Cloth marked by time: faded by sun and weather, consumed by small insects, flecked with tree residue – all provide starting points graphically, as well as contributing meaning. Accept or reject? Mend, or emphasize ragged edges? It’s a matter of entering into a dialogue with the imperfect. Unlike the blank sheet of paper for the writer, or the perfect white canvas for the artist, time-marks are there as a beginning for a conversation.
Wood Remembers Tree
(Tree Traces 1)
Size 16″ x 16″, 2023
The marks of time and nature can be the starting point
Weather and small creatures marked this square of silk noil. Placed between two sawed logs set vertically, the missing parts follow the edges of the logs as the cloth shifted over weeks. Stitched circles follow frayed places to make profiles whole. Tattered areas, supported on the left with a print of lumber, and on the right, with dyed silk organza, sun and tree canopy colors showing through.
Currently traveling with the SAQA Global Exhibition Abstraction: Textural Elements, SOLD.
Detail
Tree Traces 2
Size 20″x 20″, 2024
The idea of mending is becoming an interest again,
the act of making whole with patient stitches
Arcs repeated, arcs closed, joined in a circle. Baroque edges of the missing parts, whispers of fiber suggest fingers of land at the edges. Mending follows the right angles of the woven fabric, filling a gap. Darkened areas suggest the ghost of a tree, probably an oak. In memorium.
Detail
Work in Process, showing stitch patterns on back.
These are often interesting to makers of stitched work, but are typically not accessible to view.
handwork
Hand stitching cloth. My mother did beautifully crafted embroidered pictures. Until several years before my retirement, it never occurred to me to follow her example. The urge to have cloth in my hands, with thread and needle, caught me by surprise. So I made small abstract compositions incorporating colored bags from grocery store produce, mailing wrappers, bits of screen wire and other oddments. Thread as a mark-making tool remains deeply engaging: a line that’s three dimensional, can be picked up, become a field of texture, be wadded into chaos, then stitched down in a way that suggests intention….
Autumn
Size 16″ x 20″, 2021
The boisterous colors of fall, leaves making
random collages – an ephemeral party thrown by trees
A cyanotype base for sky, the shadows of leaves, sticks, flowers, fern – most of our trees making an appearance. Individuals, each wearing unfamiliar dress – organza, machine and hand stitching in colors that remember their brightest peak colors. Dyed silk frame.
Details
Milkweed
Size 17″ x 13″, 2020
The interiors of dried milkweed pods rival
the colors of conch shells from the beach
The exterior starts as a plump, bristly green thing, but dries to a softly textured gray, like light pewter. Interiors are a surprise: a gentle peachy orange, and shades of warm pinks lightening into soft golds. A joy to draw, this sketch turned into a linocut, for a kind of block printing on fabric.
Detail of work in progress
