Architectural inspiration

I made a pact with myself when I wasn't blogging last autumn that, if I came back, I would only post when I felt I had something I really wanted to show - hence a fresh silence. However, after three weeks of little new thought while I stitched pieces for an upcoming exhibition and revisited the Photoshop class I took last summer (of which more in another post), I've turned my thoughts back to my archive of photos. I take an enormous number of them, especially when I'm travelling, and almost all my work is a response to this archive.

These small experiments for a series of pieces (each currently about 13 cm square) have developed from a photograph I took in Vancouver BC last summer and are a follow on to the rather more random set I showed in November.

I was fascinated by the angles I could see within the original image and by the contrasting textures generated by the glass and concrete surfaces when I enlarged it. Like many modern high rise buildings this one had energy-efficient glass in the large windows which also gave particularly good, and interestingly distorted, reflections of nearby buildings.

I made many small croppings, especially around the section marked on the photo above. This seemed to enhance the movement within the group of pieces, particularly when I rotated and flipped them. I followed my usual practice and turned the croppings to black and white and adjusted the levels of brightness and contrast.

I then added some additional lines to the surface to accentuate the design. These may become stitches when I work on them further - and the pieces may well become larger.