Migration – working title

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Wedding last weekend, Inter-communities Volleyball Championship this weekend; it is hard to get art work done in between. Not that I am intending to play volleyball, just cheer from the sidelines. I am just the concierge for the tent hotel, and cooking lunch on Sunday for 40 – 80 people – not sure of the figures yet.

However I had a great day in the Lancashire Archives in Preston on Tuesday, and discovered some early work by Gulab Singh, now Director of G S Consultancy Limited. I will have to ask for permission to use the info, but was so pleased to find extracts from the 1981 census of Preston giving me accurate statistics of minority ethnic groups at that time.

However it can’t be very interesting to read a blog about statistics, so here is some of the art work I have been experimenting with this week. I wonder what style of dress design to create? Am I going to mirror the styles of the times, or am I going to imagine myself as a fabric and clothes designer and create my own style? In a way that is inevitable, and of course I am going to be careful not to make direct copies of Horrockses designs.

The other question is about process; what is going to be the most effective way to create the designs? I have experimented with making a stencil, which will work well for close repeat patterns, and with making a lino cut, which will work better for the larger more spaced-out designs.
So in the pictures library are 2 test pieces;
A stencilled shamrock design with cut out flowers and leaves from a map of Ireland. And a lino cut lotus with flowers cut from a map of India.

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I have let myself be distracted by wedding prep for some friends of mine – helping make banners, flags and wreaths, but I have managed to look at maps and papers. I ordered some maps on line – they turn out to be double sided, which is not so useful for me, and they are also rather boring in colour range. I need to visit my favourite second hand bookshop in Carnforth which has a wonderful collection of old maps, and these have a more interesting colour range.

I have been wondering whether to work with the size of tofu paper I have, which will mean a lot of joins, or to source some larger sheets. If I use larger sheets can I buy them precoloured (in the shades I want to match each map colour) or will I have to buy a larger gelli plate to colour the white sheets? I am just sitting with that question at the moment, as coloured sheets are limited in range and I am not sure of the colour fastness.

I need more information about which countries people came from to Preston. I may have found a personal connection to Ugandan hindus, as the wife of a friend from Leicester has a great uncle in Preston.

The Lancashire Records Office has been very helpful too and sent me a huge list: Handlist 69: Sources for Black and Asian history.