WAR: A Personal Response, Body of Work, 'Grief Redacted'

Grief Redacted

Vintage linen tablecloth, cotton thread; hand embroidered.

For my installation in Articulation's 'WAR: A Personal Response' exhibition I have recreated my grandmother's living room to reflect her mental state during WWI, WWII and the following years. I believe she suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) most of her adult life. The room I have created tells her story.

Grief Redacted is a tablecloth laid on a table set for tea. The colour of the embroidery chronicles her decline into PTSD.

Stitching on a boat.

The cloth chronicles my grandmother Florence's life so I decided to make it a part of my life. I took it with me where ever I went and worked on it whenever I could.

Stitching on the Coho ferry en route to the USA.

Stitching on a riverboat in the Malaysian Highlands.

PTSD symptoms unrecognized and untreated can be passed on to future generations. Florence's great-granddaughter Elizabeth added her stitches to the cloth. In total nine of Florence's descendants worked on the cloth to illustrate the wide-ranging and long-term effects of PTSD within a family.

The brightly coloured flowers reflect Florence's happy relationship with her high school sweetheart until he headed off to war. The flowers turn black from worry as she waited. After his joyful return, their marriage and the births of their 4 sons, the colour returned to flowers. Following the tragedy of her "shell-shocked" husband committing suicide, three sons joining the Air Force and the oldest son dying in a plane crash, she stitched only in black. Guided by her religion, bound by nationalistic cries of 'for God and country' and deep down being tormented by humanist feelings of guilt and shame, Florence suffered from PTSD as the battle raged within her home.

Links to works by other Articulation artists in the 'WAR: A Personal Response' exhibition:

Donna Clement here

Wendy Klotz here

Amanda Onchulenko here

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.

Yukon Cryosphere II, Hydrosphere - Work Continues

Working with slippery synthetic sheers I can't keep the large pieces of fabric under control. Solution - hang them on the wall and take down as needed.

My current problem is to find a method for making a soft material appear hard. 

I have made tapered tubes. They need weights in the bottom to keep all lines vertical, the way water falls and freezes.  I considered lead fishing weights but couldn't find any small enough and they would all have to be painted white.

Solution - Beads. I cleaned out my white bead stash then scoured all thrift stores in a 20-mile radius. I sorted them by size and made 3 different soup mixes.

The beads are successfully doing the job of weighing down the points but now the tubes don't look substantial enough. I have decided to stuff each tube with fine interfacing. It took a long time and was hard on my hands.

To give my hands a break I started making the flowing water panels - cheesecloth dry-felted onto flat sheer tubes.

I am laying out the flowing water panels to see if I had enough of them and enough variety in length and width.

In the meantime, in the back of my mind, I am working on how to hang these individual tubes and panels. Percolation time, again.

Backyard Project and Work in the Studio

Ron and Nordic Fencing team leader, Mat, plan the location of the deer fence along the south boundary.

Nathan is digging trenches for irrigation pipes.

The main pipe will be located under the path going around the pergola and arbor. If there is ever a problem with the pipe it can be dug up without disturbing any garden beds.

Meanwhile, I am collecting leaf skeletons from under the tulip trees.

The damp conditions are ideal for the soft parts of the leaf to rot away leaving the leaf skeleton in tact.

After washing and laying the leaves out to dry...

...I am sewing them onto an embroidered afternoon tea cloth that spent a year or so outside wrapped around a tree trunk. I have been adding leaves to this cloth for the past couple of years. The repair of the decayed cloth with darned leaves speaks of how leaves fall to nourish and repair the soil, the skin of the earth. I will keep adding to the cloth for another season or so to demonstrate how soil building is a long term continual process.

The work is called, 'Earth Repair.'

The hyacinths are blooming in the studio bed. There is such a lovely smell as I come and go from the Green Shed.

Now that the winter rains have eased we can continue with the Backyard Project tasks

Etsy Ravenmadeworks - Mola Pillows

Ravenmadeworks

I have made a series of pillow covers using refreshed vintage molas and put them in my Etsy shop Ravenmade Works.

Molas are the embroidery of the Cuna Indians of Panama. They live on the San Blas Islands on the Atlantic side of Panama.

This well-worn mola (above) is a relatively simple design with strong mirror symmetry, all features of older traditional work.

The back shows the ground fabric has been made from 3 different fabrics pieced together and they have faded at different rates.

The front view of the 3 different red fabrics making up the ground. 

Orange then black fabric were layered on top of the red ground then the 3 layers were basted together. Smaller pieces of different coloured fabric were inserted into specific areas according to the design - see the green and white areas above. 

The design was drawn or traced onto the top most layer then basted with thread along the design lines. The top layer was cut about 1/8" on each side of the line before the cut edges were folded under. The folded edges were hand creased then the edges were hand stitched down. It is an embroidery technique known as reverse applique or cut back applique.

The traditional designs evolved from elaborate body painting and reflected things observed in the environment. 

This mola has inserts of printed cloth most likely acquired by trade or from visitors to the islands.

'Mola' means blouse and they were made in pairs - two identically designed rectangular pieces, one for the front and one for the back of the blouse. The horizontal line denotes the top of the panel, often accentuated with rick rack.

The above mola is more complex in design and detail and has many different inserts suggesting it was made for the tourist market. 

The back shows the density of the hand stitching necessary to execute a more complex design.

The purple strip at the top was likely the fabric the mola was attached to to make the yoke of the blouse.

It was very popular in the 60s and 70s for travellers passing through the island archipelago to buy molas. Women would sell their worn blouses and make new ones to wear. 

Today most mola production is for the tourist market generating valuable income families have become dependent on. Many contemporary molas are made in a wide variety of sizes, are often simpler, as above, or more complex to get higher prices and are brighter in colour. They are incorporated into clothing and home decor items to add value to the product.

Traditional Mola Blouse worn by a San Blas woman.

VISDA Exhibition 'Garden Tapestry' at Portals, Duncan

Louise Slodoban, 'In An Artist's Garden' 

Photo transfer, procion dyed cloth, mono printing, screen printing, sun prints, machine & hand stitched.

Louise was inspired by a visit to Grant Leier and Nixie Barton's Studio Garden at Yellow Point.

The Vancouver Island Surface Design Association has an exhibition in the Portals gallery in the CVAC Centre of Arts, Culture and Heritage until November 10, 2015.

Georgina Dingwell, 'At Night in the Garden'

Printed surface with silk overlay and stitching.

"This piece is about the way we perceive darkness. The mind can take us to scary places even in the realm of beauty in a garden."

All artists worked within a 12" x 60" or 72" framework so there was uniformity in the size of the works. This serves to unify a wide range of styles, techniques, materials and ideas.

Elserine Sprenger, "karesansui" (dry landscape)

Handwoven, linen, silk, raffia, stones, madder, indigo.

"This piece is woven in a partial double weave structure and symbolises the strength and at the same time the fragility of Mother Nature; the stones that have survived millennia and the linen which so easily deteriorates when exposed to the weather."

 

karesansui (dry landscape), detail

Sarah McLaren, 'Joy'

"Own hand dyed linen/cotton blend fabric, hand appliqued with silk thread, machine quilted, wool batting, binding done by hand. 

Inspired by whimsical floral shapes, open weave linen, a love of colour subtleties and a passion for fabric and stitching, my intention was to design and create a joyful art-quilt garden tapestry."

'Joy,' detail. 

Sorry, the colours are way off in these images of the works. The gallery has the work well lit which makes for difficult photographic conditions.

Sarah beside her work. 

The colours here are closer to reality, but images of textiles never really do them justice. You will have to go to Duncan to see for yourself. 

The exhibition is on until November 10, 2015.

The gallery is open Monday through to Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm.

Dorothy Caldwell: Book Making - Putting it all Together

Dorothy showed us many other methods for making our mark on fabric and paper. She also showed us many examples of what others had done in the past and what contemporary artists are currently working on. 

 We were left to continue exploring the methods we liked.

Then is was time to start thinking about how various elements and pages could go together.

Cleverly Dorothy got us to use the sheet of paper we had been working on top of to make a practice book with a woven spine binding. I was delighted I am a messy worker because I have lots of random marks in the pages of my book.

Another book involved folding and cutting up the large piece of paper we marked with ink while outside. This book was such fun to make. It now awaits embellishment, or not.

After the practice books, we worked in earnest on assembling our main book. Dorothy sat with each of us while we showed her our marked pages and she offered advice, suggestions and help that kept us going until the end of the week.

The last activity involved everyone sharing their books.

Such a wonderful workshop.

Thank you, Dorothy.

Dorothy Caldwell's Human Marks Workshop

"An individual stroke is an utterance of touch." Dorothy Caldwell

 Dorothy is demonstrating the next Stroke Painting exercise. 

We taped various types of brushes onto long sticks. We dipped them into pots of different dilutions of black ink. With a large sheet of paper on the ground in front of each of us, we were instructed to use our whole body to make the mark on the paper. After we had filled the paper we flipped it and continued making marks but this time very slowly and deliberately. An added bonus was soft rain started to fall adding texture to our marks.

We hung our marks in the breezeway of Gloria's studio. We studied the layers of marks when the papers were more transparent with the light showing through them.

We spent the rest of the day making marks by piercing with a large nail, burning holes with an incense stick, burning edges with a candle, and adding smoke and wax to paper.

Next morning we learned about the history of Kantha embroidery. We then began to make our own Kantha marks on fabric.

This is the result of a group exercise where we all stitched blindfolded, responding to words Dorothy gave us to meditate on.

All of these exercises have helped us to feel centred and focused on what we are doing.