Edgelands from Prism

Yesterday I had the pleasure of going to Prism’s latest exhibition “Edgelands” at the Art Pavilion, Mile End, London. My primary motivation was to see the richly embroidered, landscape inspired textiles by Kim McCormack and I was very fortunate in that she was welcoming folk to the exhibition at the desk when I arrived. She was such an interesting person to talk to and kindly indulgent of my effusive praise. I saved her works until the very end as I wanted time to focus on them. There were plenty of other artworks that caught my attention as well, as did the exhibition space. It is a wonderful, glass fronted, long curving gallery with a lake to one side which throws rippling shafts of light onto the ceiling, providing an extra sense of magic to enhance the works exhibited there.

What did I enjoy?

Sue Reddish’s masterful use of repurposed clothing to create her pieces about the liminal spaces around and beneath the two miles of the elevated Mancunian Way, which has cut across the city since the 1960s. Her tiny seed stitch in a rich orange in this piece creates a haze of colour as though the background, which I read as sky, was flowing forwards across the land.

In Judith Isaac-Lewis’s wonderful collection of "Nature Pages" botanical prints, made with plants collected from the former railway embankments at St Alban's Way, were enhanced with the most evocative embroideries. I loved each one for the way she used a small selection of stitches which spoke to the natural imagery.

Jane Riley’s tapestry, "The Fortress Cliffs" was inspired by the cliffs at Ravenscar North Yorkshire. I thought her use of differing textures of thread and eccentric weave created a real sense of standing at the edge, looking out, and expressed her hope for the continuing recovery of this space from its industrial past.

The delicate glimmering of Jill Walker's honesty seeds, suspended and swaying with every passing movement of air was beautiful to behold, and touched me deeply, reminding me of how I fell in love with these “paper pennies” as a child.

The snapshot views in Amanda’s Hislop’s five wall hangings and concertina book perfectly evoked her experience of snatched views and changing seasons while walking in farmland near her home.

Marian Jazmik’s incredibly delicate monochrome pieces using a wide variety of reclaimed materials astonished me. The amount of work it must have taken to produce them was one source of amazement, quickly followed by admiration for her inventive use of mundane objects such as zips to evoke elements of the natural world and of decay which were inspired by her own photographs.

Niki Chandler’s symphony of shining colour was a wonder to behold. Built from multiple layers of fine netting, used for dance costumes, she created a patchwork of square shapes, blending colours carefully by folding and layering her net to construct a dance of changing colour across the dark background.

Anita Bruce's linked woven hangings were inspired by the patchwork patterns of familiar farmlands as they appear on satellite images. Initially she was considering the luxuriant verges she drove past, and their contrast with the unvaried canvas of the fields. When heavy rain flooded the area those fields disappeared; a visual reversal where patches of farmland become small islands in a vast, sky reflecting, lake.

Helen MacRitchie’s pieces are meditations on the way that nature reclaims urban spaces and margins as they become more neglected. Two wall hung artworks contrasted strong green twining strands with underlying patterns evoking urban space. 

A freestanding work, suspended from the ceiling, took the contrast of these geometric and organic elements and liberated them into space where one could walk round them and consider from all angles the way nature was inserting herself into the built environment. Glimpses of the outside environment, mixed urban and natural, brought those contrasts to life.

And finally, having saved them until last, I gave myself up to enjoying Kim McCormack’s wonderful eco print embroideries, The Wet Desert, A Trail to Glenurquhart and The Rewilding. She combines so many elements and textures: silky surfaces with tactile velvets; fragments of map with the leafy shapes of eco printing; dense areas of bullion and French knots contrasted with delicate lines of stitch which connect everything together. It was such a pleasure to see them up close, to look carefully at the layering and overlaying of different elements: couched down tubes of soft wool; leafy shapes and patterns creating a counterpoint with more geometrical areas; hand stitch and machine stitch. I marveled at the many hours of planning and stitching that must have gone into making each piece. I loved the way some of the botanical prints disappeared behind the next layer, giving a sense that all was grounded in the natural world. All in all a very inspiring day out

If you would like to know more about what was exhibited there you can download the exhibition catalogue from the Prism website here. It's well worth a browse and the site also has links to all of their members

weaving inspiration

My weaving is really taking over my creative time at the moment. Not completely dominating it, but I have been weaving pretty much every day since my last post. This is the result, hanging on the line to dry after being washed - I didn't even know you were supposed to wash things when they come off the loom, but it helps the warp and weft to meld together into a fabric. This was an experiment in colour and a practice piece to improve my understanding of weaving evenly, getting those edges straight and not loopy and finding out what happens when you weave colours together. I'm really pleased with the outcome, and have learnt all sorts of things. In particular, I was hoping for a more thorough blend of colours in warp and weft, but I've used too wide a sett on the warp, which means that my weft colours are dominating, though you do get a hint of the warp stripes running through.

I did have two days of not weaving though, travelling up to the big city to see two exhibitions. The first was the Anni Albers show at Tate Modern. A friend Steph and I had been looking forward to this for some time, she also being a stitcher and part of our little breakaway tapestry weaving group. We almost ran out of time, as it closed last weekend, but a quick bit of planning meant that we were able to get there on Thursday. The works on show were incredibly inspiring for a new weaver; each piece repaying close observation. For me that means pulling my glasses half way down my nose and getting it as close as possible to what I'm looking at - always a bit unnerving as I keep expecting a solicitous museum attendant to leap up and banish me for getting too close!

Her combination of colour, texture and technique was a real lesson in how to create beauty on the loom and, even more inspiring, many of her experimental pieces were woven on small simple looms, rather than the beautiful piece of equipment that greeted visitors as we entered the gallery.

Here, in La Luz (The Light), she has used a combination of linen and metallic thread to create a shimmering plane of colour and light - the central cross moving in and out of view as you change your position in relation to the weaving

Anni Albers. La Luz. 1947

In the detail here you can see how she carries the metallic thread across the piece so that it appears to be couched on the surface, rather than woven. The subtle colours and the way she uses differing weights and shades of thread enhances the sense of layers of light moving in and out of view

Anni Albers. La Luz. 1947 (detail)

This detail of "Two", which is woven from Linen, cotton and rayon, encapsulates the complexity of her weaving - I kept finding myself thinking "how on earth has she done that?" and wanting to look at the back.

Anni Albers. Two. 1952. Detail

Pasture, felt joyous - the wonderful play of green and orange, with little sparkles of white in counterpoint to the black thread beckoned me to close my eyes and imagine walking through fields of summer flowers.

Anni Albers. Pasture. 1958

Six Prayers, below, was a commission from the Jewish Museum in New York for a memorial to the Jews who had died in the Holocaust. They were beautiful to sit in front of, luminous, meditative, those wandering lines evoking lost journeys but also perhaps, curling plumes of smoke rising into the receiving sky.

Anni Albers. Six Prayers. 1966-7

By the time we had reached these weavings we had both come to the end of our museum feet, so parted ways, Steph going back to the station to catch a train home, and me walking down to the tube station to get a tube to my next destination, Russell Square, where I had booked into a hotel for the night (how very grown up!). This got me close to the British Museum for my exhibition visit the following day, I Am Ashurbanipal. I won't go into detail here; suffice to say it was marvellous, and fed my interest in all things Mesopotamian. But I was, of course, in one of the great museums of the world, and had been looking at weaving, so felt an quick visit to see the Coptic weavings would be a lovely counterpoint to what I had seen the day before. And they were, little snippets of colour and imagery, so fine you could hardly imagine a human hand creating them; so fresh and vibrant and full of delightful detail.

Having marvelled at these, I wandered through to the Mesopotamian and Ancient Levant Galleries, for some sketching and browsing. They are full of marvellous objects, including these curious half human half something entirely other figurines dating from the Middle Bronze Age (2400-2000 BC)

Weary at last with my wanderings, it was time to come home, but not before visiting my favourite image in the downstairs display from Nineveh. This relief of a captive woman bending down to give her child water is such a tender moment amidst all the killing and pillaging. I pay her my respects every time I visit.

You can see more of Anni Albers' weaving here, on the website of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation

An update: busy times

I've just had the pleasure of visiting the Eye of the Needle exhibition at the Ashmolean, and what a pleasure it was. On display were a variety of pieces of 17th Century needlework from the Feller collection. The range of work was delightful, from strip samplers to pictures, boxes, a mirror frame, book covers and items of clothing. There were also some church textiles, with the comment that

"Embroidery and religious practice were closely linked by some authors. Embroidery requires a focused body and mind"

I rather liked that - an early reference to mindfulness perhaps. 

One of the great joys of exhibitions is the opportunity to really see the fineness of the stitching and the way that light falls across the threads, giving the work a life and depth not visible in illustrations. It was very clear from the informative notes that work of this period held a strong moral message about the place of women within society. Themes, ranging from biblical stories and the classics to allegorical pieces, were often designed to reinforce the social expectations of the day: obedience, faithfulness, chastity and hard work.

There was a marvelous variety of techniques on display; stumpwork, needle point, whitework, pulled thread, beadwork and gold work. The way these techniques were combined in some pieces showed the great ingenuity and skill of the women who worked them. The colours in some were still vivid and clear, while others had faded to more delicate hues. The range of materials used was also rich. Along with the traditional grounds and threads of silk or linen, I saw glass beads, sequins, coral, pearls, silver threads and wire and fragments of bird feathers. These were crafted into a wonderful range of images. Flowers of all sorts were abundant, along with a menagerie of curious mythical beasts, butterflies, insects, snails, peacocks and parrots, lions and unicorns, deer and donkeys, dancing dogs, a camel and even a couple of frogs. These kept company with the likes of Abraham and Isaac, Adam and Eve, Ruth and Boaz and allegorical figures representing virtues and vices, many intended to reinforce the expected behaviours of the women who stitched. Above and below these characters there were cheery suns and moons peeping out from behind pastel coloured clouds, soaring birds and diving fishes, along with the occasional angel. I particularly liked an image of a kingfisher with a fish in his beak, and a lumpy toad crouching at the foot of a stumpwork tree.

The samplers were also delightful, some with neatly arranged rows of various techniques, some with a wonderful higgledy piggledy disorder about them. The fineness of this sort of work can only be appreciated by looking closely and the Ashmolean was kind enough to provide magnifying glasses for visitors to enable the stitching to be appreciated to the full. I saw white work, tent stitch, satin stitch, raised chain, detached buttonhole, bullion knots, needleweaving, silk shading, in fact the whole range of techniques available from the period.

One could have spent hours looking at just a couple of the embroideries, so interesting and detailed were they, but an hour and a half was all my legs could stand. I came away with a deeper understanding of the needlework of the period and a delightful menagerie of embroidered beasts in my head, further enhanced by seeing similar images carved above the windows and doors of the wonderful buildings that fill the streets of Oxford. It was a splendid way of spending a Sunday morning and I'd recommend anyone going to Oxford in the next few months to take the time to visit the Ashmolean and discover the delights of this collection. I can also recommend the first volume of the two books about this fabulous collection, it has lovely images of the embroideries and just the right amount of fascinating text. You can preview it here. I'm afraid I've just snaffled the second volume from Amazon at better price than usual, and was amused to notice that one bookseller has their copy for sale for £4,072.93. I suspect a misprint!

In other news, as they say, I've spent the past couple of weeks moving my dear little Aunt Cecil into care and beginning the difficult task of clearing her property. Having put it off for as long as possible her carer and I agreed that she's no longer safe to be left alone on evenings and weekends. It's been a terribly hard thing to do, and the sense of a life being dismantled and distilled down to just one room is strong. I brought her here to be near us two weeks ago, then went up again this week to do some sorting and sifting of "stuff" of which there is a great deal. I felt dreadful delivering her to the care home, however she has taken it all in good spirit and seems very settled in her new abode. She's just five minutes from us, so easy to pop in and see every day and we can take walks by the seaside, eat ice creams together and go on bra buying expeditions to M&S! I have another trip later this month to bring down some of her furniture so she feels more at home in her room.

I've also been in an exhibition! Goodness me! Our Embroiderer's Guild put on a show of recent work in the lovely workshop where Christine teaches me good things. I had two pieces on display (amongst almost seventy), both of which you've seen before

 Uffington, galloping across the Downs

and some magical mushrooms from the workshop we were given by Kay Dennis. I felt rather proud of them once they were mounted and framed. 

I was one of four of us who put up the exhibition. It took six hours in the sweltering heat to display everything properly, extra exhausting for me as I'd been transferring Cecil that week, which involved four gruelling hours, much of it on the motorways, coming home! I entirely failed to take any photos of the exhibition, but if I speak sweetly to our Chairman she might let me share a couple of her photos, so you can see what talented people I was sharing the limelight with. 

knitting and stitching

Yesterday I made the long haul to London to visit the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace. It was a long haul as well, with work on the fast track and the closure of part of the Victoria Line on the Underground, meaning that it was a 4 hour slog from home to sitting with my cheese sandwich on the steps outside, gathering strength to go in and face the hoards! Mind you I had made the effort to walk up from Wood Green station. I figured it was probably the only exercise I'd get for the day!

My first amusement  as I went in, was to find Barbara, who is part of our local Guild, wandering about with a bag full of goodies, trying to drag herself away as she needed to be in Worthing by tea time. We stopped for a chat, she commenting that she has "all these City and Guild students about to start their course, so she had to come and stock up". Rather cheeky, I thought, to use us as her excuse!

It was, as Gina has commented in her delightful (un)grumpy old woman post, hot and crowded, but not unbearably so yesterday. It was only my second visit; perhaps you get used to the overwhelming nature of the show when you're a seasoned visitor but I did find it left me "moithered" as Cecil would say.

As you go in you find yourself in the display area where all sorts of interesting things made by other talented craftspeople are there to inspire. One exhibition that really caught my eye was Nancy Crow's Colour Improvisations. This was a group of large, vibrant quilts, based around that single theme - improvising with  colour . Reminiscent of the Improvisations in so many areas of music, from Jazz to Classical. Take something, work with it, see what happens. Many of the quilts were densely stitched. I noticed how in some cases stitching added colour, contrasting or complementary, building on the fabric beneath like harmonies in music. In others it brought the light and shade of texture into play, giving a sense of movement or density. They were all by contemporary quilt artists from North America and Europe, and I could have looked at them all day, going back and forth between them, preferably standing further away in some cases. I guess on a crowded day, this could have been quite claustrophobic, but yesterday there was enough space to gaze. No photographs were allowed, so I'm afraid I can't show you any.

Other pieces that I really enjoyed, and which I was allowed to photograph, were all from member of the New Embroidery Group's Exhibition "Touching the Earth"

Margaret Mary Griffiths : Will This World Survive?

Liz Holliday : Downland Contours, Box Hill and Devil's Dyke

Downland is a theme I particularly warm to since I love maps; how could one not, having worked in a reference library? And I am a Downland person - not in the sense of having lived within their folds, but they have always been the backdrop of my life, first in Hampshire, now at the other end of the Way.

Veronica Chambers : Sugar Beet Singling. East Cambridgeshire Fens, 1950's

Anna Diamond : My Garden

I did my usual trick of pushing my glasses down my nose to peer closely at the detail in this lovely garden piece

Edel Zollinger : Aurora Borealis

And I long to see the Aurora Borealis one day .....

Having spent time looking and learning and being inspired, I then plunged into the fray that is the marketplace, bedazzled by stalls of every colour and design selling far too many interesting and desirable things to take in, especially as the soles of my feet were beginning to feel a bit jaded. I wandered about, looking at this and that, touching, stroking, peeking, squinting, resisting, getting turned around and around in the strange maze that is these big craft shows and emerging, eventually, back to Palm Court where the door to light and air beckoned.

I finally left at about 4:15 and, yes, it did take almost four hours to get home; and yes, I did spend money on thread and silk, but I tried to be prudent!

On the way home, even London managed to look strangely beautiful as the sun set, glinting from the rails