Up scaling work from the hand-bound book overlays using a domestic printer and adobe acrobat to tile print the images. The smallest images in the photgraph below are A4, the middle image is ink on paper, a fragment drawn freehand, from the page that was then scaled up in the printing process.
Using a scrap length of muslin, the cloth I favour due to its transparency, I taped to the largest image and utilised various colour markers to trace out the different fractured patterns. This is prep of density embroidery testing.
embroidery
04/11/2017 - Task 2 - FFF - FORM - Making Day 1
It had been a long day. The full moon was working it magic and my week had been pretty emotionally intense. I had spent the day at my reading and critique group (11am-6pm), discussing decolonising archival research, dealing with a lot of heavy imagery and discussing the way images are read by different viewers. This had sat wieghty on my shoulders due to my own personal situations. It was my turn for a critique as well, and unfortunately I allowed the emotive discussion of the morning to unnecessarily penetrate in to my presentation, muddying the work, its context and therefore, my feedback. Meh!
I came to the making session exhausted but eager to drop off the day and work.
I chose to explore ways to create a partition type structure using my fractured geometries.
The first piece I sketched the broken pattern on to a piece of muslin, used a running stitch and began gathering the parts.
I quickly dropped this as the pattern was completely lost and not what I was looking for. It felt wrong and not clean enough.
Revisiting an embroidery piece I had started previously I thought of a way to create the interlocking aspect of the chain stitch, while maintaining the transparency. I'm think about the ways to keep the delicate nature of the embroidery while up-scaling. using larger threads such a roving doesn't feel like an option as it would remove the delicate nature.
I cut a small flat card loom as quickly as I could from the pieces of scrap mount board on my desk and proceeded to warp in with the same strong embroidery cotton I had been using on the stitched pieces.
Laying the geometry underneath the warp I proceeded to experiment with a tapestry rendering of the pattern. Using a Sumac tapestry stitch, which was repeated on top to give the look of the original chain stitch. Once I have completed the weaving/tapestry I will remove it from the loom and capture the top and bottom of the piece between supports so I can manipulate it in to a maquette of a space.
I felt a tad frustrated at the end of the session to see how fruit full other participants had been. However I was quick to realise that the nature of my process is that large gains come over repeated processing days and to accept that as it is.
I think in future I may chose different materials to produce with on making days, in order to allow for greater discussion of the piece, although the reality is that it would depend on whether that is actually relevant to the work I'm producing at the time. Perhaps it is best to leave that decision open.
The feedback I received was really useful and informative. The words and text from the chat box are below:
intertwined, soft geometry(?), linked
disappearing, time, layers, materiality
Layered, ephemeral structurer
enlarge, 2/3 dimensional, different materials
Structure
thread as building material
powerful, jagged, delicate
Maybe knitted tubes, padded? would still have small stitch detail Fractals
and what about colour Katie?
- Colour is an interesting point. using the lack of colour to stop any extra reading to happen to the work, so it is just about the textures and patterns. HOWEVER, since undertaking some readings on decolonizing archive and how research has been previously preformed I am questioning if white is the colour most appropriate and if it could be read as a form of 'white-washing', whether my genres of 'white, female, British, expatriate' are read from the work, either consciously or unconsciously.