red catalogne

I blocked red catalogne this week.  

It's a piece I made in 2019 and exhibited in Hard Twist that year.

It was distorted from the repeated wrapping stitch.  

When I showed the piece, I pinned it in two places to the wall and let it take a natural shape.  See here.

wet artwork in a towel

Considering it last week, I thought that I might be able to block it and straighten it out.  (I block almost everything I make these days by washing the textile and then stretching it with pins into a foam design wall. ) 

So....I put the paper and linen cloth into the kitchen sink and ran the tap.

It was risky to put the paper and the linen and the red thread into water.

I wasn't sure if it would work but it did.  It worked.

 

The red thread bled a bit - but that's OK.  So do women.

The paper became a little more frail - but that's OK.  So do people.

The linen cloth responded well to being pulled into shape. 

  

Journal papers couched to a linen tablecloth.

A security blanket for my interior life.

If you are interested in seeing how the piece was made, follow its label, paper catalogne.

space for internal things

I think that things that are inexplicable and outside of your understanding give you space for the internal things that are incomprehensible to you.  They connect you to a more open construction of the world, or meaning of the world.  Less daily concerns.

Kiki Smith

my truest self

 

I found embroidery was like a prayer.  It brought me in touch with my spiritual self, my truest self, and connected me to a power beyond.    Ranjith Raman

authenticity

notebook paper stitched with red thread to old table cloth

the electric heat is on

negative 30 degrees celsius

understanding develops through imagination

 

people learn through the things they make

there is a rhythm between problem solving and problem finding

Richard Sennett   The Craftsman

visions

Hildegarde of Bingen had visions in childhood and entered the convent at age 7.
Her work: Scivias, begun in 1142 documented  26 of her visions.
Barbara Newman identifies Hildegarde as the first Christian thinker to deal seriously and positively with the idea of the feminine.
A female mysticism.

the above text is from a page from one of my notebooks (1999) that is now cut up and is being stitched to the black wool in the photo.  The idea to do this came to me in a dream.

These two cloths: part of my ongoing body of work dealing with my journals.

Catalogne

 

the catalogne

quebec textile tradition of bed spreads / carpets/ woven from strips of recycled fabric, cotton warp

French Canadian

3 million immigrants came to Canada between 1896 and 1914.  for many, easily portable textiles were the only reminders they would bring with them from home.