Hello again – today has been a glorious day here and finally the lockdown restrictions are starting to lift, albeit a little slowly.
I keep promising myself that I will write on my blog more often but always things get in the way. Surprisingly life has been a little busy – I have been creating mixed media embroidery samples and filming demonstrations as I have started teaching at Uni on a BA(Hons) Surface Pattern and Textile Surfaces course. I must admit, I am thoroughly enjoying it. It’s also given me so much more confidence about being in front of a camera, something I have shied away from for so long. So as a result I have created my very own YouTube channel and created my first film, learning loads of editing skills along the way.
I created this film from footage that I collected during my visits to Mexico and Jamaica. One of my long time ambitions, and very much a bucket list thing was to learn how to scuba dive. I had spent many years not being a strong swimmer and quite frankly scared of what lurked beneath the waters…I mean, who wants to come face to face with a shark with a mouth full of teeth. However, the older I get the more I want to experience things and after finally mastering and feeling comfortable with snorkelling, I took the plunge and booked my first dive. What you see in the film is me taking my first backward flip into the ocean after learning a few of the basics in the swimming pool and swimming away into the distance. What I regret the most, is that I didn’t have my GoPro with me when I did the dive…and the next 3 dives that I did. It was the most magical experience and one that I didn’t want to end, in fact, I was so taken with it I signed up there and then and my week in Jamaica was overtaken with practice, reading and homework learning how to become a PADI Open Water Diver. If you are going to do lots of studying then there really isn’t any better place to do it than sitting on a beach overlooking the Caribbean Ocean.
Some of the footage is taken in Mexico whilst snorkelling on the reef just of the coast in Mexico. I can’t really describe the feeling of floating in the water whilst Mantaray’s and Turtles swim casually by without a care in the world. They didn’t seem bothered that we were there and the turtles were quite inquisitive coming up for a closer look.
However my experience albeit amazing was a little scarred by the state of the reef, I mean, I was expecting loads of really brightly coloured fish, huge gardens of reefs just like you see on the television but it wasn’t like that. Instead I didn’t find colour, it just seemed a little…..grey. So when I came to focus my research on coral reefs into my practical embroidery work I didn’t just focus on the colour but decided to showcase some of the work showing the state that some of the reefs are actually in. The piece that I created to submit to the Bradford Textiles competition in 2020 called Devastated Coral was to show the process of what happens to the coral when it dies.
I wanted the film to show the whole process of how I start a project – from the research that I undertake, the experiences and then how I put this into creating my artwork.
I hope you like it and would love to hear your comments about my film, good and bad as it’ll help me to improve on my content. I’d also love it if you would hit that subscribe button so that you can be the first to see new films that I make
Much love
Claire x
THE NOMADIC MAKER 