In the frame

Out to lunch

Continuing my thoughts about scale - I have been concentrating on the small end particularly in my work. Scale of course comes into the design, but once that is solved (more or less) the question of framing pops up.

I use acrylic frames (see pic above): the base is like the inverted base of a box, so that the empty side faces the wall and the work sits on a platform a little off the wall. And then the top fits over all of that, like the top of a shallow box, and is screwed to the base in the middle of each side. I like these frames because they protect the work without fencing it in, and they square up the inevitable odd shape which the stitching produces. This kind of frame also takes depth well.

So, in my mind's eye, the tiny pieces would be similarly framed. Then my first frame arrived and suddenly I realised that I should have thought more about the framing rather than just assuming a continuation. For a start there is a minimum price for the individually made frames, and the tiny pieces start becoming uneconomic for their size (I could have had a piece four times the size framed for the same price). Also, as mentioned in my previous post, the screws now look out of scale with the figures and stitching of the piece itself.

I forgot the principle which John Hicks, an excellent teacher expounded to me: the design of a piece of art must include its presentation. So, coincidentally with the West Country Buddha, I am thinking about framing. The most beautifully framed small pieces I have seen recently were those of Judith James at the Festival of Quilts 2006. (please excuse my dreadful snaps - they are just taken as a reminder) The piece of work was floated somehow, set in an open 'tray' of painted wood. Or as in the second photo, set on a stretched mount which was then set in the tray of wood.Dorothy Caldwell also had beautiful small pieces which looked as if they were floating on the wall. The unframed pieces were set on a layer of felt which was marginally smaller than the piece, and that was I think on batons of wood to hang on the wall. The picture below is of three separate pieces.
Pauline Burbidge sells small pieces which she calls Stitch drawings. She says that they should simply be stuck on the wall unframed, with picture pins, but I'm afraid that this looked inadequately complete when I saw them in Birmingham this year. They did not lie flat, nor float elegantly like Dorothy Caldwell's.

Some textiles are conventionally framed or stretched like paintings, such as the work of Ruth Singer, as seen in the flikr photos down the side of her blog. And others have frames which are part of the artwork, like the glass encasings of Carole Waller's painted silk.
I'm still thinking about what I want to do.

The subject of scale

has presented itself to my brain in enough ways recently for me to start thinking about it largely - or in detail. I have been looking at Henry Moore's textile designs in a late birthday present book I was given the other day. The patterns are shown in photographs of different scales, and once more I am struck by how Moore's work seems to be effective in any size. The maquettes I saw in his workshops were just as powerful as the vast bronzes outside in the fields. (See my post of 10 December '07 on my visit to his studio.)

It is not always so, and I have been thinking about the importance of scale in many works, and how artists have dealt with the needs of changes in scale. I remember first thinking seriously about scale when I read about Michelangelo's problems with his Pieta. Mary had to be made so very much larger than she would normally be in order to support the body of Christ. The marvel of the sculpture is that it's not immediately obvious. From the sublime to the ridiculous: I've been thinking about scale in relation to my frames too. I have just completed a tiny piece - a miniature for which I ordered a frame which arrived yesterday. The screws which normally are not noticeable at all in frames for pieces about A4 size or larger suddenly leap out at me, threatening to overwhelm the piece. So, if I continue to make tiny pieces - which are so lovely for me because I can finish them relatively quickly - I think I'm going to have to rethink their presentation. Sigh.

Antoher reason I enjoy making small pieces is that I delight in making teeny stitches. Coincidentally I have been looking on the Internet at small pieces being made in textiles, either because it is that time of year, or because small is in the air - and like the screws of my frame it is amazing how often stitch can look out of kilter, too large, no longer a delicate mark tracing a contour but almost clumsily obvious.

I wonder about scale of impact too. I once bought a Francis Bacon poster, but never put it up on the wall. I feel a visceral connection with FB's work. I could visit it daily, and therefore the purchase of the poster. However, once in a modest dwelling it became too powerful. It moved from attic to attic with us, and eventually, damaged, it was discarded with real regret. This has been a powerful lesson for my own work which I always intend for daily domestic viewing. I want the work to be able to fade away into the background when not gazed at, but perhaps to surprise, sometimes catching a passing glance and revealing something new as well as familiar when looked at.

Dolled up

All around the shops are highlighting their Christmas goods. Of course this year we are also supposed to spend in order to keep people in jobs and the economy going round. Friends who are makers have sent invitations to their seasonal open studios - other friends with open studios just past have actually reported high sales this year. I am very happy for them, but cannot at all raise any enthusiasm for acquiring anything myself. I never cease to desire books to read, and from time to time a piece of art - but otherwise my concern these days is with appropriately disposing of stuff.
Tastes change so. In the attic I have boxes packed with lovely pieces that my parents in law brought back from Africa in the 50s. There are boxes of bits from parts of Eastern Europe which I've inherited from various Greek relatives. And there is so much stuff which I amassed when I was a child.One such collection consists of Greek costume dolls. On the whole they are pristine, mostly because they are presents I never really wanted in the first place, and so they were kept in a cupboard. Now trying to find a good home for them is proving difficult. I find it impossible at this stage just to throw them away, and they are essentially worthless if sold through ebay (besides, I have a peculiar aversion to the idea of using ebay - I don't know why). They look so much better than the currently available costume dolls, but who wants such things these days. They are neither cheerful tat, nor valuable. Everyone I have asked has said that they are too lovely for me to give away - in other words, no thank you.
I tried to think of a way in which I could use them in a work of art - but that just isn't me. But maybe there is a textile artist out there who would like to make something with them. If anyone out there wants the ones pictured for artistic purposes let me know. The only contribution I will ask is towards postage, and then a photo to show them in their new home.

Exciting input

preliminary design for possible quilt form made from scan of pastel collage then drawn on digitally...
done when waiting to hear about applications

Today we went out west to Taunton to see an exhibition of prints by Simon Ripley. They were tremendous - glorious in real life, and very exciting for me. I have been thinking about prints for some considerable time in one way or another, and am going to try some explorations.

The accompanying exhibition was a complete bonus: Mike Rennie's assemblages of engineering detritus are not done justice in the one photograph, and I have not immediately been able track down any others through Google. The works have a considered beauty which speaks of precision engineering, paying homage to the bits and pieces he has assembled. It is wonderful, and the best non-Rauschenberg assembling I've ever seen.

So that was a shot in the arm for my floating collage thoughts. I am certainly not going to run out of ideas for approaches!

All at sea

Swimmer 2003

I find it interesting that although we humans live on land, it is the sea which provides me with most of my metaphors for life. The behaviour of waves, and interaction with them are such vivid descriptions of how I am feeling at any particular time.

Over summer and then into autumn I have felt increasingly out of my depth, pulled down with breakers crashing over me till the undertow pulled away any pretense I had at steering myself. The temptation comes to just go with the flow, of course, and sink.

Return 2002

But with the help of other swimmers an effort was made, and somehow miraculously the relationship changed. I now feel not only in control, but am surfing the breakers - not standing, but up there, moving forward, not tempting those darling Fates too much, ... and looking at trying new approaches to my work.

I was rejected recently by a quilt group, saying that I would probably be happier in a different kind of group. I had been at a crossroads, and was hoping that membership would focus my work in a particular direction. Now, I see that they have liberated me to look at my possibilities from different and broader perspectives, and to do what Paula Rego suggested in the short film I mentioned in a recent post: to let the work show me the way. I had been grasping at a defined and perhaps personally too constricting a medium to pull me through when a much more reliable solution is to create the vehicle appropriate to oneself.

In order to allow the work to speak I'm widening my acquaintance with it. I don't want to leap about trying this that and t'other, but to pursue a kind of linked widening spiral of exploration. I have started by 'playing' in a practical way: by concentrating on recycling - materials, techniques, and ideas. And by being determined to use up stuff which has been hanging around for decades in some cases. This is occupying the front burners while allowing the back burners to boil up a storm.

I have not had such a buzz in my brain for some considerable time, and the interesting consequence is that this effort with hands and legs and brains splashing about has diminished to manageable proportions the effect of my ever-present emotional undertow.

Magnificent treasure - cast to the wind

embroidered bag from Sheila Paine's collection

One of the marvels of humanity is the desire to learn, and beyond that to show to others what we have found out. Institutions like public museums and art galleries are wealth beyond reckoning. And behind the collections within those institutions are the individual collectors. Each and every one of us should be eternally grateful for these obsessed, single minded folks who make it so easy for us to wander in and look so casually at the magnificent treasure they have gathered - so often with great difficulty.

Sheila Paine is one such individual who has collected such a magnificent wealth of embroidered treasure. The second of the auctions of her work is to take place on 11 November - just looking at the catalogue can excite and inspire. It is a tragedy that such a valuable collection has to be broken up - so sad that this country does not have an institution dedicated to textiles. Textiles such as those collected by Sheila Paine are one of the few means of recording the rich culture of ordinary folk rather than the pomp of kings.

The viewing days this week will be the last chance to see these beautiful pieces together - unless a good fairy buys the lot to save it for all of us.