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

Stitching Worlds Together

My notion of Slow Cloth was always meant to include both individual artists and commercial or artisan companies working with textiles in authentic ways. I've mentioned companies like John Robshaw Textiles, Peruvian Connection, ABC Carpet and Home, Indigo Handloom and others. Today (via the wonderful Sri Threads textile gallery Web site) I came across KasuriHome, owned by artist and designer Catalina Arocena.

KasuriHome uses vintage Japanese textiles to make throws, quilts and pillows. These aren't made from showy fashion kimono but mostly from "everyday" kimono and fabrics. Each item is unique and will not even necessarily conform to standard sizes, but is created to maintain the integrity of the textiles used. Some quilts include hand stitching done by professional Amish quilters, as this one does:

Others are machine-quilted and simply showcase beautifully combined fabrics:

These quilts are one-of-a-kind artisan objects that are not inexpensive . . . in the words of what I call "shopping journalism" that is so prevalent on the Web these days, they are aspirational. But for those of us who simply love textiles, they are inspirational.

I have multiple textile personalities these days, equally enchanted looking at these vintage/recycled/wabi-sabi pieces in the Japanese or Gee's Bend or Alabama Chanin spirit, and by rich, dazzling, mirror-laden, beaded and bejeweled, gold-and-silver-embroidered pieces with the spirit and colors of India or Morocco . . . and those are just some of so many amazing textile cultures. Whichever way you go on any given day, there is a rich universe of color, texture, soul, spirit and beauty, with thousands of years of humans putting worlds together stitch by stitch, to guide us.

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:

 

Craft 2.0, Authentic and Slow, and Extreme Slow

I've been thinking a lot about the last post and thought I'd say a little more. This is a long post .

I have no problem with anybody who wants to knit crazy acrylic scarves on size 17 needles, or scrapbook, or do no-sew sewing, or any other activity with their hands and hearts. It's really different from the approach to art, craft and design that I'm calling Slow Cloth or Authentic Cloth. There's nothing wrong with the people who are doing it, and nothing inherently wrong with what they're doing if they enjoy it and nobody gets hurt; the thing that gets under some of our skins, I think, is the marketing and selling of it.

I'm not even sure what Craft 2.0 means, but I think it's what String or Nothing was talking about -- lots of crafts skewing very young, marketed as hip and trendy, and suggesting that you really don't need any skill or time or commitment. "Make a sweater in a weekend!" "It's not your mother's knitting!" "It's not your grandmother's beadwork!" (There are always unnecessary exclamation points involved.) Some of the results are beautiful and charming, some are okay, and some are really awful. But it doesn't serve anyone to suggest that there's no value in going past beginner-level skills and kits and throwaway materials. (There's also a lot of use of recycled materials in these crafts, and that's fantastic, yet it's still often marketed in silly ways.)

I think what's most appealing for young women is that there's a lot of community, both electronic and real, in this movement. They're discovering the amazing sense of belonging that happens when women get together to talk and stitch. The stitching adds a dimension and connection that is nourishing and regenerative. There's nothing new about this. From time immemorial -- quilting bees being the best-known example -- these talk-and-stitch gatherings have had power.

I discovered it around 1990, living in Chicago and working on weekends at The Weaving Workshop, then on Diversey. The store was owned then by Marilyn Murphy, now president of Interweave Press. Amazing women worked there and knitted there -- Stacy, Melissa, are you out there? Once a month we'd all get together for potluck and knitting. Coming from a family with three brothers, it was truly my first positive experience of a group of women supporting, liking, and encouraging each other, and sharing creative work. Yes, we irreverently referred to those evenings as "stitch 'n bitch" and we all understood how great those evenings were. We just never thought to MARKET the concept or turn it into a book or a zeitgeist, and the world wouldn't have been ready if we had.

My Chicago friends were incredibly skilled knitters, and generous with everything they knew. I learned so much from them. We used to talk about having a "no-brainer" project that didn't require much attention, and then a more challenging one for moments of full presence. In what's becoming the "craft industry" we see a lot of no-brainer projects and not much else. And our culture devalues taking time and can barely imagine or support doing an art or craft over a span of years, and not taking shortcuts (I don't mean every project has to take years, though as we know, some inadvertently do).

Next time you're in Santa Fe, visit the Tai Gallery on Canyon Road and spend some time with the bamboo baskets there, made by very old Japanese basketmakers. You'll forget every trivializing joke you've ever heard or made about basketweaving. These vessels have an integrity, a life force, and a beauty that is indescribable, because years of learning and relationship to the materials have gone into them. They are made mostly by men (traditionally the skills aren't taught to women, and that's one reason the art is dying). This is from the gallery's Web site:

There are now less than a hundred working bamboo artists in Japan. The young people who have taken up the call to learn bamboo basket making make a commitment of time that is hard for us as Westerners to comprehend. The first ten years are devoted to learning the basic techniques of cutting, dyeing, and plaiting bamboo. After this is mastered, another one or two decades are spent developing as an artist. Artists begin to gain full recognition as they come into their fifties and sixties. There are a number of basket makers who are still working in their eighties. It is an honor for our gallery to represent some of the top living bamboo artists of Japan.

I guess you could call this Extreme Slow art. Most textile artists and artisans today don't have this mindset or cultural support, and we should all be a part of our time and our world. But the reverence, the authenticity and the respect for the materials is so rich, and if you are open to it, these baskets have a depth and a vibration that feels profound and eternal.

Somewhere between these baskets and throwaway trendy projects is Authentic Cloth. And it's taken an eternity to read this, right? Thank you! Back soon with inspiration and links and more.

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.

What Is Novel Is What We Have Not Seen And Heard Before

There is a wonderful tutorial on sashiko at the Purl Bee blog. This Japanese craft has elements of quilting and of a very ordered embroidery; the thread is heavier than Western quilting thread, no frame or hoop is used, and traditional stitching patterns are geometric and symmetrical. Mari explains the process in detail with wonderful and very helpful photographs.

According to Nancy Shriber in her lovely Sashiko Handbags 14 On 14 book,

Sashiko was originally designed as a mending technique to quilt together several layers of fabric for warmth and durability or for strengthening a single layer of fabric. Like quilting in America, sashiko had humble beginnings. The Japanese have been doing sashiko for practical sewing purposes since the early 18th century. It was developed as a way to recycle fabric and to extend the life of the garment. Sashiko is a running stitch sewn in repeating or interlocking patterns through one or more layers of fabric. As with many art forms, most of the stitch designs are simplified representations of things found in nature such as plants, birds, and clouds.

Visit Nancy's Contemporary Sashiko Web site gallery -- she has instructions there for this beautiful, simple wallet/checkbook cover as an introduction to contemporary sashiko:

Despite its humble beginnings, as with other Japanese crafts, sashiko is a beautiful form with infinite levels of skill and subtlety. In the United States we tend to want to make everything quick and easy and oversimplified -- and at the same time, create products to sell  that may not be necessary or even desirable to the heart of the practice.

As a result, sometimes the beauty and nuance of textile traditions are really lost on us. For instance: As I was searching around for information on sashiko, I came across this site on the Akan Cultural Symbols Project via Quilt Ethnic. In the Akan culture in Ghana, traditional cloth is woven to communicate with a rich and specific language -- here's one pattern from the site:

EMAA DA - NOVELTY

               

Symbol of     EXPERIENTIAL KNOWLEDGE, CREATIVITY, NOVELTY, and INNOVATION
From the proverb:  Dea emmaa da eno ne dea yennhunu na yennte bi da. 
Literal translation:  What  is novel is what we have not seen and heard before

Now, I know I've seen similar African fabrics and have only seen color and pattern, with no idea about the rich conveyance of concepts, messages, language and communication woven into the cloth by master artisans. This richness and meaning exists in textiles from so many cultures. This is part of the Slow Cloth approach: respecting the significance -- as well as enjoying the beauty -- of world textiles.