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

All Ebb, No Flow

I had a friend who described me as someone who wakes up every day ready to engage in hand-to-hand combat with her demons. This week Team Demon is a little ahead -- not by much, and not for long, but I feel like I'm moving through water these days. All the doors have closed, but there are no windows opening and it's getting hot in here. You've been there, I'm sure.

So you try everything -- pushing the river, surrendering to the river, being joyful though you've considered all the facts, as Wendell Berry said. You do your work and yoga and meditation and dance and more work and creating and reaching out and therapy and sending resumes and reading oh-so-helpful books and eating right and thinking positive and good grief, where is the fun? The excitement? The buzz? The magic? The prize? The romance? The passion? It's all overdue.

But this helps. I will snap out of it and return to the mantra -- our topic. And speaking of overdue, I headed back to the library to return the book on living complaint-free because someone else had it on hold -- and clearly I didn't finish the book -- but I found something less pious and much more interesting: another gorgeous Thames & Hudson textile book. Quilting, Patchwork & Applique: A World Guide is far more than the title or cover suggests. I almost passed it by, thinking it would focus on traditional patchwork quilts, but it is really a comprehensive survey of global textile techniques and culture. There are hundreds of  beautiful color illustrations of garments, household textiles, ceremonial and ritual textiles, recycled-fabric patchwork, embroidery from India, Asia, Europe, Africa -- it's encyclopedic and stunning, and full of inspiration.

The book is recent, published just last fall, so it has a very current sensibility in the text. She mentions the Gee's Bend quilts -- I'm going to see the exhibition on Saturday. I wonder how it will be to see them after seeing so many images of them, and hearing the story for so long in the media.

Monday Monday

Every once in a while I come across a site that I'm sure I must be the last to discover, but just in case, I'm going to tell you about it anyway: Fiber Arts Calls for Entry is just what it says, a fantastic aggregate of opportunities for textile artists.

Via Fibercopia, I found One World Textiles. My Australian readers may know this site already. I would say that this is eye candy for global textile lovers, but on a long walk this morning through a glorious green landscape under blue sky, I decided that "eye candy" isn't really an appropriate term for things that are really eye and soul nourishment. That's what these textiles are -- every thread has a soul, indeed. And check out the book list -- more than a hundred great recommendations on global textiles. It's sending me to the library.

We've had thunderstorms and windstorms in the past couple of weeks -- with a couple of four- and five-hour power outages (inevitably right after buying a refrigerator full of groceries). It's made me acutely aware of how dependent I am on electricity. So what can you do when there's no computer, sewing machine, stove, iron, radio or CD player? Why, hand stitching, of course. I began some bead embroidery yesterday -- something I really go in phases with, and find deeply meditative and healing when the time is right.

A quick follow-up on the colonoscopy: It's so not bad. If it's on your list, do it. I'm telling you, if they marketed it as a Total Spa Cleanse with Brief Induced Nap, they'd have no problem at all getting people there. I felt great the next day.

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:

 

Slow Cloth: The Quality of Expression

When I started this blog, I had a big general intention to make my lifelong passion for textile art, craft and design a more central focus in my life, and to connect with others doing all kinds of work with textiles and fiber. So far, so good. I also had several specific areas I wanted to explore. One of these was my somewhat fuzzy idea about Slow Cloth, as I called it -- an authentic approach and relationship to textile art, craft, fashion and design. I've made some headway here, and articulated ten qualities or characteristics of my Slow Cloth philosophy.  This post is the first in a series exploring those qualities in depth, starting with no. 10 -- expression -- as we work our way up to joy in the process, that magical experience that keeps us committed to art and craft. This is my way of finding meaning and connection in the things I make and do, identifying it as a lifelong pursuit, an adventurous, graceful, creative, healing, spiritual, artistic path.

Slow Cloth is Expressive of Individuals, Communities or Cultures.

Textiles have been with us for thousands of years, and in that time, cultures have developed their own vocabulary and style to express and communicate values and meaning. These systems can be incredibly rich and nuanced. In the height of the geisha era in Japan, it's said that anyone could "read" a kimono -- the pattern on the fabric, the colors, the way it was worn -- and glean an incredible amount of information. Everything meant something. The textile arts were a way of telling stories and communicating that was unique to the culture. Yet even those not fluent in the language could appreciate the sheer art, beauty and character of the objects and the ways they were worn and used.

The idea of individual expression through textiles or art is more recent, from a historical perspective, but gives us unlimited capacity for freedom, imagination and creativity. We no longer have to be anonymous, as so many artisans and craftspeople have been through the ages, using the language of the collective in their designs -- we can create our own languages and symbols.

The Slow Cloth approach doesn't put a high value on efficiency or making everything identical. The hand of the maker wants to be seen and be evident, whether the maker is an individual or a community or a culture, or all three.

In our time, cultures influence each other and are interwoven. We have the great luxury of being able to see and share textiles from all over the world, in an instant. I love the idea of honoring and using cultural traditions while interpreting them in contemporary ways that feel right for today, and that's what I see so many wonderful textile artists and designers doing. Art and craft are not static -- they are living energies that need new practitioners to keep them alive, new contributions to the DNA. There is value in preserving the knowledge and techniques that give us a foundation for the new.

For those of us who are modern nomads who have moved around a lot, who feel an affinity with many groups and yet don't identify too much with any one, that in itself is something to express. Some artists and designers ultimately want to "go home" and work with the communities where they began, like Natalie Chanin. Others travel far to learn and experience the crafts of lives very different from their own.

To think about: what is your work expressive of? What traditions do you work with or respond to, which communities, which cultural influences? What inspires you? How do you speak with cloth, color, stitching -- and what do you want to say?

Photo: © Tran Thi Hoa / World Bank

Indigo Blues and Cleopatra's Flesh

Ah, I found it! This is the 1964 Jules Olitski painting from the exhibition "Color as Field," reviewed with a slide show in today's New York Times, that I saw just after discovering the amazing work of Rowland Ricketts at  Ricketts Indigo. Here they are side by side:

Jules Olitski, Cleopatra's Flesh, 1964

Untitled Obi Yardage, 2002, indigo and charcoal dyed hemp kibira, paste resist

I love seeing these together. Completed nearly a half century apart, each is unique yet each uses similar elemental shapes and curves, with the deep flat saturated blue planes encircling the desired dots. These pieces have a lot of presence and power. It feels like you just become the color. It would be so interesting to curate an exhibition of textile artists paired with art in other media -- it's been done before but it's always fascinating to me. It's so important to always be looking -- to see a lot of work of all kinds.

After I first posted about his work, Rowland Ricketts sent me a very courteous e-mail, appreciating the concept of Slow Cloth. He and Chinami are now in Indiana, and he is teaching at Indiana University.

 

Symbols of Abundance

I had just a little time to do some browsing this morning and visited Spirit Cloth, where I am always struck by the depth and emotional shading of Jude's words and work, and that led me to Shibori Girl. Am I the last to discover this wonderful site and artist? These are some of her beautiful ribbons with base dye, before shibori wrapping:

They look like roses, of course. I once did one of those New Age exercises where you decide on a personal symbol of abundance, and for me it's flowers -- lots of them, especially roses. There are only two working rose farms in the United States, and I think it would be some kind of heaven to live on a rose farm. This is from Belle Story Rose Farm near Santa Barbara:

My peripatetic father finally found his home in his late 50s in Chico, California. He had a teaching job he loved at the university, and he bought a house and planted 50 rosebushes. After a life of instability and running from himself, he was home. He got mesothelioma from exposure to asbestos years earlier and died at 63. But I am glad that in the end he had his home, his community and his roses.

Here in the present, I've been asked to make a couple of ceremonial "tribal garments" for an executive gathering. This is very last-minute, so I've been ordering fabric online in a frenzy of power shopping. I'm using the Tibetan Panel Coat pattern from Folkwear. The folks at equilter.com were fantastic about filling orders quickly. Sadly, I can't say the same about SilkBaron, where part of the order was wrong (and it was a big order -- they made some money) and then argued with me, as if I must be lying, crazy, or stupid, instead of just fixing the problem. There are so many great textile resources out there, and it's a  disappointment and a surprise to be treated badly by people working with textile artists, but so it goes.

This project is more streamlined than it would be if I had more time, when I would design something really tribal with stamping, beads, coins, all the good Complex Cloth stuff, but I'm going to make it as beautiful and soulful as possible and be grateful for the time, space, and opportunity to do this, even as 100 pages of writing (and blogging) on the sustainable clothing market still awaits. More soon. 

Home for Wandering Spirits

I chose the word magic as my guiding force for 2008 on an optimistic late December morning, and the universe promptly responded, first thing on January 1, with a wicked sense of humor. I haven't given much thought to magic since then, but it was the first word that came to mind when I saw this enchanting piece by Sara L at her The Fabric of Meditation blog, called Wanderhouse I:

And here is the detail of the spirit who lives in the Wanderhouse:

These pieces are so wonderful -- strange, ancient, knowing and fun at the same time. Visit Sara's blog for more of her intriguing and imaginative work. The Wanderhouse I had me thinking about all the nomadic and tribal people who carry their homes with them -- and it's often textiles, carpets and curtains, that go a long way toward making a home.

There are other artists working with the idea of spirit houses, like Carol Owen. In Thailand every building has a spirit house for the comfort of the resident spirits. It's a magical idea, rich with creative possibilities.

Pattern Recognition

Sometimes I feel so reckless and wild
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
I gave nobody life
I am nobody's wife
And I seem to be nobody's daughter
So red is the color that I love the best
It's your Indian skin and the badge on my chest
The heat of my pride
The lips of a bride
The heart of the truth
And the flag of youth
And the blood that is thicker than water
I was born to be telling this story
I am finally telling this story
I will always be telling this story.     -- shawn colvin, the story

Nice to see you again here in cyberspace! I have been a very recalcitrant blogger. I got seriously derailed in the last couple of weeks, in part because of dental issues that aren't going away quickly. Like Acey at SparklingLotusLand, dental situations bring up a lot of early-life issues for me (and I have some doozies) and they never happen at the right time.

I'm also a bit stalled in my efforts to restructure my life since losing my job in late August. It's been some time now, and I have excellent freelance projects, but it's not quite where I want or need to be. I don't know what the answer is, and hesitate to talk about it too much, but part of what I'm doing here is exploring ideas for ways that I can finally make a living, contribute to the world, and use my skills in something that involves textiles, after spending nearly 15 years mostly working in the organic foods industry and somewhat cut off from my creative self.

 

 

I have a lot of expertise and passion for the principles of the organic foods movement, but sadly it has felt like a dry well for me for quite some time, though it has given me a grounding in issues very relevant to sustainable textiles and apparel. I've had a lot of false starts with art and textiles, so now it is past time to get serious, and I am ready and eager to find work that I really love, whether editorial, entrepreneurial, communicating, designing, getting an advanced degree and teaching, other, or all of the above. There really is no going back. (And if you are interested, my resume is linked in the sidebar.) So -- path forward -- dare I say clear eyes, full heart, can't lose, for my fellow Friday Night Lights fans.

Readers, when it comes to creating, how do you find focus? I love art quilts, bead embroidery, painting, garment sewing, and more -- I love to make beautiful and meaningful things. Art quilter Lisa Call says to affirm that there is enough time, but do you think it's more important to follow one muse, or work with a broad range of techniques? Is that the difference between the artist and the hobbyist -- the ability to leave a hundred shiny objects behind and focus on one path? For me the danger has always been doing nothing when presented with too many possibilities and choices; at the same time everything feels connected and enticing. In some ways this relates to the fantastic comment threads on Craft 2.0 and Slow Cloth -- I appreciate the stimulating discussion so much, and thank all of you who commented.

Many of us are surely torn between making art that would properly be shown in a gallery and doing things with more practical, and even marketable, applications. Lately I've found myself surfing through sites of artisan fabrics, many hand-printed, primarily for interiors. Textile print design is a whole area of specialization all its own, considered a decorative art, and a rich and world-enhancing one. Prints and patterns can have so much charm, or whimsy, or sophistication, or tribal expression. Enjoy these links, and come back soon for more ideas, thoughts, and updates on work and projects.

• Galbraith & Paul in Philadelphia creates beautiful, modern hand-printed textiles. I've taken note of them before and was reminded of them at Fibercopia. This is called Spring Garden:
                                              

• Bird Textile is an Australian company focused on sustainability. It's not letting me pick up an image, but visit their cool site.

• My friend Harmony at Harmony Art creates beautiful designs on organic cotton and has a great blog; she's interested in working more with quilters and artists, and is speaking at the sold-out SAQA/SDA Breaking New Ground conference in April in Philadelphia. You can buy her fabrics by the yard at Near Sea Naturals.  Visit her site -- I'm having no luck with images today.

The Cloth & Culture NOW Project

Cloth & Culture NOW, an exhibition with accompanying book, has just opened in England. I was so excited to discover this, as the project illustrates all the global principles of what I call Slow Cloth in a major and visionary format. Here is information from the Web site

Cloth & Culture NOW investigates the links between contemporary textile practice, strong traditional practice and overlapping global influences, offering a framework for the study of contemporary textile practice within a cultural specific,  trans-national and cross-cultural context.

Cloth & Culture NOW brings together, for the first time, contemporary textile works from Estonia, Finland, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, and the UK. which most clearly exemplify:   

• Contemporary textile practice as an expression of cultural identity

• Contemporary textile practice that has emerged from traditional practice

• Cross-cultural/trans-national interface in contemporary textile practice that has emerged from traditional practice.

35 artists have been selected as Case Studies for the book and to take part in the exhibition.

Cloth & Culture NOW highlights exciting  and innovative contemporary textile practice from areas where there has been a strong tradition of textile linked to specific cultural identity. The work of these contemporary practitioners reflects that cultural specificity while also responding to cross-cultural and trans-national influences.

Most of the selected artists have made new work for the exhibition, reflecting the social, political and utilitarian history of textile within the context of shifting experiences of culture and tradition. These works include the contemporary use of traditional techniques and materials: knit, tapestry, embroidery, felt making, plus explorations of new materials and technology, large architectural installations, performance work, video, narrative based textiles, decorative textiles.

Cloth & Culture NOW opens at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia,   on 29th January 2008 until 1st June 2008 and then tours to the Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester in the Autumn of 2008, followed by venues in participating countries during 2009.

This is very contemporary and sometimes challenging work from master artists in an international framework, yet they are creating this work stitch by stitch, as we all do. There is an education program as well, and the show will travel. Here is an article from a local UK site with quotes from Lesley Millar, the professor of textile culture who curated the exhibition and leads the project.

Whether we are working in our modest studios at home on some small project or part of this kind of sophisticated forward-thinking exhibition, the Slow Cloth approach can be rich with meaning and possibility as modern expression, rooted in tradition and connected to culture. Stitch on.

                                                   

Slow Cloth Inspiration, February 1

I was doing a Google search for khadi -- the homespun cotton that Ghandi wore and promoted -- and came across the wonderful Fibercopia blog. Author Arcadia is an interior designer; she has an incredible eye for beautiful and interesting textiles from all over the world, and a ton of knowledge.

Rowland and Chinami Ricketts are masters of natural dyeing and traditional techniques at RickettsIndigo. Visit their site full of stunning work -- you will not be able to navigate away (but do -- come back here!). I'm in love with this piece:

Untitled Obi Yardage, 2002, indigo and charcoal dyed hemp kibira, paste resist

and saw echoes of it the next day at the Denver Art Museum's show of Color Field paintings.

Back to interiors, John Robshaw Textiles is a commercial enterprise very much in the Slow Cloth spirit. From the Web site, here is the mission statement:

Our mission is to create original, handcrafted textiles from around the world. John Robshaw Textiles employs traditional printing, dying and weaving techniques, while reinterpreting them in ways that respect the integrity of the method to create original textiles. Every textile represents a story, a drawing of an adventure in a far–off place–from Yogakarta to Rajasthan, Bolivia to Vietnam. Arriving at textiles from painting and printmaking, I am interested in the mistakes, overlapping prints and the miss-registrations of woodblocks that record the human hand.

I'm guessing that these very beautiful pillows and bedding are out of my price range for now, but the spirit of this artistry and design is contagious. I found him through VivaTerra, where you can buy some of these objects.

The incredible multimedia and quilt artist Deidre Adams has started a blog; I'm very inspired by her technique of quilting, then painting the quilted surface.

Finally, for today at least, I'm enchanted by the sustainably-produced fabrics at Bird Textile --  "Australia's first climate neutral business."  If you love textile design and are interested in what's being done in environmentally friendlier fibers, take a look.

With the new year off to a strange start, I have not yet finished my Take It Further textile art challenge piece for January -- I don't think I'm alone, but I'm not very happy about my unfinished projects. Time to work harder and smarter.