Layers of Meaning
commentary on design, fiber art, & modern embroidery from Serena Fenton
Texture and depth is what keeps bringing me back to textiles when I start to wonder why not just do paintings (painting being much quicker, after all). These sumptuous works by Mary Ruth Smith bring it all back to me as to what fiber can do that nothing else can: exquisite color combined with the mottling, shading and movement of light that only comes from the dimensionality of fiber. The blurb for Smith's exhibit reads: "As a textile artist working from a formalist approach Mary Ruth Smith relates traditional embroidery techniques to contemporary thematic concerns in a compacted, overlaid process, refining stitches and French knots into intricate works reminiscent of Byzantine mosaics."
More of her works can be found on the embroidery guild web site and at Mobilia Gallery.
image: "Tribulation" by Mary Ruth Smith; 10" X 10"; Compacted & overlaid French knots; thread
How to show the unviewable (and unknowable) has been one of the obsession of man since the beginning. Early religions dealt with the notion of representing God by dividing him up into aspects and then creating earthly representations of those aspects. These could be made into statues, paintings, mosaics and worshipped as if it were the genuine article.
Most modern religions refrain from depicting God. Perhaps man has finally gotten clever enough to acknowledge when a concept is too immense to be dealt with in one image.
The exception to this, however, is the portrayal of Christ. Since Jesus was God-made-man, he should be able to be depicted (in theory, anyhow). For at least 1700 years, people have been doing just that. Prior to that, they were content to use the the fish symbol. Perhaps they should have just stuck with fishes, because every portrayal of Christ has to deal with some skeptic saying, "do you think he really looked like that?"
A recent New York Times article looks at the latest portrayal of divinity, Mel Gibson's "The Passion of Christ", which features Jesus-as-hunk. The article states: "archaeological evidence that the average man of Jesus' day was about 5 feet 3 inches tall and a bantamlike 110 pounds. Given the harsh conditions, especially for working stiffs like the members of Jesus' family, combined with Jesus' ascetic lifestyle, which included walking everywhere, scholars agree that he was most likely a rather sinewy peasant, as tough as a root and about as appealing." Hmmm. The article goes on to give a fascinating overview of how we have remade Christ's imagery to fit our moods for all these thousands of years. It offers some insight into our gods and our notions of what is god-like appearance, as well as some paintings based on archeological evidence. It would seem that the root of the issue though might not be "Did Jesus have blue eyes", but rather how does one capture the immensity of divinity in without being abstract?
The First Elegy by Rainier Maria Rilke
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies?
and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every angel is terrifying....
Woman's lives and issues are humorously depicted in beaded paintings by Chicago artist, Colleen O'Rourke. Working with seed beads (available in a limited color palette), O'Rourke has created a series of frozen moments of conflict and reflections. Dishin the Dirt depicts a lively gossip scene of women friends. Cornered portrays a mother and young child backed into a place of no escape. Family Bed depicts a contented family, complete with dog, cat, parents and several children all piled into bed. Rooftop is a evening party of friends, drinking beer and jamming musicians.
O'Rourke's style is flattened and graphic. The bead medium, with its hard edged colors dos not allow for much surface modelling. These small works could perhaps bear a kinship to the Roman mosaics, where daily life remains frozen in time. In Pompeii, the dogs bite; in O'Rourke's world, are there lingering dangers, or just modern apathy?
image: The Gramma's Tea Party by Colleen O'Rourke
Mary Bero creates small embroideries and slightly larger prints. A description of her work at Kevin Quandt Fine Art (and also at Kelly Rae Theiss Gallery) says it all: "The reason one is drawn to her tightly constructed and highly stylized work is that she has the power to pull them off. They are tribal, urban, and indiginious, they have the look and feel of relics that were from a time past, but once view up close one realizes that the are too surreal to be from any other time but the present. Her work combines paper, thread, and cloth together and separately, they present worlds of calm and schizophrenia meshed together. Bero's work can be broken down by subject matter into three group: portraits of faces resembling tribal mask, surreal landscapes, and works combining both."
A handout from Mobilia Gallery has a wonderful quote from Bero: "Her work relies a great deal on intuition and spontaneity: 'Mistakes are my greatest inspiration.'"
Access Art in the U.K. has produced a series of online art workshops for teachers and learners. Right now I am working my way through the Draw! unit. The first part asks the learner to think about what drawing is (and isn't). "What is a drawing? At its most basic, a drawing is nothing more than a series of marks made on a surface by one human being, which another human being can understand.... Believing what you see. Drawing is about forgetting what you think you know, and believing what you see. Never assume you know what the thing you are going to draw looks like. Take your time before you begin to draw, and make sure you are really looking - try seeing the object as if for the first time."
Then the tutorial moves on to some intriguing exercises for the practice of drawing: "To get round the worry of the white page, give yourself something else to think about. Set some restrictions on your drawing. Make a number of drawings of the same object using different restrictions, i.e. "I'll only make calm marks" "I'll only use angry marks", "I'll only use four lines". Work with extremes!" I like the idea of just making marks that express my mood. I spend far too much time worrying about depicting visual reality - time for some emotion!
Ever wonder who picks the colors for everything? Or names them? Every June, Graphic Arts magazine reports the color forecasts for the upcoming year. The colors to the right are their forecast for the fashion colors for spring 2004. Those are not my vision of colors that scream "spring fashions!! Easter bonnets!"
These color forecasts aren't just restricted to clothing. The industry predicts colors for cars, home furnishings, school notebooks - anything that comes in a color. These predictions come from several places, but the most influential color forecasters are The Pantone Institute, The Color Marketing Group, and The Color Association of the United States.
The Color Association of America offers national meeting and seminars to discuss color related issues. Meeting notes from their fall 2003 meeting:
"Topics that elicited the most comments were the role of texture in replacing or accentuating color; aquamarine or 'mist' green-blue as the color of the future; the aesthetic of 'white' and 'clean'; dealing with the perception of color as an indulgence; and the impact of plastic and candy colors on American culture.
The second day of the symposium focused on effective color presentations. To illustrate, the Color Association staff reviewed the past 90 years of the Association's forecasts and presented innovative new formats for paper, fabric, yarn and photographs. Working in teams, the attendees then had a chance to evolve their own presentations based on fun topics that included creating a pet line of animal day beds, an eco-friendly drink and a line of guitar straps."
I am simultaneously repelled and intrigued by this commercialization of color. I am also pondering, as an artist, and as a crafts-person, how involved I should be in this societal investigation of color. Seems like, at the least, artists should be aware to check ourselves for the authenticity of our vision against the pressure from the commercial color palette.
LoM's Edouard Benedictus gallery features textile and wallpaper designs by a French designer and print maker. Benedictus worked in the Art Deco style, using the pochoir technique. Benedictus' fabrics are still in production, as are Benedictus carpets. His work continues to inspire others. There is a Benedictus wallpaper print in the background of this image: Chesterton in the City, by Lesley Anne Ivory. Art Quilter, Rose Rushbrooke has created an art quilt based on a Benedictus design.
More on the pochoir technique: "Pochoir Technique: The pochoir process is the hand-coloring of an individual black outline prints. The was done with the help of a thin zinc or copper cut-out stencil guide. Each color is applied separately brushed by hand on each print, one stencil for each color. The paint used was watercolor and gouache. The only difference being watercolor paints (aquarelles) are transparent and gouache paints are opaque."
The Seguy gallery has been updated, with more images.
I am beginning a new feature: a gallery of out-of-copyright images that are relevant or inspirational to fiber artists. Needless to say, because of the copyright issues, these will be older / antique / historic images (or possibly some from the Library of Congress collections.)
Pochoir prints by E.A. Seguy is the first gallery of these works. Have a look and check back. I hope to add more.
Also: I know the green on the first page is a bit much, but right now I have not been able to override they system default with anything that is more appealing (though I did find several worse schemes). The software is an open source product called Gallery, running on ibiblio's Linux servers. It's a very cool product and pretty easy to install and manage!
The Cooper-Hewitt Museum has mounted an online exhibition of their pochoir prints.
"The pochoir process, characterized by its crisp lines and brilliant colors, produces images that have a freshly printed or wet appearance...
Pochoir is a refined stencil-based technique employed to create prints or to add color to pre-existing prints. It was most popular from the late 19th century through the 1930's with its center of activity in Paris. Pochoir was primarily used to create prints devoted to fashion, patterns, and architectural design and is most often associated with Art Nouveau and Art Deco."
The Patterns section of the exhibit features images that "created to inspire primarily fabric, interior and wallpaper designers."
Mathematician and quilter/knitter Pat Ashforth has created a textile piece based on a mathematical conundrum: "It depicts a square divided into the smallest known number of different squares which will fit together to make a square". The creation of the shape may be mathematical, but her color use is artistry.
I am no mathematician, so I looked up the history of this puzzle, and found a number of fascinating resources, which are all surprisingly attractive. Perhaps it is one of those 'harmonies of the spheres' events, where the mathematical proportions are inherently pleasing to nature and the human eye.
* Mathworld has a definition of this process that was the clearest to me - and related it to quilting: "A square which can be dissected into a number of smaller squares with no two equal is called a perfect square dissection (or a squared square). Square dissections in which the squares need not be different sizes are called Mrs. Perkins's quilts." (note: this link has 21 types of Mrs. Perkins Quilts).
Some historic tidbits: "In 1936, four students at Trinity College considered the problem of cutting up a rectangle into squares of unequal size (no two alike)."
The ultimate site is devoted solely to squared squares and rectangles: www.squaring.net "This website has been designed to bring together for reference and display, many of the tilings of squared squares and squared rectangles which have been discovered over the last hundred years, up until recent times." If you browse the folders on the left, there are links to interactive square drawing web applets. Choosing 'image8' will generate op art (psychedelic?) results! see below
image(above right): Square Deal by Pat Ashforth
image (left): perfect squared square; order 21;1 generated at www.squaring.net
Piecing curves is a challenge. I can put a sleeve into a shirt with only a few struggles, but a shirt sleeve is a 3D sculptural shape. The curve is not supposed to lie flat. Pieced curves for a quilt are supposed to lie flat - really flat.
Alison Schwabe has created a handout with great illustrations (for those of us who are verbally impaired) that shows and describes how to create an obedient pieced curve. Schwabe's advice for my curves: "If you end up with a mini-mountain-range or a thing looking like a bra, you have sewn the wrong edges together – absolutely, so unpick and go back to find the right piece to go with the one on which you’re working."
Here's hoping for a non-sculptural curve.
image: Alison Schwabe; handout on piecing curves
Right now I am working on a series of landscapes using thread painting. That's from my sketchbook (left). I'm trying to extend a painterly vision into a new realm. This has me struggling with the basics: how to create a realistic landscape within a hard-edged medium. To be specific: how to get the distant hills to move into the background and stay there (where they belong!) and at the same time, how to create some crisp edges (my piece is looking a bit mushy)
The Smithsonian has two resources:
first - a tutorial on landscape painting that they created for use in the classroom. (see below)
second - a virtual tour through American landscapes, giving lots of insight of how these principles are applied.
From Landscape Painting: Artists Who Love the Land
1. A winding path.
A path or river that winds through the landscape from foreground to background can make us believe that the picture describes a deep space.
2. Changes in size.
A tree that is close to us appears much larger than a tree of the same size that is far away.
3. Overlap.
A boulder that is close to us overlaps and partially hides a much larger cliff behind it.
4. Changes in clarity.
A distant mountain range appears more hazy and less distinct than a mountain that is closer.
5.Diagonal composition.
Land that moves away from us on the diagonal appears to move back into space.
Jane Burch Cochran is a quilter who has brought together several backgrounds and influences to create her art quilts. Of her piece, Winged Victory (right), Cochran states "At 21, I visited the Louvre and will always remember the 'winged victory' in a stair alcove. Connie Iskin gave me the old, white organdy dress. I envisioned a winged victory figure with wings made from gloves." The quilt includes: old organdy dress, gloves, old embroidery, handkerchief, embroidered roses, various fabric, beads, buttons, sequins, paint, glitter. All of this is brought together with saying of women's victories in the over the past few decades.
Cochran further enhances her art by adding 'found objects' that have a personal connection: a glove from a grandmother; buttons from a friend. The pieces tie together in an evocative richness.
image: Winged Victory by Jane Burch Cochran
Chiaroscuro is the variation of light to dark across the surface of anything. Here are two definitions of the word:
1 - "In conventional artwriting, chiaroscuro means merely modelling a form, as in a shaded drawing, in terms of light (clear=chiaro) and dark (obscure=scuro). As such, chiaroscuro is a generic term and does not describe a particular manner of modelling." Words of Art
2 - "In order to understand thoroughly the meaning of this word, we must know that claro implies not only any thing exposed to a direct light, but also all such colours as are luminous in their natures; and obscura all the colours which are naturally brown ... deep velvets, brown stuffs a black horse, polished armor, and the like, which preserve their natural or apparent obscurity in any light whatever." Oxford Companion to Art
The second definition reveals the heart of chiaroscuro. It is the movement from clarity into obscurity. Things are revealed and then hidden. Vermeer has created a world where everyday life is revealed and then hidden. Georges de la Tour's The Repentant Magdalene embodies this revealing and falling away, as does the LaTour to the left.
In fiber, we tend to create more graphical worlds where objects are very flat, abstract and two dimensional. Faith Ringgold brings the two worlds together by painting on her fabric before she quilts it, but it's not a world where objects are hidden and revealed. Are there quilters who fully utilize the drama of chiaroscuro?