Catherine Scriven: Daily colours Project

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Installation of Monthly Map books

Home from Home Exhibition
Installed the Monthly Map Books today in a Victorian town house where each themed room displays a intriguing variation of artist works related to home and books.

These Monthly Map books are based on a visual source gathered for the Daily Colour Project (Sustaining Systems) which I did in 2008. The project was investigating the interaction of art and domestic daily situations. As an emerging artist I was investigation how to establish an artistic practise and routine, when more everyday essential routines were demanding for my attention. Through this investigation it also became apparent that maintaining a daily routine was a low-key but important means of surviving when unpredictable and destabilising events happened.

Detail from Monthly Map: August.
digital print on paper, thread, hardback book cover.

Also available at the book fair: Monthly Maps: September and November.

Invitation for Home to Home Exhibition on Facebook

Monthly Map Books

Folding Map (cover not yet present - this is a work in progress)

I am making Monthly Map books for the artist book genre exhibition 'HOME' at 153 Woodhouse Lane, Leeds that is curated by Louise Atkinson to coincide with the International Artists book Fair in Leeds. The Exhibition opens on the 11th of March and will be open until the 18th in a large Victorian House opening on Friday 11th of March 2011.

A lot of my work is related to intimate and domestic objects so it seems appropriate for this exhibition. I am working on Monthly Maps. These books will be based on source material gathered for a daily colour project in 2008 and 2009, where washing was colour coordinated when hung to dry and photographed. The source material covers august 2008 to April 2009. All months haven't been processed yet, but I anticipate making Monthly maps for August, September, November, December and April, with an edition of at least two so one could be on display in the exhibition and others for sale at the fair. They can be completely opened out and framed if wished.

Detail of sewn pages

Here is August Monthly Map, the first month of the project which started on the 15th of August 2008.

August Monthly Map

Lace effect of sewn pages

Create 09 Exhbition

Daily Colour Project: Sustaining systems

Installation view for the Graduate Show Create 09. The work was commissioned for the Start 4 Art Awared 08. Months on display are:
August: the first month the project was consistently recorded on my return from holiday,
September: With reasonably fair weather
December: With wet weather, celebration days and the end of 2008.
April: Fairer weather, rebirth of nature with spring and faith rebirth with Easter. Also the last month the project was recorded.

There are a total of 9 months recorded (but not displayed here) covering the four seasons from summer to spring.

Colour prints on cotton rag paper, produced from the offcuts of the t-shirt industry,
Embossed with the dates and sewn with thread into patchwork square.
Each square 700mm x 700mm.
Mounted with dressmakers pins.

In this ongoing project, photographed for the Start 4 Art Award 08, drying washing was sorted by colour as daily art interventions. The work explores how small systems underpin our lives with inevitable consequences beyond the domestic. Equally these personal structures are affected in time by external factors such as illness, seasons or more ominously global climate change.

Daily Colour Project, December Patchwork

December images have been sewn together and dates have been embossed. December was a wet month and washing had to be dried inside overnight. Some days, including the 25th no washing was done. This leaves blank squares with dates still embossed. The last four units have been left blank, as in the structure of that particular month in 2008.

The work explores how small systems underpin our lives with inevitable consequences beyond the domestic. Equally these personal structures are affected in time by external factors such as illness, seasons or more ominously global climate change.

Patchworks in progress

I have started to produce the final layout for the daily colours project. The toned down selected photographs for each day have been printed on Khadi paper, paper made from cotton cut-offs from the t-shirt industry in India. Handmade with a lovely deckle edging.

I have laid out the images for the months of August 08 and September 08, the first two months in which I consistently recorded this daily discreet art performance and practice. Dates will be embossed on each piece of paper; some pieces will be completely blank following the layout of the western calendar system. The pieces are intended to be sewn together in the fashion of a patchwork quilt.

The images record whether the washing was dried inside or outside according to the weather and seasonal changes. The number of wet days in August are a strong reminder of the climat change which is affecting us globally and locally.