Studio Progress March/April 2025

I have been thinking about the processes in my work as a series of actions and their opposite response.

 MAKING – UNMAKING

CONSTRUCTION – DECONSTRUCTION

BINDING – UNRAVELLING

STITCHING – UNPICKING

MENDING – TEARING APART

COVERING – UNCOVERING

WIPING ON – WIPING OFF

After reading Victoria Chang’s book of poems, ‘With my back to the world’, I was struck by the annotations in the book relating to the poems. I especially like the grid pattern and replicated this onto canvas using felt tip pen and then embroidered a motif or design onto the grid. I reminded me of repair, of mending, the stitches reaching across both sets of lines and pulling together from one point.

This was a canvas from a previous seminar that I had turned around because I like the staining that they dye had made. There was also stitching around the figure of Penelope which I thought was a good echo to the previous work. I made marks to emulate loose threads and to partly obscure the image. I then attached some hand embroidered flowers from a second hand table cloth I had sourced. I then made some abstract stitched lines around the flowers and used felt tip to outline them like a bunch of flowers. I wanted to play with the feminine ideal of flower embroidery and the irreverent felt pen scribbles. The drips of dye were also a way of recreating those loose threads because the line they make is uncontrolled. I then thought to introduce a grid format with spray paint and masking tape. However, during one of my supervisor meetings, we agreed that there was too much going on and to perhaps cut down the canvas. In the end I did not use this in my final hang but I think some interesting elements were explored.