tendercollector

[tendercollector]

I don’t think that I have ever worked on the same piece for six weeks straight. The length of the project didn’t wear on me like I had expected it to. In fact, I wish that I had more time to dive deeper into the work. While making the quilt, I became totally hooked on that process. When it was time to start embroidering, I wasn’t ready to relinquish the process/mindset of quilting. Now that I’ve “finished” the quilt top, I find that I am dragging my heels to finish the embroidered part. There are so many variations (quilt patterns and embroidery stitches) to learn, it feels frustrating to stop now.

Going into this project, I was convinced that I would end up with a finished, usable quilt. I have a quilt top. It will stay that way for awhile, if not forever. I have a hard time viewing it as an everyday object.

There are a couple things that I’ve struggled with throughout this process:

1.)How do I maneuver through the lines of fine art, craft, and decoration? After having a conversation with a friend, I realized that I don’t want to be having conversations about how my work fits into the worlds of fine art/craft/decoration. Isn’t all fine art decoration to some degree? I have to learn how to steer around that conversation and towards a conversation that is more meaningful to me and the advancement of my work. Fabric and thread are just the substrates that I happen to use.

2.)What is the meaning behind my work? Sometimes, I get so caught up in mastering a process that the imagery that I use in the process is second. The imagery can lack a clear meaning. Maybe, I should let that go a little bit. I just need to trust my gut and make what feels right.

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progress on Goat Mommy, should have worked more on it this week, spent more time reading instead. 

images below are by Joyce Kozloff, her work references decoration/quilts/tiles/craft. 

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the quilt top is 99% done 

I’ve started to work on the embroidery that will go in the middle of the quilt. I’m pulling images from the original Goat Mommy print and fleshing the scene out with images/symbols/patterns from other places. I had left the bottom portion of the image unresolved, but after reading the New York Times piece on the restoration of the Ghent altarpiece, I am thinking about referencing medieval sacrificial imagery. 

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After my post last week I decided to take the quilt I had made apart. This is my first time ever making a quilt (in a serious way) and the way I had started to piece it together was CHAOTIC. It was also boring to look at. 

I figured that I wanted to have the quilt look nice/delicate and the embroidery (which might not get totally done by the end of FWT) be more violent/chaotic. I am looking at the collections of The Public Domain Review for inspiration. I find it’s running parallel to The Museum of Jurassic Technology. 

The quilt top will be done in a day or two and then I’ll move onto embroidery. 

Here’s a link to a short documentary on the women of Gee’s Bend. 

I’ve been reading about how traditionally embroidery wasn't done by some solitary princess in a tower waiting for her prince charming. It was, like quilting, done by a group of women. But now, here I am, doing it alone...How can the work that I’m doing be in conversation with the greater world when it’s made in solitude?

[tendercollector]

Hi, here’s what my week has looked like. I’ve had a slow start in terms of actually making anything (I will talk about what I have made in a minute). I spent the past week in San Francisco looking at art and reading. The first image is the sculpture “Tallus Mater (Madre Tallo/Stem Mother)” by Ana Mendieta. The second is a flat sculpture “can the circle be unbroken 2″ by Duane Linklater. Both are on display at SFMOMA right now. 

The next image is of one of the books I’m reading right now. It’s a written exploration of the artist project The Museum of Jurassic Technology, which is located in Culver City, CA. While the museum has many different exhibits, it’s main objective is to have its guests leave with a sense of wonder and confusion, at least in my mind. 

The group of images below the book are all things that I’m looking at and thinking about embroidering onto the quilt. At the end of this past term, I had talked about wanting to explore Goat Mommy more. I’ve been thinking that this quilt might be a way to dive more deeply into who she is, what she represents, and how to best represent her. The gnarled thing next to Goat Mommy is a growth from a blueberry bush called a witches broom. Witches brooms are a symptom of a fungus that causes a plant to grow rapidly in a particular place. It’s a bit more completed than that, but I’m not sure how to put it into words. Although, there is an explanation for why the witches broom happens, it still confounds me...It’s also got me thinking about how Goat Mommy might wrap herself in overgrowth to protect herself. The image of the sun is another symbol that I’m looking at in relationship to G.M. Traditionally, the moon is often associated with women and female deities. I have been thinking about her more as a war god (hence the sun), as well as a nurturing/agricultural god (the sun is needed for growing crops). 

I think that I am using Goat Mommy to process my own confusion about being a young woman right now...I don’t want to be making work about gender/feminism, though. I am working with materials that are traditionally used by women, not because I am a woman. ...I need to stop writing about this right now because I feel very confused, but I would like you all to know that this a conversation that I am having with myself. 

The last images are of the beginning of the quilt. I would like to get the quilting part done in the next week so that I can spend the rest of my time embroidering and assembling the quilt. 

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Reading list

The Subversive Stitch Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine by Rozsika Parker Thinking Through Craft By Glenn Adamson Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern Catalogue

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Guo Fengyi 郭凤怡, China in four seasons 2009, Long March Space 北京

“Guo Fengyi (1942-2010, Xi'an, China) is a self-trained female artist whose artistic practice articulates a particular journey of spiritual and metaphysical significance, belonging to an older generation whose embrace of Chinese folk culture imparts a unique knowledge of history, myth and mystery. Her works on paper are composed of finely controlled brushwork that blend and weave into a composition of lustrous images; suggestions of both human figure and otherworldly beings.”

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MOROCCO. Marrakech. Royal marriage. 1987. Saharawi women.

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A herd of marked sheep is readied to be shipped to Colombia, James L. Stanfield.

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Poor, tortured heart. c.1450-1500

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Karin Kneffel (German, b. 1957), Ohne Titel, 2006. Watercolour on laid paper, 20.5 x 20.5 cm.

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Peter Doig (British, b. 1959), Jetty, 1994. Oil on canvas, 200 x 250 cm.

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Golshifteh Farahani in I’ll Kill You If You Die by Huner Saleem

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Edmund Dulac - The Dreamer of Dreams, 1915.