Studio Saturday - Dolly

The summer sun is at the right angle to catch the leaves of the peace lily - yet another possibility for a woodblock print -

- but not yet, the grandbaby must have a doll.

I found a pattern, and dug out some recycled linen and a remnant from a favourite dress -

Failure to re-read the instructions led to some tricky moments attaching the head - "next time" I'll sew it on to the body as instructed, rather than stuffing it first!

 We got there in the end -

The tricky part is the hair; the scary part is  the embroidered face. This, I decided, is too much detail, and could so easily go wrong -

Better to leave the child to decide whether she's happy, sad, etc -

Dolly was well received -

Apart from Dolly, a new woodblock is under the knife.

Drawing Tuesday - Serpentine

What a lot of subjects to choose from! In the "old Serpentine gallery", work by American artist Faith Ringgold, who has been a multimedia artist pretty much ever since she graduated from high school in 1948 -

Feminist series

Windows of the Wedding series

From the cut pieces intended for their second collaborative quilt,
unfinished when her mother Willi Posey died, Faith Ringgold
made "Mothers Quilt" in 1981

In the new gallery, a variety of painting by Colombian artist Luchita Hurtado, catapulted into the spotlight at age 98 -

Crayon and ink, work from the early 1950s

A self-portrait

"Moth Lights"

 I chose this long one, which uses five sheets of paper, and really enjoyed looking at how the shapes related to each other -

Untitled, 1954

Colours had to be changed to use what I had available

And there was the pavilion ...

Joyce

Mags

Janet K

 Carol looked along the Serpentine to the bridge -

Najlaa looked at Luchita's "moth lights" and  other patterns -

 Extra-curricular activities

Mags brought along photos of her work as shown in Meanwhile, the EDAM course show -

and also her workbooks, including how the colours of the tabs on the layered maps, based on her train stitching, relate to the train ticket -

She had printed one of the layered maps onto a cloth bag [I'm itching to extend some of those lines with a bit of stitch...] -

While away on holiday Joyce has been stitching -

close-up

turn it over and see...!

 ... and happened to be wearing some earlier stitching - splendid -

To end, some of the floral glory encountered on my walk through Hyde Park to the galleries, such a lovely walk -

"Adventures of The Lonely Heart"

A blast from the past.

Rumbling around in the hinterland of my home studio, aka storage room, I found some work from the 90s - the story of The Lonely Heart -

...an early work! I loved making it - it's embroidered on black velvet (very last century!) with space-dyed rayon threads, and at the time (of rediscovering the joy of stitch) each little panel, each little story, was meaningful to me.

Some details -

Found and remembered

If you "never" throw away your experiments and samples and suchlike, they re-surface years later - and you might not be able to remember when or why or how you made them! These are done with biro and were probably made while having an enforced stay in Brussels when Eurostar trains broke down in the tunnel - that was December 2009. They are done on what looks like hotel stationery of some sort, and a biro would have been just the thing after seeing work by Jan Fabre there - a ceiling encrusted with beetle wings. I remember pointing it out to Tony and telling him about the exhibition of his work in the Louvre, which included large, buckled drawings solid with ballpoint pen marks that had made a lasting impression on me: simple, subtle, intense, laborious.

Some of these textures now strike me as "interesting" for putting into or onto, which is it, the porcelain pots...

Also found, remnants of a work-in-progress called "Speech Marks" - snippets developed from marks made to "record" overheard conversations on mobile phones. Often the record showed my annoyance at the loud voice, the self-absorption of monopolising the conversation, the triviality; all sorts of grumpiness that of course we can rise above now....

These are somewhat similar, but it was working towards a project, or series, about counting -

Feminist textiles and embroidered hankies

The Cut Cloth exhibition, and its associated events, were what spurred my recent trip to Manchester. I got there on the last day of the exhibition, which was held in the amazing Portico Library, with its delightful "original features" dating back 200 years - the library was opened in 1806. The central exhibition space , which also functions as a cafe - is a modern intervention -

The "Polite Literature" category would include the literature that was read in the Polite Society of the Georgian era, the sort of literature deemed sufficiently suitable for a wife or servant. But these shelves also hold some risque novels and a few books on witchcraft and philosophical and theological arguments. (Read more about it here.)

We had a simple lunch on tablecloths rumoured to be by Alice Kettle (and indeed she and ceramicist Stephen Dixon are leaders of the Crafts Research Group, year-long artists in residence) -

In the vitrines, historic documents - The Subversive Stitch by Roszika Parker was published in 1984, and the Art Textiles exhibition, curated by Jennifer Harris  was held at the Whitworth in 2015

Textile art and contemporary feminism
(click on the image to enlarge,  for reading the text)

 A few of my favourite pieces -

 In one vitrine, historical textile production in Manchester, which in 1853 had over 100 cotton mills and until early this century produced "wax cloth" for export to Ghana, and also Shweshwe indigo fabric, "German print", which was exported to South Africa -

Some days later, "the hanky workshop", led by Sarah Corbett of the Craftivist Collective. She supplied a kit with hanky, thread, needle, instructions, a lovely woven label ... and there are other stitching-for-action kits on the Craftivist website -

Sarah's Little Book of Craftivism contains thoughtful, do-able projects that bring the political a bit closer to the personal -

I was also taken by the follow-the-dots stitching cards - Stitchable Changemakers. 

And being an embroiderer, I not only had to turn it over to see the back, but photograph it -

 Here we are, stitching away in the Portico Library - changing the world one stitch at a time!

The hanky, explained Sarah, is a way of gently confronting and connecting to "a powerholder" - onto which can be stitched not only your concerns about their actions and policies, but also encouragement for doing a better job in future ... with the added dimension that you'll be thinking about these topics and issues as you stitch. To me, that is much more sane than yelling angry slogans. But to whom, about what, would I write or give such an object?  When we said a few words about ourselves at the start of the workshop, I said I'd come because this was an area that I'd not been involved with yet in my life. And indeed, I felt very much out of my depth and hadn't thought who for, or about what, such a handkerchief missive might be.

At the end of the session I hadn't got very far ... and Sarah gave us an "extra length of encouragement" to take away - "little by little, we travel far"

Little by little I sorted out what to say, how to say it, and to whom. While I educate myself about "issues" that I might want to try to change, I'll focus on what I know: "the personal is political". Family politics; who holds what powers? So, first, the nearest and dearest ... what could I say to my son? His birthday was only a week away, so the text urgently needed writing, no time for dithering. It got done. The words had to be fitted into the space available, and the writing had to be a good size. That got sorted, and then I traced it onto the cloth with a black biro. 

After that bit of agony came the joy of stitching - with two strands of anchor cotton, or rather one strand doubled over through the needle, so the needle wouldn't get lost during stitching on public transport (the sturdy, reclosable envelope of the kit was very useful for carrying it around) -

 Finished -

 And the back .....