{"id":649,"date":"2009-11-14T07:57:50","date_gmt":"2009-11-14T12:57:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=649"},"modified":"2009-11-14T07:58:20","modified_gmt":"2009-11-14T12:58:20","slug":"thinking-about-primitive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=649","title":{"rendered":"Thinking About ‘Primitive’"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a quiltart post this week someone asked about\u00a0links to fibre artists working with\u00a0 primitive style stitching in their art.\u00a0 Of course, it all depends what you think of as ‘primitive’.\u00a0\u00a0 In the mind of a quilter, does this mean switching attention to a thick thread and sewing large stitches with a big needle? or is it something more?\u00a0I suggested to just either take up a needle and thread and begin doodling on a cloth, (sample making) or thinking of each\u00a0line as a straight stitch (the\u00a0quintessential primitive stitch) begin making pencil marks on paper in various combinations and patterns – in other words, to just get started.<\/p>\n

But I also suggested the quilter do a bit of thinking about what she considered the essence of\u00a0\u00a0‘primitive’ and think about what she wanted to do with primitive style stitching in her work.\u00a0 The suggestions were well received by the original writer on this subject, but\u00a0further comments from others\u00a0set me thinking\u00a0 about what I myself see as the essence of primitive.\u00a0 As some\u00a0more links rolled in from others on the list, a number of artists were suggested\u00a0 and although I love their works I wouldn’t describe as them as primitive in the way the original questioner seemed to be\u00a0thinking.\u00a0\u00a0 So then I got into a dictionary and then\u00a0wikpedia, \u00a0and found the whole field an overlapping zone of confusing definitions bringing in terms such as rudimentary, primordial, untrained,\u00a0naive, folk art , ‘primitivism’ – covering everything from art to anthropology and biology, none especially connected to stitchery but a good starting point for considering\u00a0art\u00a0through stitch.\u00a0 People began to talk about several ethnic embroidereries employing running stitches,\u00a0\u00a0such this one\"untitled\u00a0a work which I have not given a title to yet despite it being 3 years old and twice exhibited….<\/p>\n

\"untitled\u00a0<\/p>\n

This next\u00a0one is “Desert Tracks 3”<\/p>\n

\"Desert\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"desert<\/p>\n

And next is “Desert Tracks 5”<\/p>\n

\"Desert<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"detail<\/p>\n

So, although I\u00a0didn’t have \u00a0‘primitive’ \u00a0in my mind when I was doing these pieces 2-3 years ago, perhaps that was part of my purpose.\u00a0 I am not a great journaller and so didn’t record\u00a0 much about them at the time apart from thinking of them\u00a0in terms of ‘tracks’ left across surfaces.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But in relation to the\u00a0untitled one, I was really\u00a0focusing on the\u00a0very very basic pattern of a square within a square, primordial not just o early\u00a0patchwork patterns but\u00a0primoridal in a human design\u00a0sense; and in that context I wanted to present it as ‘unskilled’\u00a0 – one of the\u00a0terms I found comes up in the plethora of words surrounding ‘primitive’ in the dictionary.\u00a0 Now that I think about that, this\u00a0does have more than a touch of the primitive about it.\u00a0 Anyway, regardless of my largely unrecorded contemporaneous thoughts, they all certainly\u00a0 influenced the development of\u00a0\u00a0more recent\u00a0works, which you can\u00a0explore in the Tracks gallery\u00a0on https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Another point that was discussed recently was how looking back over your work, and also writing about it,\u00a0can give new insights even when you think you know or knew it well at the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On a quiltart post this week someone asked about\u00a0links to fibre artists working with\u00a0 primitive style stitching in their art.\u00a0 Of course, it all depends what you think of as ‘primitive’.\u00a0\u00a0 In the mind of a quilter, does this mean switching attention to a thick thread and sewing large stitches with a big needle? or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6uxpF-at","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=649"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":663,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649\/revisions\/663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}