Free machine embroidered sculpture

A further sculpture can now be added to my blog - a camshaft sculpted from an old Austin engine that would have been in one of the original mini's and coincidentally, the Riley Elf that my dad owned when we were children. 

Here the camshaft can be seed covered in the embroidered fabric and then cling film to help the moulding process. It is then left to dry.

This is the underside of the camshaft and fabric. Unfortunately the camshaft has started to rust and has marked the fabric as can be seen in the image below. I am not sure if I like the obvious link or not .

Camshaft and shadow

When trying to photograph the camshaft, a really lovely shadow was also recorded. I must book a session at the photography studio at uni and see how I can develop this further. This provides a great sense of ethereality: for the fabric parts are not real, they are a suggestion of loss and longing but they are also quite beautiful. In my need to be perfect and take on roles that were beyond my normal remit as a wife and mother I am realising that there is an inner strength that allows us to do such things when we really have too, but what now needs to be found now is the strength to realise that this endeavour to be so perfect is not always needed and that my best might be equally worthwhile.

Here is a thread drawing  of the camshaft on mull (fabric used for making spine and lining books). I have various papers and fabrics to try drawing on with thread purchased form Shepherds of Gillingham Street, London. I want to know what happens when I draw on materials that are not actually made for embroidery and have unusual grains, thickness and texture. Materials that will may distort my image during the process of making or afterwards.

Still I wonder why my thread drawings are fairly successful when my pencil and paper drawings are very much weaker. My fear of failing on paper was making it worse, I could not relax and enjoy the process: I knew or rather worried that people would say or think that I could not draw. But inside I knew loved too, and through using a tool that I grew up with, in an unconventional manner i.e. making no preliminary marks on the fabric and just working from direct observation with one starting point and finishing point, I could begin to free up the creative process because the drawings just would not be perfect but perhaps might work quite well.

So where next? 

I have to decide if I want to try and persist with getting BMW to let me take a photograph of a modern mini engine so that I can create a free machine embroidered engine on dissolvable fabric (a technique first used in tear 2). Whilst i realise that there is the issue of privacy and secrecy, I will still hope. 

Shall I continue making sculptures from the old Austin engine and it's component parts that were in the original mini - various component parts and then the engine (courtesy of Graham).

Think about a different engine completely to draw - after all it is about the need to be perfect, our fear of failure explored through the association of female and male roles. So I am off to Warminster on Monday to photograph the old Bristol car engine at Spencer Lane Jones. The company had it's origins in Bristol before the start of the Nineteenth Century and grew after it's role in aviation development during the Second World War. This manufacturer was a big part of my childhood: my dad was a bus driver and drove the green route master bus with the Bristol engine. I also love old cars and their sense of history - who owned the cars, what journeys were made and who might yet continue the restore and care for our past and continue it's future.