants both old and young and plenty of visitors who seemed genuinely surprised to find three men indulging in some embroidery (the three of us did after all make up approximately 50% of all men present at the event!).

There were lots of trade stalls at the events and of crafty exhibits on display. The Inspiration Station itself exhibited work from the Young Embroiders Guild as well by artists such as Floss & Mischief who were also helping out at the event on the Thursday and Friday.

One of the most interesting exhibits for me was the Mermaid Project exhibition stand by the Silk Felt Collective. This was a fibre art installation of work inspired in part by Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of the Little Mermaid.

It was a pleasure to meet Lord Libidan at the event. I’d seen a couple of pieces of his work online before but it was all the more impressive seeing some of it in the flesh. His work pushes the boundaries of cross stitch and some of the most popular pieces he had brought with him to the event were these transformable cross stitched Transformers figures.

Having seen these I’ll certainly be investing in some plastic canvas at some point in the near future to further explore the possibility of creating three dimensional embroideries. Do check out his website for some more wondrous cross stitched items.

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From Spikeworld. | Spikeworld - The blog of Spike Dennis | Artist, Maker, Curator and Colloaborator

Kayla Mattes’ Internet Inspired Textile Art

I stumbled across Kayla Mattes’ textile art on the @BrwnPaperBag blog. She’s an interesting artist who makes use of contemporary sources of inspiration in the production of her work and it’s her use of material sourced via the internet that piqued my interest given my own use of content sourced online in recent work.

These images are woven panels that memorialise AIM chats; I believe that they are Jaquard woven. The design features smiley faces and text speak that seems to have been much more prevalent prior to the rise of predictive text in applications. The design is reminiscent of that aesthetic that we might associate with the world wide web from around the turn of the millennium.

The parallels between pixels and stitches do provide a fascinating playground for visual exploration and Kayla has used digital sources of inspiration for a number of works including ASCII Catz and glitch inspired design for a series of small tapestries in her Pixel Fuzz series.

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From Spikeworld. | Spikeworld - The blog of Spike Dennis | Artist, Maker, Curator and Colloaborator

Electroluminescent Tron Inspired Hooded Sweater

This is a little something a whipped up recently. I finished a zip up hoodie with some electroluminescent wire enabling it to light up with a Tron-blue light.

The hoodie has three settings which include pulsating (fast/slow) and static modes making it a a perfect piece clothing for ravey nights out clubbing or for a long winter night.

This little video shows it off really nicely…

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From Spikeworld. | Spikeworld - The blog of Spike Dennis | Artist, Maker, Curator and Colloaborator

Flesh Stitch

Over the last couple of weeks various members of our collective, the Pack of Wolves, have been coming together to help Layla with various aspects relating to the filming of her new film – The Erl King.

After a weekend out filming on location last week we took the studio to film a few of the final shots. One of which required an animal to be skinned… or at least that’s what should appear to be happening on the film at least.

The work around that was proposed was to use a piece of meat from the supermarket and a piece of animal skin that was sourced online. Being our resident boy who sews it was left to me to stitch the skin onto the skin of the meat so that it might look as if all are one on screen.

I have to say that it was a very satisfying sewing session if all very surreal.

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From Spikeworld. | Spikeworld - The blog of Spike Dennis | Artist, Maker, Curator and Colloaborator

Free Nyan Cat Cross Stitch Pattern

I drew this Nyan Cat cross stitch pattern up at the request of my little sister. She asked me if I could make her a pattern for a cat to stitch herself. Given that she’s never had a go at cross stitch before I decided a nice kitsch Nyan Cat would be a better place to start than some photo realistic pattern requiring hundreds of different coloured threads.

Click here to download the pattern for yourself – It should look great worked on some dark blue Aida.

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From Spikeworld. | Spikeworld - The blog of Spike Dennis | Artist, Maker, Curator and Colloaborator

Knitting Machine Hack & Glitch Knit

Glitch Knit is a project by Tokyo based artists Nukeme, So Kanno and Tomofumi Yoshida. For this project the team hacked a Brother knitting machine which is used to transform glitch data into something physical and beautiful.

Glitch is data or digital information that is damaged or corrupted. You might have seen this visualised if you have ever come across a digital image (.jpg or similar) that had been damaged and presented blocks or bands of colour across parts of, or all of the image.

There is a small community of visual artists who are using glitch to generate art and textiles. Whilst much of this makes use of corrupted files artists are also finding ways in which to deliberately generate glitch data from a variety of sources.

Nukeme describes the knitting machine hack project as both the “corruption of data and the corruption of the machine” but sees both acts of corruption as preparing both elements for play. The team behind the hack also damaged the structure of the knit which results in the holes you can see in the knitting that has been outputted by the machine.

I’ve become more aware of means of integrating digital and traditional methods of production since starting my cross stitch project six months ago. Whilst I’m using digital platforms to generate content for my work I’ve not taken that step into digital production but ideas about ways to engage glitch have started to crop up.

This hacked knitting machine is available to use at FabLab Shibuya and details of the hack are published on Github should you wish to attempt to hack your own machine.

Find out more about the Glitch Knit project here – www.glitchknit.jp

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From Spikeworld. | Spikeworld - The blog of Spike Dennis | Artist, Maker, Curator and Colloaborator

Miniature Architectural thread Sculptures by Takahiro Iwasaki

These miniature architectural thread sculptures by Takahiro Iwasaki are really quite amazing. The picture at the bottom really gives you a sense of scale and shows just how tiny these creations are.

That they’re also made of thread is also staggering since it’s not a rigid materials one would normally consider suitable for making structures like these. In fact the big wheel structure below is made from hair.I am assuming that the tread has had to be treated in order to enable it to stand up like this.

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Click images to view larger

The Crimea Cup ’14 – Hand Embroidered Subbuteo Cloth

This embroidered Subbuteo cloth is a little aside I’ve been working on for the last couple of weeks. It has been hand embroidered with cotton thread with a design that takes inspiration from football tactics boards.

The markers that have been sewn into the cloth take their colours and layout from the Russian (white, blue & red) and Ukrainian (yellow & blue) flags. The choice of countries represented was inspired by current activities taking place in that part of the world following the annexing of the Crimea by Russia.

The Subbuteo cloth is an old Chad Valley item and so is a little worn. The pictures show the cloth laid out on a table as is the norm with a Subbuteo football cloth although I feel that the cloth probably needs stretching and mounting.

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From Spikeworld. | Spikeworld - The blog of Spike Dennis | Artist, Maker, Curator and Colloaborator

MADAMI’MADAM Embroidered Samplers by Elaine Reichek

Elaine Reichek is an artist based in New York City. Much of the research underpinning MADAMI’MADAM was completed as a part of a residency that she undertook at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, in 2001.

MADAMI’MADAM is a group of sixteen hand-embroidered samplers referring to Genesis and the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. This is a common subject in art history and in the less well-known tradition of pictorial samplers. I borrowed images from both sources… For texts I quoted from a wide range of writers and works—the Bible, but also the works of Milton, Mary Shelley, Charles Darwin, Ray Bradbury, David Cronenberg, and so on.

I was thrilled to come across Elaine’s work as she makes use of the format of old pictorial embroidered samplers like I’ve been doing for my Unicorn Dating embroideries.

The series explores ideas surrounding religion, reproduction, life and death. Throughout this series the artist refers to the canons of art history and the traditions of embroidered samplers whilst interweaving references to popular contemporary culture such as in the Blade Runner sampler (below).

The use of references from both contemporary and historical contexts is of particular interest as is the way in which she has created a series which is weighted towards thematic rather than aesthetic considerations.

Elaine has produced a wide range of works, many of which make use of stitch and bear references to the traditions of the media. You can find more of her work at www.elainereichek.com

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From Spikeworld. | Spikeworld - The blog of Spike Dennis | Artist, Maker, Curator and Colloaborator

image courtesy of Emma Bakel

OVERTIME Exhibition Photos

Last month my work entitled Bedsheets not Spreadsheets was exhibited as a part of the OVERTIME exhibition hosted by the SEIZE collective in Leeds.

The exhibition was held in an empty office space in Leeds and artists who exhibted presented work responding to the space or to the theme of ‘overtime’. Here are a few photos from the exhibition.

You can view more photographs over on the SEIZE Facebook page here.

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From Spikeworld. | Spikeworld - The blog of Spike Dennis | Artist, Maker, Curator and Colloaborator

This is a little cross stitched piece I created for my little sister’s recent birthday. She’d asked me for a cross stitched skull after having seen a previous piece I’d been working on. I decided to add a little ‘shazam’ to this piece for her though by making it glow-in-the-dark.

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From Spikeworld. | Spikeworld - The blog of Spike Dennis | Artist, Maker, Curator and Colloaborator

New Folk Visionaries Exhibition, London

The Bell, Walthamstow, London, E17
31 May – 15 June 2014
New Folk Visionaries is an exhibition by the Pack of Wolves that will explore aspects relating to “contemporary folk and visionary talent on the outside edge”.

This group show will feature the work of five emerging artists. Experience storytelling, legend, tradition, the uncanny and obscure in the form of paintings, drawings, puppets, masks, embroidery, sculpture, 3D objects and film; from Marie-Louise Plum, Mark Scott Wood, Faye Scott-Farrington, Spike Dennis and Layla Holzer.

Traditionally outsiders, folk people and visionaries are often self-taught; marginalised from mainstream society, on the fringes. Despite our modern times of social networking and self-promotion, the Pack of Wolves have never stopped celebrating what it is to be an outsider, and we carry on folk themes and traditions within our work and our investigations whilst acknowledging what it is to be a 21st century contemporary artist.

Something we all share is humour. We poke fun at the norm, with our ugly-beauty and tongue-in-cheek commentary on social mores and what is acceptable and what is not.

We learn craft. We talk to people. Make our puppets from driftwood, our witches eyes from plastic coated bagels. We celebrate the mundane and make it magical.

An exciting jamboree of painting, drawing, stitching, crafting, building, puppeteering, performing, witching, spelling, hoaxing and coaxing, using self-taught traditional skills will be on display, with an emphasis on the way of the outsider.

The exhibition will feature a selection of the less grotesque embroideries from my Unicorn Dating series in their first UK outing.

The New folk Visionaries exhibition will take place as a part of the E17 Art Trail in London. for more information visit www.e17arttrail.co.uk or www.packofwolves.org.

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From Spikeworld. | Spikeworld - The blog of Spike Dennis | Artist, Maker, Curator and Colloaborator

This is a nice little video taken of the OVERTIME exhibition in Leeds organised by SEIZE. The exhibition took place in March this year and featured my ‘Bedsheets not Spreadsheets’ embroidery.

You can see a few photographs from the exhibition on my blog here.

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