Phenomenology

Braiding is produced by crossing three or more strands in various zig zag ways so that the warp becomes the weft and vice versa. 

Weaving uses warp and weft as distinct and separate elements.  

Braiding can also be referred to as inter-lacing or inter-twining. 

Maurice Merleau Ponty believes that the body-subject is really two-fold.  The seer can be seen, the touché can be touched and therefore, crossing and reversing takes place al the time.  

At the same time, we are seeing and sensing. 

Merleau Ponty braids self/others/world into one thick texture. 

‘ the flesh of the world ‘

 

erotic

For me, working with textile is erotic rather than analytic.

Eros rather than Logos.

I respond to materials and the sensuousness of them. 

I respond to the emotions they bring out in me.

I love making them

It is my passion.

It's a valid way to be an artist and to be a human.

Led by love and emotion and not thought.  Not so much thought.

xo

grid

What is seen as repetitive, obsessive, compulsive, in women’s art is in fact a necessity for those whose time comes in small squares.  

Lucy Lippard

Also, there is a symbol of renewal of life in the use of discarded materials.      L.L.

Story or Poem

 

A story applies to a definite period of time. 

A poem is about the unchanging, the universal. 

Time destroys the beauty and use of the story.

Time augments the eternal truth of the poem. 

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.

protection cloth

 A long time ago I read that mothers placed their babies on black and white cloths when they were put down in the ground or the floor.  A grid or a zigzag pattern of black and white confuses the dark spirits who might live beneath us.  The cloth is a protection device.  

I’ve held onto this idea for years.  It’s time to make a protection baby play cloth.  I need to do it.  I am loving the doing of it.  My love is in this grid and my grandmother strength and determination are in this cloth.  Making something that grows larger and stronger with every step along the way, makes me feel stronger and somehow safer.  

her mermaids

 The idea came to me to use black and white grids in the floor quilt I’m making for the twins and to use white with black dot fabric in all the bias bindings for the wee flanelette padded cloths.