Gardening vs Nurturing

As a part of the work i did for one of my degree modules, I set up a series of dialogues with the environment outside my house. This one i called 'Gardening vs Nurturing'.

I made a checkerboard of black, weed-suppression garden cloth and crochet doilies.

20 months later, this is what the site looked like

As i anticipated, nothing had grown through the garden cloth, while the doilies nurtured lush growth.

Sass Tetzlaff - JC 2011 Graduate

'Domestic Bliss Series'

These are postcard images of another BA(Hons) Julia Caprara School of Textile Arts 2011 graduate - Sass Tetzlaff.

Sass told me the images are taken directly from 'pin-up girl' posters. She thread painted the images by machine than appliqued them onto pieced backgrounds.

The backgrounds are all used men's shirts and she also incorporated men's suits in the above work.

Sass says in her artist statement: 'My current work focuses on the tensions that exist between what women in Western Society want to do and what cultural stereotypes still seem to suggest they ought  to be doing.'

Chlorophyll and Hemoglobin

In my degree studies I am exploring the connection between red cells in human blood and chlorophyll in plants.
I dyed many different household linens in greens and reds: pillow cases with embroidery, tea towels, bed sheets, napkins, table cloths.
I used a Val Campbell-Harding method to randomly strip-piece the different cloths.

After one cut and sewing the strips back together again.

After 2 cuts and sewing the strips back together again.

Now i am hand stitching the flow of blood and chlorophyll in running stitch (had to be that stitch)
You can barely see the stitching in this image because i have just started. I am playing a version of the PAC Man game - whenever I bump into the other colour i have to change direction and 'run' only on the same colour as the thread in the needle.
This image has funny looking labels in it because this was the work i took to the Martha Cole workshop in Gloria's studio. Martha gave us lots of different question sheets to answer while looking at our own work pinned up on the wall.
I had had a week with Martha while doing the artist residency with Articulation in Banff. We did similar exercises in a lot more depth and a lot more of them. That is when I learnt to recognise my 'style'.
It was most interesting to repeat some of the exercises several years later to see how my work has developed and changed. i noticed i feel differently about my work now too.
It was well worth taking the time out to just look at what i make.

More Work in VCA Show

Dialogue 2 My Turn

Once I had dried the cloth and sealed it with a workable fixative, I pinned it to a frame and waited for a windy day.

When the wind came I raced outside with a bottle of brown ink and tried dipping Douglas-fir needles then holding up the framed cloth for the inked needles to draw on it.

But I found the needles couldn't hold enough ink to leave enough of a line on fabric. With previous sampling I had the needles draw on soft paper and it worked very well.

So I rushed inside, hoping the wind was going to hang around, found a small brush and some wire and ran out to the tree again.

I wired the brush tip to the branch, dipped the bristles and held up the framed cloth.



It worked much better with the brush being able to hold more ink.

I think I got so into co-operating with the tree that I overdid the amount of drawing.

But the tree had a lot to say.










Worm casts had stuck to the cloth even after it was dried.

I didn't like these lumps of dirt because bits of them kept dropping whenever I handled the cloth.

So I brushed them off.












Some of the bigger 'bits' were not being held by the fixative and I wanted to keep them on the cloth.

So as my next response, after the tree did its drawing, was to secure the leaves and tree shoots with various types of stitching: closed herringbone, cross stitch, whipping.

I forgot to take a photograph of this stitching before I sent it off to my tutor in the UK. I'll post images it once I get the work back.

Textiles in the Environment

Another of my projects where I am getting very little interaction is this one where I put a length of unbleached cotton in the pond.

It has submerged and moved around a bit, probably been moved by the Canada geese that have returned and use this spot to waddle in and out of the pond.

After a couple of months, the cloth has become brown and a little green but I am sure this isn't the staining I was hoping for and it will wash off when I throw it in the washing machine. In fact, I think the clear spring water is preserving the cloth.

The best part of this experiment has been the lovely photos of layers and reflections I have been able to capture at different times of the day and in different weather.

Once again, I will lift this cloth when I need it for the next 'brilliant' idea I think of.

Tree Drawings

This semester with my BA (Hons) studies I am taking the Personal Specialism module, which is all about learning how to write a proposal for an art project, 2 of them actually and to show how the art work would change to suit the different sites.

My first proposal is for my work to be placed out in our garden as a dialogue between the trees and myself. I am exploring the intimate human connection with the natural environment so I am starting by exploring my own relationship with our garden.

These are some images of drawings made by trees. I waited for a windy day then went outside with my sketchbook and a bottle of ink. I dipped a leaf/needle that was still on the tree in the ink then held the sketchbook up so the page just touched the inky leaf.

It is very interesting to see how each tree produced its own distinctive marks.
The idea for tree drawings came from Nalini Nadkarni's book 'Between Earth and Sky', a very good read for those interested in trees.

The Ups of Spring

When I got back from the UK some work I had produced for my BA(Hons) studies with JC School of Textile Arts, I put it out in the garden. It is a paper version of a men's suit jacket. Much like the paper possessions sold in Chinese funeral stores, I made a paper suit to return it back to nature as an obsolete, inappropriate garment for the contemporary male to wear since I found it was based on armour.

So far with all of the rain and fog there has not been much decay, just a bit of discolouration. The anachronistic male suit may be harder to get rid of than I thought.

The 'up' spring news is I spied our first spring flower yesterday. I feel as though the garden is waiting for just a small rise in temperature and it will burst into life. I have not been in this house in the spring so I am looking forward to it.
As part of spring and part of this module of work, I put threads out in the garden for the birds to take their pick while shopping for nest building supplies.

We get a lot of different birds visiting so i put out a variety of threads to suit every one's tastes.

We have a plant called charity that has been flowering all winter and as a result we have had regular visits from a variety of hummingbirds. We also saw a pileated woodpecker, well heard it hard at work before we saw it. Being a key ecosystem species, I was very pleased to see it because it means its activities allow a whole web of other fauna to visit and live on our property.

Art Deco Design

Here is an image of my design wall at an early stage of my Art Deco study. I grouped images according to influences on the movement, illustrations of why it was known as a 'total' style, design features, materials and colours.

These are some of the influences on the movement.

One of the predominant design elements that became obvious was the step motif and form. In Europe it seems to have been inspired by ancient Egyptian culture, while in North America the step design elements came from rediscoveries of Meso-American civilisations such as Mayan, Aztec and Incan.

This is work by the British potter, Clarice Cliff, whose work was immensely popular in the late 20s and 30s. Throughout her career she used the step design element as a motif, pattern and a 3D form.

I wrote about the importance the step design in my assessment essay for the History of Design module. It seems to be a reoccuring element in many different cultures. It would be interesting to find out if there is any significance in the timing of these reoccurances. Also, that of the reappearance each time of bright orange in art, architecture and fashion.

Art Deco In Victoria BC Canada

One of the unique aspects of the Art Deco Movement is it 'moved' all around the world. Here in Victoria, where I live, I found some fine examples of well preserved Art Deco architecture.
In 1931 Imperial Oil built a 3 tiered garage on the waterfront inner harbour area of the city and topped it with a tower just like the one that had been built on the Palmolive Building in Chicago in 1929. Both towers had state-of-the-art navigational beacons put on top.

Today, Victoria's tower tops the Visitor Centre, a restaurant and tourist activity offices for harbour tours and whale watching.

The elegant Art Deco elements are still clearly visible.

For the final assignment for the JC School of Textile Art module I have just finished, I wrote an essay about how the step design element was used throughout the Art Deco Movement. I looked at the way these 'modern' skyscraper buildings were inspired by the stepped buildings in Mayan/Aztec and Egyptian civilisations. I found some very interesting links.

Art Deco in England

A box full of a semester's worth of Art Deco Movement research has been sent to England to be assessed. Phew! I am looking forward to a month's break but I thought you might like to see some more highly innovative fashion from the period, courtesy of Richard Martin's book.

This pink silk satin dress by Gabrielle Chanel has spiraling bias-cut panels encircling the body.

I may not agree with Richard's attempts to convince me these creative dress designers were inspired by Picasso (I think the inspiration flowed the other way) but he did describe this dress well, "A kind of 3D, silk-swathing puzzle." It is a 1920 design by Madeleine Vionnet.

Madeleine wasn't big on colour, as you can see in these ecru and pink dresses, in fact they are all skin-like in colour. Colour would have been a distraction from the brilliance of these designs. What was important to her was the cut and how the cloth related to the body.

The detailing on this sleeve is exciting in an understated way: threading, tying, hanging, wrapping, joining with faggoting, gathering - all on this quiet, elegant sleeve.

Another Madeleine Vionnet (1938) garment speaks of utter simplicity while it drapes the body with such complexity. All without the help of Lycra or Spandex. Pure genius.