Grids, lace, networks and similar structures represent a metaphor in fabric and thread for my concern on the state of the world today. They represent to me those structures comprising the points of reference we’ve all come to count on for reliability – those stable international alliances, social mixes and balances, and financial structures that have affected our lives for decades or even centuries. Many have been or are under threat of being distorted or even ripped apart by the geopolitics of our time. If you stress or pull a lace fabric, it will eventually tear.

Down the years I’ve occasionally pondered on the nature of lace – whether it’s the pattern of holes that are important, or the matrix in which the holes appear. My personal conclusion eventually was that the defining characteristic of lace is the pattern of holes, and the material between the holes is not important.

To me, each of these leaves could be said to be a form of ‘lace’. One fell and was altered by insects (I’m not sure about any cause/effect here) and the other’s holes were genetically programmed into the leaf. There are plenty more examples in Nature – plant leaves with holes for which insects and birds in particular are responsible (I’m posting more pics on my Instagram account shortly @schwabealison) and some corals and sea sponges come to mind.

Yes, I realise some readers could fairly reasonably be thinking I’m pushing this ‘lace’ connection a bit far, but if you reach for your dictionary you’ll probably find variety of definitions for lace, varying between those points of view, and most frequently the definition is given in terms of fabric and thread, followed by some the most popular types such as Honiton, Guipure, bobbin and needlelace. The lace boundary is a bit blurry because some counted thread needleworks including Hardanger, drawn and pulled thread works are lacy in effect, yet not commonly referred to as ‘lace’.

Browsing on Pinterest with the search subject “networks” brought up some images I hadn’t seen before, including a wonderful one which took me down a rabbit hole into a Royal Academy paper on the artist Gergtrude Goldschmidt, known as Gego, 1912-1994. I was taken by the author’s comment that Gego herself never thought of herself as a sculptor, but an artist whose proccupation was line. She worked in both 2D and 3D, and her “Her intricate ‘Drawings without Paper’ series are small sculptures whose shadows create secondary ‘drawings’ on the wall on which they are hung. The larger suspended works not only seduce with their form but leave unanswered questions about whether one should look at the lines that create the work or the empty spaces they define.” (Adrian Locke, R.A., 2014) I have sometimes wondered about which is the more important part of lace – the matrix or the holes? A few years ago I concluded it’s the pattern of holes, regardless of the material those holes are in https://www.alisonschwabe.com/weblog/?p=6976

Another favourite artist on my mind at the moment is Vera Molnar, a Hungarian artist (pioneer of generative computer and kinetic art) who apparently frequently declared her life to be about squares, triangles, lines, and that she was mad about lines.  I blogged about her a couple of years ago. I’ve been very influenced by her computer generated squares surrounded by slightly off-kilter lines because of a small bug she put into her computer algorithm. Intrigued, I developed a stitch motif that I’ve used in my work a number of times –

With the upcoming SAQA Global Call AI Artistic Interpretations opening soon, I’m thinking about all of this, and today’s search brought up the term ‘neural network architectures’ in a video clip presented by a bright young man using big words and terms that I’m only just keeping up with! Lots to think about and some sources of inspiration there, definitely.

This research is all food for thought as I finish the binding on the current work … but it doesn’t mean it’s nearly finished! For various reasons, I decided that this current work, c.110cm x 84cm would be better made in reverse order. So first, the front, low loft batting and the back, were layered, basted and machine stitched (ie quilted) with a metallic polyester irregular grid. The edges are currently being faced (one more side to go) and then the cutout blob shapes will be placed at many of the grid line intersections and stitched into place before finally adding the hanging sleeve and signature.

Squares, grids – important parts of how I see the world around me – All around the world people are facing disruptions to long-established patterns of traditional and rules based order, evident at local, national and international levels.

This small piece is an example of my current interest in disrupted grids as symbolic of the chaotic state of the world today. If you take notice of the news from around the world, your own country and your neighbourhood, you understand what I’m talking about, and I don’t need to spell out my own strongly held political views on any particular situation in every direction we can look. These are the thoughts behind my interest in grids.

A couple of months ago I made a small 6″x8″ textile piece, different from this one below, and gave it to a friend Victoria, to mail from Miami FL to Dayton OH for me, as UY’s mail service El Correo is notoriously unreliable, and I could not justify putting such a little snippet into a courier envelope at a cost of ~US $80 or $90. Time passed and the organisers in Ohio kept a lookout for it , but I felt it had been lost in the mail, so with just a week and a half before the cut-off date for submissions to arrive, I made this replacement piece to hand over to someone this week. But on friday night came the news that the original one, mailed 6-7 weeks ago in FL had finally arrived in OH! So, this replacement one will be for the 2026 auction!

The Spotlight auction is of 6″x8″ textile pieces so small I can’t think of them as ‘quilts’. Members of SAQA make and donate them each year for the auction, held both online and in person, at the (SAQA Studio Art Quilt Associates) annual conference. Anyone can bid and I’ll put details up later – you don’t need to be physically present or a member of SAQA. Proceeds help pay the costs of SAQA’s exhibition programs. I always paticipate, and regard these auction offerings as high quality samples, and while making it this second one I learned a great deal. It has already prompted me to start a larger work on this theme, with the back, thin batting and front already layered and pin basted. I’m currently deciding the size of the grid as I scale this idea up to something like 120cm x 90cm.

Barbara Rucket of Atlanta GA, and I are good friends in a small online group of stitchers who met up among the earliest members of the Textile.org’s – StitchClub begun in 2020. (Visit this link to learn about this subscription organisation that presents excellent online workshops and encouraging feedback from teachers and fellow members) Several of those teachers left indelible inspirations on my creative path. One example is Jessica Grady’s embellishments workshop which inspired experimentation that led to my art quilt “Caribbean Crush” and several more recent pieces.

Recently Barbara shared her thoughts on where her work is going, and the importance of graphing or charting her original designs to work in her preferred stitching techniques of needlepoint and beading.

As an experienced stitcher of needlepoint and beading works, for many years Barbara has been a member of the Embroiderers Guild of America, EGA – (which I belonged to in Denver) taught classes and been active in the several other textile art guilds she belongs to. These images of two of her works bear similarity to how I think in repeated units of squares, or grids on a different scale, which I see as an enduring influence in my own art, from (a) hand drawn diagrams to illustrate university geomorphology papers in the predigital 60s, and (b) the brief time in the 80s I spent making traditional American geometric patchwork.

Today most of my art is based on some kind of grid ( https://www.alisonschwabe.com/weblog/?p=8524 )

Right from the start, StitchClub members included experienced lovers of stitching as an art form, and others who hadn’t held a needle to embroider something for many years; and we all welcomed this new textile art online group as a huge help to our sanity during the difficult Covid-19 pandemic. After a while, StitchClub experimented with the idea of forming small groups they thought would expand and strengthen the StitchClub community – like a quilting bee or stitching circle. Those who expressed interest in this trial were selected from within close time zones; each group was labelled with a colour (we got PINK) and we were given Textile.org’s Zoom link to use at our chosen time. At the PINKS’ first Zoom call about 4 years ago, Barbara, Nancy, Ali, Bonnie, Jan, Val, Pam and Ann and I decided to meet every second tuesday, at mid afternoon Montevideo time; I’m the only one in the southern hemisphere, mid-way between Western Canada/USA and the UK.

StitchClub eventually let the trial groups project go, but we PINKS decided to continue with our group thanks to Nancy offering us her Zoom account. Last year with some mixed feelings I let my StitchClub membership go, but it’s important to me to remain in the PINKS group.

As we got to know each other by chatting about the SC workshops and textile art in general, we’ve always found so much to talk about. Of course some momentous world events have occurred during this time, and while they are touched on, our fortnightly talk still mostly stays ‘on topic’. What a joy it was to have regular facetime contact with fellow stitchers while normal in-person group activities in our communities were suspended. Since travel resumed, some of us have managed to meet in person. For the UK members this is less difficult, but on a visit to USA I was able to take a couple of days out of our family visits to go to Atlanta for a wonderful, but too brief time with Barbara and her husband.

PINKS still meet on Zoom every second tuesday, which is this afternoon, actually! and it’s nearly time to go and make a cup of tea, check my hair and put some fresh lippy on …