Red Thread Studio: Slow Cloth, New Cloth, Art Cloth

Silk Throw and Mini-Mood-Boards

There isn't a whole lot of art happening in my life at the moment, but I did manage to finish a gift project this weekend -- one of the silk throws I mentioned forever ago. The idea of fringe went by the wayside in favor of a very simple and minimal row of pearl nuggets stitched onto each side. The silk velvet proved true to its reputation -- hard to work with but so incredibly soft and seductive. The challenge is that the silk velvet has a loose weave and a tendency to "grow" while the silk dupioni does not, so you end up with more fabric on one side than the other no matter how carefully you've cut.

I think a take-no-prisoners approach to staystitching on the velvet might help, and I'll try that on the next one. This one is for my friend Angela and her new husband, who live in Germany. Angela is an expert belly dancer and one of the people who inspired me to take classes, which is another post for another time.

I also came across something else I thought might be interesting to share. Here's the backstory: In the summer of 2001, I applied for an editorial job at Threads magazine. This was before they changed over to strictly garment-sewing technique. I got an interview, and booked a flight for  . . . you guessed it . . . September 11, 2001. The flight didn't take off, of course, but I was the last person outbound from Denver whose luggage they took before everything shut down, so I was in the airport for many hours trying to get my luggage back, with thousands of others in complete shock and confusion.

Though I did end up flying out for the interview a couple of weeks later, by then the economic downturn had begun and everybody's plans had changed, so I didn't get the job. But to get to the point . . . they had asked me to throw together some pages of images and fabric to show them how I worked visually and how I might put together a page. I created five or six of these; I guess now we'd call them mini-mood boards. I love the mood board concept -- it was a great exercise to create these.

So I found my Threads mood boards the other day -- here's one, and I'll photograph the rest and put them up. These have fabric swatches layered over collaged paper images -- this one has a narrow swatch of lavender silk along the left side. The lower image is a postcard of a painting by the magnificent Wolf Kahn.

I keep a collage box full of pages torn from magazines -- often just for the colors, as these were, or pictures of clothes for the "style file"  -- old postcards, cancelled stamps, maps, all that sort of thing. It's full of enough ideas and idea triggers for a lot of work. I know the current thinking is anti-clutter, and this box would be clutter to a lot of people, but it's hidden treasure and inspiration to me.

Dance With the Tiger

Letting it go
Is jumping the train
Is to dance with the tiger
Letting it go
Though we won't be the same
Is to dance with the tiger
And laugh at the rain
        -- Rosanne Cash, Dance With the Tiger

I'm a big fan of Rosanne Cash's music and an even bigger fan of her writing -- she is a magnificent artist in every medium she employs. She's been posting to a songwriting blog on the New York Times site, and added a provocative and beautifully written piece last week on fact versus truth. What caught my eye, for our purposes here, is her comment about songwriting as discovery rather than self-expression.

Since I've written about expression as part of Slow Cloth, this made me think. Is discovery a better concept? Or exploration? I think they all apply. In strictly songwriting terms -- and I am not a songwriter, just a music lover -- I think she's saying that lyrics should not simply be a catalog of personal facts, but should strive to tell the truth of a situation instead. I believe that's true in textile art as well.

I see it this way: Art that is too specifically personal often fails. For example, a personally meaningful quilt about an experience, even a profound one like an illness or loss of a loved one, too easily becomes banal if everything in it is a literal reference to that event or person and it goes no further. I do not mean to be unkind here. It's the artist's tightrope to walk; can you take your experience and make it accessible, even universal in some way? Is the viewer just eavesdropping on your experience, or able to engage with it through some shared understanding or emotion?

I think this is why I've been shy about joining in some of the monthly journal projects that are popular -- I want to explore broader concepts rather than literal answers to narrow questions. I'm more attracted to the ones that offer a color scheme or method that can be a launching pad for many different directions.

So I like the idea of discovery and exploration in the Slow Cloth approach, and I think expression is still important too -- especially for women and cultures that have often been silenced. Maybe our expression has to include and assume an attitude of discovery and exploration. We discover things about ourselves when we create, and we discover things about other humans when we look at their textiles and the stories they tell in cloth. We see how they define beauty and what they value, what they fear, what they want to reveal or conceal.

And if we really look, we do get truth, not fact; questions, not answers; new maps and new territories with every authentic act of creation.

Disclosure and Sequins

Before you knew me
An angel came to me
I wrestled him down to the ground
He said he could cure me
I said
That don't worry me now
    -- Shawn Colvin, That Don't Worry Me Now

Re my last post  . . . I don't plan to stop writing about Slow Cloth or sustainable textiles . . .not in the least. I feel like I've just started, and I have some big ideas for the whole Slow Cloth approach. I just have to figure out the best way to do it, and find like-minded people to work with on some of my plans and ideas.

It's a gray day here, but this post over at My Marrakesh about the curative power of sequins brightened it considerably. Go visit! And if you love floral textile designs, you'll find some gorgeous eye candy in Kim Parker Home. Only after I got the book home did I realize that some silk matelasse that I bought quite a few years ago has to be one of her designs. Her Web site is here.

Back to work, and I will see you soon.

Change of Plans

This blog is going to go on hiatus while I manage a busy life and figure out what this blog wants to be. It may become a Web site with an e-mail newsletter that will go out periodically; I'm not sure yet. If you'd like to receive news and updates, please write me and let me know what interests you most here:

• Sustainable and organic textiles and clothing
• The Slow Cloth approach and the world of textile art and craft
• Personal art projects and links to other textile artists and craftspeople
• Other. .  please do let me know!

Thanks, and stay well.

In the Meantime

By the end of the week, God willing and the creek don't rise, I should finally have my high-speed Internet issues resolved. Liberation. NOW we'll see some blogging, people. It's not like I live in the backwoods -- hardly -- but there are peculiarities in my little microcosm that have made it a challenge.

Meanwhile, a few links and photos of unexpected pleasures this week. If I were in England this week, I would try to find my way here, to the Stroudwater Textiles Festival and Symposium. For the rest of us, that link will take you to a page that has further links to several very intriguing artist sites. This looks like an extravaganza for those of us with the Slow Cloth orientation.

Maggie Baxter from Australia is an exhibiting artist at Stroudwater whose work looks quite amazing in the multicultural Slow Cloth vein. She doesn't appear to have a Web site of her own, but you can read about her collaborations with textile artisans in India here.

My friend Betsy sent me a link to Digital Threads, a project of the Textile Museum of Canada. This is a rich and beautiful Web site that focuses on some very innovative, forward-thinking textile projects, but also has links to past exhibitions that explore a very full range of textile arts from traditional to contemporary.

Arlee sent a link to Pleasure-Purpose, a Toronto exhibition that is "an attempt to navigate craft and question its contemporary role." It seems like the textile world just continues to explode in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia . . . maybe it takes the past or present influence of a Queen.

But then there's Japan too. My brother and mother went to the new International Quilt Study Center museum and sent me a beautiful package from the gift shop: these Japanese fabrics from Kasuri Dyeworks and Stitch Dissolve Distort by Valerie Campbell-Harding and Maggie Grey. If you love Japanese textile arts -- or stunning displays of skill and beauty -- definitely visit Jane's blog on Japanese embroidery. She left me a lovely comment here -- thank you, Jane, and thank you for your subtle, gorgeous work.

And last of all for today, my dear friend Lisa went to New Orleans for the Jazz and Heritage Festival and brought me a God of Love. I've had a few of those in my life in mortal form, but never one of fabric.

Here he is, very powerful, slightly alarming -- because love should be a little dangerous -- and completely enchanting:

 

Mental Gridlock

My next scheduled post on the Slow Cloth list is the topic of Beauty. I was all rarin' to go on it last week, and e-mailed someone with a very popular and charming blog about using one of her photos. Though she said yes, she was so curt and unappreciative about it that the photo's beauty was diminished for me, and I no longer want to use it. There are other beautiful images to choose from, but it derailed me, so here I am a week later. The topic of beauty is coming, and in the meantime, in the words of the walrus, let's talk of many things.

I've had a sense of mental gridlock with this blog lately. I want to write about so many things, but it seems now as if it should be two separate blogs -- one on sustainable and organic textiles, clothing, and companies (that would probably replace the dormant Organic Confidential), and a second for art, craft, culture, and the Slow Cloth concept. What do you think? That would mean two new blog names -- there actually is another Red Thread Studio, and in any case, I think that name is no longer quite right for the me of today, rather than the me of some years ago when I first heard the legend of the red thread.

On the green side of things: My report, The International Market for Sustainable Apparel, was published; you can read the press release here and the abstract and table of contents here. These reports sell to businesses for alarming amounts of money, but have no fear, the money goes to the publisher, not me (though I was paid to write it and grateful for it!). It's out of the price range for individuals, but if you have specific questions I am more than happy to answer them and recommend other resources that are accessible. In any case, I hope it may help in my search for the right work.

Sadly, one of the most innovative and risk-taking sustainable apparel companies folded this week, unable to secure enough financing. NAU was trying to achieve very high levels of aesthetic beauty, high performance, and sustainable materials and production, all packaged in a Slow Fashion design philosophy, but they may not have been flashy enough for today's standards. There is a long way to go in this market, despite the indisputable successes and media attention of 2007.

And then the NY Times had a silly article about Sarah Jessica Parker's clothing line, in which nothing sells for more than $8.98, but of course they claim there are no sweatshops involved because the factories are monitored. By whom? According to whose standards? How often? I think the reporter failed to do the job on this story, as he keeps asking how clothes can be made at this price but never really answers the question. And it's a good question. I'm not sure it's possible without some exploitation of resources and/or people.

On the art and craft side, I found the True Stitches blog, another kindred spirit. I especially loved her post about the level of critique on craft blogs and the unspoken rule that you can't ever say you don't like something. I'm so glad someone spoke up about this. I'd much rather have someone respond honestly to my work than just tell me it's great all the time. As I said in my comment to this post, aren't we smart enough and tough enough for real dialogue? I'm a marshmallow underneath my curmudgeonly exterior, but as long as it's not a personal attack, I'm fine with people not liking everything I do and with collaborative process and conversation.

Finally, thanks to Judy Martin, who linked to me on her wonderful Judy's Journal blog (she has more than one, actually, with very intriguing and inspiring work), and welcome to new readers coming here through Judy. I love connecting to all these Canadians, as I am Canadian-born, though raised in the U.S.,  and just may end up back there or somewhere else if the election doesn't bring some new hope to this country. And off topic, I know (or maybe it's not,  but that's another post) but don't even get me started on more news this week about horrific acts of violence and abuse toward women and children. Surely we can do better.

Tomorrow -- back to art and fabric and beauty. Thank you for coming by, and for your patience with me with this long post, and the time between posts. I'd like to be posting daily, with more pictures, and I'm working on it.