I continued my creative rest, by starting work on a piece that popped into my head, while noticing the changes in light, one early autumn morning. One thing that I learned whilst living in the Orkney Islands is how important the hours of sunlight can be, to my physical and mental well being.

We would make the most of every bright day, getting outside to store it up, as the days began to shorten. And I remember when we first moved to the cabin, (the window shutters had been nailed shut and needed considerable repairs before we could use them), so we had to live in lamp light for a few weeks. I cried with joy the day that the first shutters were opened. It was such an amazing feeling to see the sunshine streaming in!

I think that gratitude for light will always stay with me and although the winters here in Angus are not as dark as they are in Orkney, the days have nevertheless been drawing in and my early mornings, working in the sunshine are over until spring comes around again.

So I set about making my own sun, to remind me to look for the light in every day and to stay positive through the winter months. 

I started by making the eyes and nose in coil. The biggest challenge here was making the second section, which needed to be a mirror image and so I had to work in the opposite direction to usual. It always feels like trying to write with your left hand, when you’re right handed!

I am particularly interested in using coil to frame things, so I wanted to make the face in linen scrim, painting on the details in guache.

I then made a circular frame around the face, joining it to the eye section, as I worked. The frame is very similar to the Ripple (for those of you who have been working through my Introduction to Creative Coil Basketry Course), but I added decorative details to the surface. 

Of course something needed to support that scrim face at the back, so I worked a disc of coil to the appropriate size and stitched through to the frame at the front, to complete the face. This disc actually turned out to have a dual purpose, because it made the perfect place to attach a cord for hanging the sun, when it was complete.

I had decided from the start, that I would just launch myself into the rays, letting the coil be my guide, as I had enjoyed working in this way with my previous piece.

The rays had their own challenges though, as the diameter now became far too wide to be worked on my lap.

I have been working on tiny baskets for so long, that it required some experimentation to find a comfortable working position, for such a large piece.

I tried suspending it from a picture hook, but this was too restrictive as I couldn’t keep turning the piece as I would normally. Without a large work surface that I could access without disturbing the rest of the family ( I do much of my work very early in the morning before everyone else gets up for the day), my only other option was the floor.

It certainly made it easier to work on, but it wasn’t very kind to my back or my knees and did make the need for a proper workspace very clear.

But of course if you waited for the perfect set-up, you would never get anything done. Most often it is best to just go ahead with what you have to hand and gradually sort out everything else as time and resources allow.

The rays are not perfectly even, because of the way that I went about it, but I decided that keeping the energy of the piece was the most important thing here. The piece really is about energies of one kind or another, and I am really glad that I made that decision.

In some ways finishing Autumn Light marked the end of my creative rest period. I am now settling into a 12 month project focusing on locally produced jute twine, with funding applications and exhibitions all buzzing around my head, but the spirit of the last few weeks of creative development through a playful approach, is something that I want to keep alive over the coming months.

Even when deadlines need to be met, courses need to be filmed and bills need to be paid, that must continue, because finding joy through making and using that to express my experience of the world around me, is really what Five in the Nest has always been about, and it’s what I want to share with others.

I’m off to do some research, on the history of jute production in Dundee and Angus today and I will be back to share some of that, as well as some of my plans for the months ahead, next time.