Martha Cole and Dialogue

This weekend I went to see Martha Cole and her latest work at an open house in Gloria Daly's studio. Martha had taught a book making class there the previous week so we were able to look at the students books as well as Martha's books.
Martha is a world authority on paste paper and their use in book making.
The image shows her 2 of her latest experiments (in her hands and the purpley one on the wall). She is next going to work on  this stitch-paint technique at a much larger scale.
Her work is inspirational and she is a wonderful person.

There was much excitement at home this past week when a severe weather system blew across the west coast. Our trees were blown around and lost small branches but no damage done. I do enjoy a hearty storm.
After the storm I was delighted to see the contributions the trees had made to the dialogue I presently have set up.

There was lots of communication about the storm.

With the rain and warmer weather the grass is growing vigorously.

Clean Up and Dialogue

Now that i have sent this semester's module of work to the UK for assessment it is time to clean up my studio. All of the left over yarn that i had hauled out, i sorted by hue. I have all of my yarns and threads sorted into 24 different hues, each with their own box. I call these boxes my palette. i find sorting yarns like this helps keep my eye for colour in practice.

The dialogue where I staked doilies out under the trees is coming along.

After 10 days it looked like this.

While the agricultural cloth looked like this.

Dialogue Gardening vs Nurturing

This is another dialogue i have going on with a Douglas-fir and an arbutus.

I staked out under these 2 trees a grid of round knit and crochet doilies and squares of agricultural cloth.

I was anticipating the plants in the ground would grow up through the knitting/crochet....

...and be suppressed by the agricultural cloth.
This dialogue is still in place. i didn't send it to the UK with the rest of my work because i haven't responded to it yet except to photograph changes regularly.

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.

Dialogue 2 Continues

After cutting about 15 smaller squares off the cloth, I uncovered the remainder.





There is quite a lot of grey staining and some other brighter coloured marks





Maple tree seeds had sprouted through the cloth in several places.





Once the cloth was dry these shoots withered and stuck to the cloth.



Now it is my turn to respond.




I pinned the cloth on the wall and looked at it for a few days......

Dialogue 2 'The Tree as Verb'

Dialogue 2 is about a conversation with a tree using a textile.

I have been doing lots of sampling. First I buried a piece of cloth under the leaves of a big leaf maple and left it for a couple of weeks.

Then, every 2nd day I would cut off a small square and bring it inside to dry. I would label it and give it a verb from Bill Yake's poem 'The Tree as Verb'.

I put the squares of cloth up on my design wall and spent time each day looking at them, thinking about how I would respond now it was my turn.

The leaves had left some staining but not much. Several thoughtful people have given me suggestions to get more staining going on so I'll do more sampling.

My tutor liked all of the bits stuck to the cloth...

...so I tested lots of different products to find the best sealer that would leave the cloth soft enough to hand stitch into.

The winner was Krylon workable fixative.

More work on Compost Cloth

I have been developing my response to the composted cloth. After I found it was disintegrating, I put a backing cloth behind it - a small tea table cloth. Here is a quick drawing of how it will look.

After stitching through both layers to secure all of the tears, I am now working through both cloths a double running stitch around the embroidery on the tea cloth.

I value this remnant of cloth so I am embroidering it.

The Japanese Saki Ori techniques of weaving, stitching and patching, recycles worn out remnants of cloth because they are viewed as still having value.

Dialogue 1 Compost Cloth

This is the cloth I pulled out of the compost, washed and dried. Now it is my turn to respond to it.

I had this strong urge to preserve it....

...so I looked up 2 of my favourite books, 

Therese de Dillmont's 'The Complete Encyclopedia of Needlework' 

and Weldon's 'Encyclopedia of Needlework', 

to read up about darning and patching. But once I started handling the compost cloth I saw that it is completely rotten with weak fibers so can't be patched or mended.

Next I did a web search on museum textile conservation techniques, which seemed to better suit the condition of this textile.

I attached it to a small tea cloth to act as a support and am now working a small running stitch around every tear, through both layers of cloth.

It is starting to have that nice crinkled 'English quilting' look. 

It also reminds me of Kantha work from NE India and Bangladesh.

A couple of days ago...

A couple of days ago I posted about some books that have been influential in my studies and I forgot to add the one I am currently reading.

I am looking at how nurturing and housekeeping have gone on in the home and taking those activites out into the natural environment to extend our concept of what is our home.

I am racing through this book because it is such a good read. I'm not even stopping to make notes, which I may regret later when I am looking for something I know is is there.

A couple of days ago, I went outside to check my different textiles and I felt as though I was being watched.

"What is that crazy human doing? We can't eat anything she has put out. We tried them all."

I also found the early spring flowers were rather burdened that morning.

The good part was we had limed the grass the day before and we were looking for some moisture to take it down into the soil. By the afternoon the snow had done its job and was all gone. 

Dialogue 1 - Compost Cloth

As part of my studies I am working with different ways the natural environment can leave its mark on textiles. I am calling each of these attempts - dialogues.

The first dialogue is a quickie - with the compost. I put a length of unbleached cotton in the compost, undisturbed for a month. This was the result.

Here is the textile out in the understory of a maple.

Looks pretty decayed and stained...

...but when I washed it most of the dark staining came out. There is some left so the cloth has changed colour.

The soft decayed edges are the best parts.

I have a desire to preserve this textile so I am researching darning and patching methods and will next do some sampling.

ANDREA GRAHAM - Feltmaker

ANDREA GRAHAM - Feltmaker Friend, Linda Wallace (tapestry weaver, stitcher, spinner etc) put me on to this inspiring feltmaker. She moves effortlessly from 2D to 3D and back. I feel aligned with her when she talks about sustainable craft/art and nurturing the planet.

Check out her blog and her unique web site that is full of surprises - I think she designed that too.

Thanks Linda, for the find.

Books Books Books

As with all modules of work in this BA(Hons) Embroidered Textiles programme, there is lots of reading.
I do like having to read because there is no guilt in settling down with a book and looking up to see most of the day has passed, which does tend to happen to me when I get hooked on a good one.
There have been several books this semester that have been most influential in my work.
I devoured Nalini Nadkarni's book on trees.
Even though she is a scientist and professor with a doctorate in tropical canopies, this book is very personal about her own connection with trees and her family life, which makes it easy to relate to.
It is a great example of someone with the ability to link art, science and life.

This book has lots of provocative ideas about what we need to do to survive and thrive on the planet for the next millenia.
It is a book of essays written by experts. There are lots of statistics to back up their arguments and I found it very readable.
However, there is a big problem with the case they present.
Unlike Nalini's approach where she covered all the bases in a loving dissertation on trees, this book thinks it did the same by looking at the role of governments, education, religion, media etc in bringing about a global shift from being a consumer society to sustainable one BUT it completely and totally left out the role of the artist and art as an agent of change.
Art history shows time and time again how art has led the way with what is new in ways of thinking and viewing and doing.
I checked the index, there is no mention of 'art', 'artist,' 'beauty' ... so its not a balanced view.
Makes me wonder what else they left out.

These 2 books have been great references to dip into while I am developing my ideas.
For example, when I am contemplating using a symbol in my work I check it out in one of these books to find out the history and multiple meanings it might have. I then follow these leads with web searches.

Phew, I have been wordy this post.
It is probably because all I have been doing this past week is pecking at my key board putting together 2 art proposals - Assignment C.