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.

Wrapping Another Set of Trees

On my tutor's advice I wrapped another set of 4 trees with bed sheets.

Arbutus

Tying the sheet on with a hand made jute twine.

The Maple I selected is a wild life tree, essentially a dead tree in the next phase of its life as a host to a whole network of life: nesting holes for birds, insects, fungi, mosses.....

Maple

Douglas-fir - the optimum species in this ecosystem.

Douglas-fir

Cedar

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.

 

 

 

 

Wrapping the 4 Trees Again

Arbutus


Maple

Douglas-fir

Cedar

Decisions Decisions

Throughout this term of my studies I had continued to move along about 8 other dialogues out in the forest that I had established during the previous term. By the end of the winter term I decided my final degree exhibition would be about the tree cloths - a big decisions when I still had so much to resolve. This meant I needed to wrap another set of cloths around the trees and I needed to do it now to give the trees as much time as possible to get busy staining the cloth.

I liked the idea of pre-mordanting the cloth in sea water just a short distance away from where the trees are growing. Sampling had shown sea water to be an effective pre-mordant on cotton. A pre- mordant was likely to stimulate the staining process.

I made another decision too. The cloths would be bed sheets my 3 children slept on while growing up. 

I liked the idea of using the same nurturing cloths being used to express my need to get to know these trees.   

An important part of my work is to use textiles with an accumulated history. During a research module I had written a paper looking at how different artists worked with the human imprint on cloth.
While I soaked the sheets in the sea, 2 men  threw a ball for their dog and watched me. When I walked back towards them they said, 'We have to ask. Art or science?' I said, 'both.'

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.