Glenys Mann of Fibre Arts Australia is currently presenting a fascinating series of online interviews with fibre/textile artists here Conversations With The Makers
I was recently asked to take part, accepted of course, and thoroughly enjoyed answering her thought provoking questions, skipping a couple as nothing was compulsory. I assembled some pics to her specifications, and sent it all off.
I’m pleased to announce it went live this week at http://conversations.jigsy.
Some sample making continues for some ‘Sandlace’ works, inspired by pics such as this one above.
I was checking through my blank page sketch book, where I sketch out/doodle pattern ideas in pencil, and often add single words or lists alongside, and there I found these apparently odd examples from the same page, beginning with the trapped/wrapped/mapped thing. You’ll note I am a frequent user of …. and very large **s for emphasis in my notes/diagrams. I know perfectly well who Nik Krevitsky is or was, but can’t find any bio information on him. I own a a copy of his book, ‘Stitchery’, 1967, which I bought in 1976 – which has always inspired me, but currently languishes unattended back in Perth W. Australia. But as for the rest of that note, perhaps it should read ‘wrapped carrots’ or even ‘trapped carrots’ – though goodness knows, it is my own handwriting!
Moving right along, this next snippet really tells me a lot in these two words ‘fungal frills’ which might sound odd to you !
“Fungal frills’ is a good example of how a list or a note on a page is my shorthand for a great deal of information, reminding me of a photo I took of fungus growing on a tree trunk we passed walking in an arboretum in MD, USA mid last year. It wasn’t their subdued colour but the delicacy they presented, with none of the ‘frills’ being over about 1″/2cm max wide. Lacey and lovely, of course not ‘holey’ though:
Following that I returned here and fiddled with nylon organza frills cut on the bias and not edged … but I was underwhelmed, because they were boring to me, and won’t show them to you – not worth the effort of digging them out, photographing and tweaking the pics for this page. Just take it on faith that those samples are in the sophisticated storage retrieval system I have for samples (unsorted in a box on my lower bookshelf ) But even writing this paragraph made me think of another possible approach ….
Back to the carrots thing, though …. I really do know what it refers to, though whether they’re trapped or mapped I can’t decide and it doesn’t matter really. Back in the mid ’80’s I did a large wall panel of 3-d crocheted cups/tubes, like barnacles, with wrapped, um, stalks, or carrots if you like, protruding from them and attaching to the panel below the cluster of tubes. They’re on my mind – and other holey things including what I’ve shown from this page are all being revisited as I take a closer look at something that has always intrigued me – ‘holes’ and the interesting textures they can lead to.
Well, although I could go on for a long time in PSE, drawing lines on photos of sand ripples to explore the idea of holes making a lace pattern based on the brights and darks, once I began to think of it as ‘sandlace’, it seemed time to pick up needle and thread and start working with the idea !!
My first sample, the grey and cream in the upper right corner, below, was of the cream, bonded on one side, holes cut out and the edge shaped, then ironed on to the grey background. Although I did a little stitching, and I liked it, it also seemed too flat, too ‘neat and careful’, I felt.
The grey and brown on the left is also heat bonded, and really, the small cut-outs feel too small to do much about – so I am just leaving that as is. Which is what making samples is all about – its certainly not about finishing anything off, unless you specially want to, of course.
The third sample I did was cream, sewn to grey and then cut out after the orange stitches, which worked well – can you tell I’m keen on the florescent thread? And, the dark grey stitching is actually attaching the whole thing to one of those painted stretched canvases I have around, its 20cm sq. – and I have several 30cm sq, so I will mount them as I do them, because that worked well, too. On larger pieces there will be room for several French knots or other textural stitches if I want them.
A lovely stained glass window at the top of a marble staircase in an old bookshop in the Cuidad Vieja /old city of Montevideo. (They stock modern books, though, lovely.) I took a photo to remember what the phrase was, and just now put it through an online latin to English translation site, and it came up as ‘Truth is the daughter of lies” which isn’t really what I thought I might be expecting – but if that is a fair translation, as on reflection it could be, then what an odd thing to have displayed in a bookshop. Next time I go down there I’ll see if I can get some better feeling for what the purpose of these words is.
I read a lot, and love it when words frame something with which I feel close personal affinity. This morning I came across a climate change issue blogger I hadn’t read before, Pointman http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2013/11/01/make-no-mistake-words-are-ammo-2/ He made some very interesting observations about the alarmists v. sceptics exchanges in the climate change, um, issue/debate/word fest. I was recently accused of being ‘a denier’ which as you know is a pretty derogatory term in this context ! I am however a sceptic, and always feel relieved when I come across someone who has seen through the smoke and mirrors of the issue and realized that (1) climate has been changing since the Earth had an atmosphere, and (2) Man has the huge advantage over most other species in being adaptive to a wide set of conditions and change. In other words, our hope as a species is to mitigate the effects of climate change, which of course effect all 7bn+ of us to some degree; some more effected than others by virtue of geographic location on the planet’s surface. It is known from the fossil record that something like 99%? maybe a little less – of species that were once on Earth have been extinguished mostly during ice ages and cold periods. Well of course we managed to put the Tasmanian Tiger onto the extinct list all by our human selves – and there are other species that have disappeared because of direct action by Man, but on the whole more disappear by ‘rapid’ environmental change – ‘rapid’ and ‘change’ being relative in this sense.
