Goodbye sweet friends

Thank you to everyone who’s bought a collage from the last set. I am working on a new series for the exhibition in Alnmouth at the end of the year. It’ll be at The Old School Gallery, follow them on Instagram, they do some great stuff and you can go and stay in their special huts - which I will do for exhibition set up, so that’s exciting.

What they say

Three videos in which I do the voices of the women I’ve made.

Three difficult women, on a parade, or something.

I walk back and forwards from the camera and as it refocuses the lens goes ‘merp-merp’

Number one.

Furious, volcano-breasted woman berates man who is trying to organise countryside fair.

Number two.

Woman with two dollies attached to two small fluffy dogs warns children to steer clear


Number three.

Knitting woman talks lovingly of her grandchild, sort of.

New Friends

Some new friends are appearing in the studio and there are three of them that I particularly like.

Three older women.

My favourite kind of human being is the difficult, stubborn old woman kind.

I hope to be one one day,

I’m working on it.

I have some more of this trio to share soon.

I made videos.

So I’m just bracing myself to watch them then I will brace myself through the embarrassment of actually posting them.

See you on the other side comrades.

filth

I’ve realised a running theme in my work, and something that’s very important to me, is MUCK and GRIME. Things that are old and worn. Ragged. Faded. broken. Mended. Stained. Used. Wonky. Threadbare.

It irks me to read a magazine (or frankly just to interact with the world at all sometimes) and see so many people wearing clothes that look like they’re fresh from the box, it feels unhealthy - for the planet especially but also my microbiome flinches just a touch.

I’ve decided I really need to lean in to this mucky, grimy filth for my work, which is how I found myself just last week . . .

. . . prepping my sheets by treading paint water in to them. What did you think I was doing?! I’m not that filthy.

And leaving my patterned papers in front of the sink for my studio mates to walk around on.

I started off trying to create a mucky look with paint and (even though I like it mainly) it just didn’t hit the spot. real muck is the way forward. I look forward to showing you the results.

More collages and more

There are lots of new collages happening that will be with The New Craftsmen in time for Christmas. I’ve also started writing and am insanely excited to be going on a week long residential writing course in September, I love making these people and situations visually and writing is letting me dig even deeper, I find it very satisfying, like lancing a boil in a way - letting out thoughts and situations that haven’t had an outlet so far.

Stand Tall Art Auction

Head over to Stand Tall Art Auction page to place your bids until July 16th!

They’re a pair of purposeful sunflower people, marching towards each other or facing out depending on how you hang them.

They’re listed as separate items so I feel a bit nervous for them - where this journey may take them! Maybe they’ll go to separate homes or maybe they’ll be kept together, only time will tell.

I would love to see them displayed facing out either side of a desk, in a protective sort of way, or facing in either side of a fireplace. You could have a lot of fun with placement. It would be lovely to buy both and give one as a gift; they would definitely make a magical portal from your house to the house of whoever you choose to gift the other to.

They’re a real mix of materials - antique etchings, handmade paper, pages from the Book of Martyrs, block printed wallpaper, an old Sothebys catalogue, vintage clothes peg packaging, dolls house flooring, coloured paper, milk bottle tops, pressed leaves, ink, gouache and more things beside.

They’re both float framed in beautiful ash frames and ready to hang.

Studio update

There are some socks starting to march across my desk, I’m really enjoying paper darning them.

And some textures being made for a Hadley x Charleston Farmhouse collaboration

The sunflower guardians for Stand Tall art auction are all framed and ready, I hope to raise lots of cash for Ukraine. I’ll be sending out an email to buyers and just interested people soon, once I have the link to my works.

The studio was a bit messy so we tidied it up and then . . .

Invited all the family members in to trash it a bit because it was our 1 year anniversary of Studio 2.

Happy Day!

Do the collage shimmy

Some high speed dithering for you. Papers shifting and shimmying around until I find a place that might not feel perfect but feels right enough to commit to with a bit of glue. At least until the next layer of paper or paint comes along.

The Beautiful Ghost

I made 3 new collages for The New Craftsmen and they sold before they hit the shelves (so to speak) which is great! I can’t wait to show you them once they’re photographed. Prints will be available soon.

Most of my collages sell very quickly with The New Craftsmen (and hopefully through this website once I get a little shop together) but a very important one remains . . .

The Beautiful Ghost.

Sure, I see in retrospect that making an all white collage might be a problem for the good folk of The New Craftsmen to actually try and sell, and then I went and let slip that it’s sort of a sad collage I made in a state of gloom about climate breakdown. So there we go

I like it staying around; haunting the halls of The New Craftsmen warehouse in all it’s pale gloom.

Nice.

Making sunflower people for Ukraine

I’m making two powerful sunflower people for the Stand Tall auction to raise money for Ukraine. Here’s a quick video of my dithering and snipping in super fast forward.

I will keep you posted about the sale!

Also, by the way, as an aside, nb. I have a special little black book with the emails of people who have got in touch about buying my work and they always get an early heads up when things are for sale, so if you want to join it drop me an email on hello@jowaterhouse.com. I haven’t told anyone that ever, I’ve just let it happen organically but now you know: you have to send a personal email to be on the early bird list.

Social Media

I have a friend who used to work at Netflix and at the time they didn’t see their competition as other streaming services but instead their competition was . . . people leaving the house. Their model was all skewed towards stopping you leaving the house, they wanted you to just stay home and watch Netflix. How sad is that?

I’m having a battle with social media, it’s been ongoing for years now. I don’t have it on my phone, I regularly take long breaks but still I can’t find a balance - as soon as I’m on it I become a passive consumer (maybe something to do with my brain type? Maybe something to do with how social media is engineered?).

And when I do manage to be a producer on social media, put some ‘content’ up (god I love that word, its so creepy) I just feel like I’m facilitating other people’s passive consumption.

I think I may be old.

I think I may be finally leaving the world of social media.

studio shots

I googled myself today, are we supposed to admit to that? I’m thinking about reaching out to people to move my work in new directions and I just wanted to check how I fared. Anyway these lovely shots by The New Craftsmen came up, I’d never seen them before, I think they’re very nice and moody.

Murderous times in the studio

I invested some money in these beautiful weapons from Niwaki, they cut beautifully which is such a treat, I sit them next to my lovely Victorian snippers in the studio.

I’m working on a children’s book at present, nothing commissioned or anything, just putting ideas together. I made this image of an angry Thomp thumping what will be a tomato but for now just looks much more gory than that. I made the body out of some nice spotty paper my dad made for lining an antique chest with. Only after I’d made it did I realise he’s made it out of The Book of Martyrs!

Here’s a small sample of The Book of Martyrs for you. Gosh I don’t know how everything ended up so extremely graphically gory and on my first foray in to making a children’s book too. Oh well.

Here’a a nice bit of relief from the bloodshed - I love it when these little things happen on my desk.

As seen on Kit Kemps Design Thread

I was very honoured to be featured on Kit Kemps Design Thread yesterday. She’s such a powerhouse! I always feel very grateful that she likes my work.

Please accept this odd thumbnail of the Instagram post. I’ve been trying to stay off Instagram and really feeling much better for it! Just hopping on there ocassionally to screenshot any nice things and then running away. I’m incredibly lucky to have the wonderful Alice doing the Hadley Paper Goods Instagram if you fancy going and supporting her in that endeavour.

A commission from some years back

Sifting through my papers I found a small seam of textures I’d made for this commissioned pieces so I revisited it. I felt very excited by using the paste paper to show the threads, I think it worked well.

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finished (almost)

I’m finding these florals so compelling now, here’s a little brown number

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It is great working with other people in the studio you get to learn things - like that Wallis Simpson was a nazi sympathiser. I had these beautiful shot of her that had been strangely smoothed and retouched so the textures were great but then I found out the nazi thing so I thought it best she wasn’t recognisable. Here is her eye though, don’t know if that’s creepy or not.

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Almost finished!