New Work: Responding to Trees with Stitch

This work began with a cloth that was buried in the soil beside a Douglas-fir tree. Before the cloth began to decay I dug it up.

It was now my turn to respond to the cloth. 

I liked the bits of leaves stuck to the cloth so stitched over some of them to hold them in place.

Now it was the tree's turn to respond. 

When the cloth was dry I stretched it on a hoop and waited for a windy day. When that day arrived I raced out and tied a little paintbrush to the end of a branch. I dipped the brush into a bottle of ink then held the hooped cloth up to the brush. While the wind blew the branch around the ink-filled brush drew on the cloth - a wind drawing.

Now it was my turn to respond again.

It was time for me to add more stitch to respond to the tree's wind drawing.

The cloth needed a backing to support the stitching I had in mind.

I selected a bedsheet stained during its time wrapped around the trunk of the tree.

I found another unstained bedsheet to give a firmer cloth to stitch into.

I trialled different bedsheets to get enough contrast between the 3 cloths. Even though the colours are soft and subtle, contrast between the different cloths is still needed. 

I used my camera to take black and white photographs to check the value contrast between the different sheets before I settled on this combination.

I wanted to show the little branchlets that break off the Douglas-fir tree during a wind storm.

I went though my large bin of 'white' thread to find just the right ones.

I went outside to find one of these branchlets and made lots of drawings of it until my hands knew the angle at which the needles came out of the branch.

Next, I stitched some samples, trialling different stitch combinations. I settled on a made-up version of couching though no doubt someone somewhere has invented this stitch before. I call it a long-armed couching stitch.

Now I have to settle down and stitch every day to make sure I keep the rhythm going and keep remembering my intention with this work.

Stitching on the Tree Cloths

 

After sampling...

...I used the colour studies to find matching coloured threads...

...and headed outside to stitch on the cloth. 

 

Eco-Printing aka India Flint & More Sampling

I went back to sampling more eco-printing using India Flint's methods.

There was dyeing rather than leaf printing...

...but they weren't my marks.

Did I need to leave a body print, visible evidence I have touched the cloths and left my DNA, just as the trees have done?
Image of Colin Jenkins' stitched body print 'Purge' - (Source: Embroiderers' Guild (2006)  Art of the Stitch  Scholar, Surrey: EG Enterprises, p. 14).

Or maybe stitch into the cloth with my own dentritus, my hair?
Image of Tabitha Kyoko Moses' self portrait, stitched with human hair - (Source: Embroiderers' Guild (2006) Art of the Stitch Scholar, Surrey: EG Enterprises, p. 36).
I sampled but didn't feel the efforts added to my understanding of the trees I wanted to get to know.

In Praise of Ironing

'In Praise of Ironing'
It has to be spread out, the skin of this planet,
has to be ironed, the sea in its whiteness;
and the hands keep on moving,
soothing the holy surfaces.
poem by Pablo Neruda

I continued to search for a way to respond to the marks the tree left on the cloth.
I rejected making a bed and decided laundering them would remove the marks.
Could I just iron the sheets and fold them up?


(Source: Google Images, extreme ironing)
My research showed much belittling of the domestic activity of ironing so the action would not necessarily strengthen my work.
Pablo Neruda's poem 'In Praise of Ironing' uses ironing as a metaphor for controlling natural biological processes, the antithesis of a harmonic relationship I wished to express in my work. 

How could I add my mark in a sympathetic, symbiotic way?

Considering Making a Bed

(Source: Google images, source unknown)
I wondered how I would respond to the trees' staining on the bed sheets. Could I make a bed? How have other artists used beds?

Bed linen enveloped in natural biological cycles - repulsive rather than inviting.
(Source: tigeyguz's Flicker photostream)

Stitching the bed. Jane McKeating's book on a double bed is a metaphor for her relationship with the other person who shares her bed, or did share it. 

Tracey Emin's My Bed, 1998-1999, installation, Japan to Tate to The Saatchi Gallery to New York.
Tracey wanted the installation to look as though a bed had been taken out of a bedroom and put in a gallery space.
There are many other artists who have 'made beds' - Patricia Jauch, Frieda Kahlo, Robert Rauschenberg. The problems for me are the bed has for so long been used as a signifier of human relationships and a bed made from tree stained sheets would be associated with the idiom, 'airing one's dirty laundry in public.'

Simultaneous Mordant on Tree Cloths Insitu

To encourage staining on the tree cloths I made up a tannic acid solution....

...and sponged it on the cloths while they were wrapped around the trees...

...and after it had rained while the cloth was wet.

Staining did appear to be most active on the tannic acid soaked parts of the cloth.

Checking the Tree Cloths

Over the months I checked the sheets for signs of staining.
Animals continued to run up and down this cedar trunk.... 

...moving the sheet and leaving their marks.

The Maple sheet worked loose but I decided not to disturb it ...

 

...because staining was happening.

BA(Hons) Studies Continue in September

My BA(Hons) studies resumed again in September. I told my tutor, Sarah Burgess, of my decision to continue with the tree cloths for my graduating exhibition work. She suggested I wrap 4 more sheets around trees as insurance. I bought 4 single-sized bed sheets and scoured them to remove all sizing.

I pre-mordanted them in the nearby sea.

 

 

 

 

Repair and Mending Tree Cloths

 

 

 

The obvious response was to repair and mend the holes and tears in the tree cloths. Mending techniques by their nature aim to be invisible so this would be a necessary but not obvious response. I needed to do something more to the tree cloths.