Home and Place Collection – Which Ones are They?
Which Ones?
I mentioned these iconic Manchester towers in my blog concerning my love of recreating Manchester in fabric and felt HERE. This post will deal more with the ‘making of’ rather than the inspiration.
The title is quite tongue in cheek since these towers are the cause of both celebration and consternation in Manchester. These ones in particular, Deansgate Square I didn’t much like when they first started reaching towards to sky. Now however, particularly when I am on the ground, standing between them, I very much like them.
Once standing as a steel outcrop in a mostly low lying city (with the exception of Beetham, which I also have re-created HERE) these towers are now becoming lost in a sea of towers that look similar but different to these. We have a few different shapes but on the whole I do think the newer stuff could do with some variety. The politics and the views about all of this amongst the denizens of Manchester, I will leave to the likes of the excellent local news source the Manchester Mill to pontificate. I will simply describe my process.
One thing I will say is that I had to go in person to try and untangle which towers were part of the square and which were separate developments so I could make sure I got the look correct and didn’t include any towers that I shouldn’t within ‘Deansgate Square.’
Core of Steel?
First step was to make the four basic shapes, easy? Well, actually there are slight indents in the sides of each one of the square’s towers which I did not immediately appreciate, so as you’ll see here, I just made four basic rectangles. As usual my lack of attention to detail needs fixing later on.
Next challenge was to choose the colours to cover the blocks in, simply because the towers in real life are often a different colour depending on the time of day and where on is stood in relation to it. So, I did my usual trick of mixing a few colours together and overlaying different colours of merino felt. I did something similar with my Beetham tower sculpture.
Then its more of the same until I have four true blue towers, before the next, lighter layers get layered over to create an almost watercolour effect on the final piece.
Throughout this part of the process there was lots of standing the bits up next to each other to make sure that they had the right(ish) height relative to each other. One of the towers was too short so needed to have a little extension on the bottom added to.
It was at this point I realised that the towers actually had indents on each side, at first I tried to rectify this by simply stabbing the felting needle in harder and longer but when that did not work I realised that drastic action was required; the scissors came out and each block was cut down the line where I wanted to create an indent and luckily it worked quite well. Once again my knack for improvisation saved the day!
For a few weeks after this I got distracted by some other pieces such as my AI Bubble, Resilience/Druck amongst others and Deansgate Square had to wait its turn. However, once my attention again returned, it was time to make the square upon which the towers stand.
I had already decided that this would be made of air dried clay, the towers needed a solid base and the texture represents well the rain drenched pavement of the city in February when this piece was completed.
It was at this point that I got the bit in my teeth so much in respect of finishing this, I forgot to take any more photos. However it entailed tracing the footprint of the square based on a few overhead photos of the square and noticing that I also needed to felt a small white building with some grass on top, along with the small rusty gates which dot the square, which I really like.
So, I’ll just place a few more photos of the finishing touches to conclude this one.
I suspect more towers are to follow, however just like the Manchester of seven or so years ago, my collection currently has this and a Beetham.
View the story behind the Home and Place Collection (Originally named Manchester Collection) HERE
See the rest of my studio stories HERE