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

African Textiles Coming to Metropolitan

African textiles are hotter than July right now, for good reason -- what an amazing and rich textile heritage, a treasure trove of color, pattern and symbolic inspiration. A new exhibition of traditional and contemporary African textiles will open at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 30 and run through March 29, 2009. From the Met's press release:

Africa's extraordinary legacy of textile arts, with its explosive color and complex graphic statements, will be presented at The Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning September 30. Bringing together more than 40 works dating from the early 19th century to the present – including a spectacular silk and cotton kente prestige cloth woven in Ghana during the 19th century and a 30-foot-long installation work by the contemporary artist Yinka Shonibare – The Essential Art of African Textiles: Design without End will highlight the enduring significance of textiles as a major form of aesthetic expression across the continent. While examining some of the finest and earliest preserved examples of different regional textile traditions, the exhibition will relate these to contemporary works by eight living artists, who draw inspiration from textiles in their explorations of other media ranging from sculpture, painting, and photography, to video and installation art.

This is a key dimension of the spirit of Slow Cloth for me --  illuminating traditional textile techniques and viewing them through the lens of contemporary artists and designers. This exhibition will surely be visually and culturally dramatic and powerful -- I predict we'll see its influence on fashion and textile design, on color forecasting, and in the art world.

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.

Art, Design, Service

I think it bears repeating -- pay a visit to Lisa Call's blog to read about the design principles she's adapted from the Expeditionary Learning School framework. The final principle in the series is service and compassion. The whole series is inspiring -- and is very compatible with  Slow Cloth, with attention paid to diversity, service, reflection, nature and creativity. Lisa's last post really struck me, as I've been thinking a lot about service.

My family did not have much of a culture of giving or community, so I've come around to this concept mostly as an adult. I think a lot of people in the world feel they don't have enough themselves, not enough money or time or whatever, and when you feel you don't have enough, it's hard to conceive of service. But maybe that's when it's most important -- to claim the abundance we all have in this time and place and do something for those in need.

There are a lot of textile people actively engaged in service, from the Michigan woman who collects sewing machines to send to people in New Orleans building back from Katrina (sorry, I can't find the link right now but I'll keep looking) to people all over the world working to make sure that women have a living wage through sewing or other crafts. Then there are all the people who use their sewing or knitting skills to make blankets and hats for those in need in cold winters, or for babies and children who are ill. We can all teach others our skills if they're interested; that's one of the great traditions of needlework of all kinds.

I hope in some small ways this blog contributes to a better and stronger community, and I'm searching for more ways to be of service.

Even Here We Are: Some Thoughts on Beauty

It's a beautiful flower in your garden
But the most beautiful by far
Is the one growing wild in the garbage dump
Even here
Even here we are.
 -- Even Here We Are, Paul Westerberg

Out of all those kinds of people
You've got a face with a view.
        -- This Must Be The Place, Talking Heads

I've been trying to do my Qualities of Slow Cloth series in order (as in the original post) though it really doesn't matter -- the order was not carefully thought out. But there we have it, and the next quality up for exploration is beauty. Writing about beauty, and what it means in the context of textile art, craft and culture, is -- ha! -- not easy. This might just be one of many posts exploring it. So, let's just call this some thoughts on beauty.

The art world gets snobbish about beauty sometimes, as if to make art that delights the eye is weak and insipid and somehow easier. It's true that beauty sometimes feels less intellectually challenging, because it bypasses the brain to just arrest the senses. To sidetrack the argument, we can talk about an aesthetic. To me an aesthetic is more a personal sense of what is beautiful, and an intention to move toward it, while beauty often suggests a conventional standard that isn't what we're aiming for here.

Our perception of beauty is relative. They say that homely people grow more beautiful with intimacy, while the conventionally beautiful, if lacking other compelling gifts, lose their luster in the eyes of others with time. If meaning, significance and memory grow, people become more beautiful in our eyes. The same is true with some objects -- worn patchwork scrap quilts come to mind. And we're at our human, artisan best when we create something and use our hands and imaginations and hearts to make it not just purposeful, but also beautiful in a way that is true to our own aesthetic. This is true for words, too -- there are words whose only purpose is to identify or communicate something, but when we add some elegance or rhythm to what we say, it serves a larger need. It's not what you say, it's how you say it . . .

And because we are so compelled to make things more beautiful than necessary, and we have been all through the ages in every culture, I have to believe that it's in our collective DNA to seek and to create beauty. It nourishes us and it connects us to spirit -- some of the most beautiful things made by humans are tributes to spirit in some form: magnificent cathedrals, awesome statues of Buddha, gardens, art.

In her wonderful book A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman talks about how researchers have tried to codify what makes a stranger's face appear beautiful to us. There is a certain symmetry that we respond to, and it can be measured in some pretty nuanced ways. But of course, we all know that we love the faces we love for their uniqueness and their "flaws" as much or more than for their perfection.

So it is with everything.  The Japanese call this recognition of character wabi-sabi -- humble and imperfect beauty. I've just checked out Robyn Griggs Lawrence's book The Wabi-Sabi House: The Japanese Art of Imperfect Beauty, from my (beautiful) local library. I'll let you know what I learn.

Until then, food for thought: Where does beauty fit in your work? What's the most beautiful thing you own, or the most beautiful thing in your life, and what makes it so? What's the most beautiful thing you've made, and how do you feel about it? Do you feel pressured by conventional ideas of beauty, in your life and person and in your art or craft? Comments welcome.

Every Thread Has a Soul, and the Dance of Art and Nature

An article in the new issue of Selvedge quotes an Arab proverb: "Every thread has a soul." Awesome. I think I'll make that my official tag line for this blog, and maybe even its new name. In Googling it, I don't find any other references to this proverb, but maybe it's little-known in the West with origins in the mists of time, and that totally works for me.

I joined Stitchin' Fingers, Sharon B's terrific new fiber arts community. Anyone can join, and there are many sub-groups forming to cover just about every technique or interest. I keep thinking about starting a Slow Cloth group and/or a global textiles group . . . anyone interested?

I've also been thinking about, and wanting to do a post about various kinds of eco-art -- the intersection of art and the environment (I've written about art and agriculture on my other blog).  Nature and art are inextricably intertwined, of course, and nature has provided us with inspiration from the dawn of humankind. Making art from unprocessed natural materials or integrating art and natural spaces, a la the brilliant Andy Goldsworthy, is one kind of eco-art. There are many ways that fiber artists are connected to this sphere; after all, until recently, all fiber came from plants. Just a couple of links to explore:

• Abigail Doan is a mixed media and environmental artist who works with fiber. Her work is extremely intuitive on one hand, and the way she uses threads and fibers in nature makes emotional sense, yet it's also challenging work with an intellectual and ethical context.
• Though I've not personally worked with natural dyes, this is a place where art and nature do an intimate dance. As mentioned in my previous post, Permacouture is exploring this area; Cheryl Kolander at Aurora Silk and others have also been pioneers.
• Nicole Dextras is a Vancouver artist -- take a look at her Weedrobes series.
• Lots of people have blogged about the World Beach Project and the radical Crocheted Coral Reef project, but the links are worth repeating if you've not discovered them yet (you're in for a treat).

I think all the renewed interest in the arts of spinning and felting is related to the environmental movement. We've finally figured out that food comes from the soil and the farm -- now we're beginning to understand where fabric comes from, too. The closer we get to that understanding, the more people want to work with fiber in its raw form. Fiber is as ancient and as intrinsic to community as food. And making it beautiful and meaningful connects us to soul and spirit, and to each other.

And now, with all this talk of ethereal and natural things, I must get my body to the yoga mat. Go find some inspiration in nature today, and create.

photo by Streuwerk.

Time Waits for No One

My father used to call me "Miss-elaine-eous" and I must have been eleven or twelve years old before I realized that he was making a play on the word "miscellaneous." So here are my MissElaineous offerings for today . . .

• The Maiwa Textile Workshops for 2008 are up, and they look completely inspiring. Workshops are 2-3 days; the schedule begins in September and goes through early November, so there are a lot of opportunities to find your way to Vancouver. I'd love to take the blockprinting workshop and The Expressive Stitch. Well, really, I'd love to take almost all of them.
• Have I written yet about Permacouture Institute here? This is a new nonprofit organization with a very creative and activist sustainable textile and Slow Cloth orientation. I spoke by phone with founder and executive director Sasha Duerr today -- this woman is amazing and will make some positive waves in the textile world, I'm sure of that. She's an expert on natural dyeing and has a special interest in edible dye plants (cabbage, beets, onions, etc.) and all the possibilities inherent in being able to grow things that will both feed us and color our fiber without harm to the environment. We talked about her work and about some of my ideas for taking the Slow Cloth concept to new levels. . . . everything is possible, right?
• I've been meaning to link to a blog post by UK biologist and textile artist Mags Ramsay on The Character of Cloth. I love the work she's doing with indigenous African textiles -- very beautiful and with a great "spirit cloth" sensibility.

That's what I've got today. Off topic, this week has been a continuation of a pretty intense and unrelenting healing journey -- I've been prescribed physical therapy for my neck, and Monday was the first visit. I wasn't quite prepared for the tremendous amount of grief and sadness stored in that area that the bodywork released. Though in practical terms the therapy is necessary for some dental work to be successful, on another level it's evidently part of a lot of ongoing work I'm doing on old emotional issues - according to Dr. Christiane Northrup, at 50 all of your unfinished business from childhood MUST be resolved if you're to stay healthy, and it will rear up like an immovable elephant in the room if you don't. I'm finding that to be all too true, and it turns out my unfinished business is a doozy.

Finally, I have a colonoscopy scheduled on Friday as the follow-up to March's illness. I tell you this not to give you Too Much Information, but to encourage you to get this test if you are around 50, and not be embarrassed or put it off. I know, I don't feel old enough for it either. On the inside, I'm about 16 -- rebellious, darkly romantic and trying to figure out what to be when I grow up. But on the outside, time waits for no one (or Tom Waits for No One, as we fans say) and we must attend to our bodies. We are all of the nature to age, as the Buddhists say, even if 50 is the new 30. I hope the procedure will be as dignified and painless as possible.

And hey, where are the Fiber Artists for Obama? They seem to have let their blog go dormant. They ought to be celebrating today. Fiber art in the White House! I'm sad for the way Hillary has sometimes been treated, and  proud of her for the most part despite some missteps. But we do need a change, and no one has set a fire in young voters like Obama has since Bobby Kennedy, and I'm all for that (I was and still am a John Edwards fan, too, and I truly hope there's a place for him in Obama's cabinet after a November victory). Like me, this country has a lot of healing to do -- the old ways just aren't working.

I hope you, cherished readers and all who find their way here, are also healing from anything that ails you. Onward we go.

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.

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:

 

Only Connect: Slow Cloth and Community

This is the second post in a series on 10 qualities of the Slow Cloth approach. This was a tough one; I've been trying to write this post all week, not sure if I'm saying too much about myself and whether what is so meaningful to me just sounds banal in this context. Maybe so, but let's give it a try, and see if my disjointed thoughts make any sense.

Let me start by saying I'm not much of a joiner. I've been outside the margins for pretty much my entire life; it's not what I wanted but that's how it turned out. My early life was randomly peripatetic, highly unstable and anything but normal; there were no consistent relatives, friends, or schools. I was the only girl in a family of boys, and therefore the lightning rod for my family's gender-related baggage and hostility; I was also separated from and accelerated out of my age group in school and scorned by my parents for wanting normal social activity. This didn't make me a very good candidate for a happy marriage and family, so I don't have children; much of the conversation among my friends in the last 20 years or so has been about things I can only observe, with both the sadness and freedom inherent in that. It's taken me most of my 50 years to even begin to tell the truth about my life and experiences, and to really begin to heal and allow myself some happiness.

The things I am good at and passionate about -- art, textile crafts, yoga, writing -- are most often solo activities, and whether that's a chicken or an egg, I don't know. I like to be invited to the party, and most of the time I'm really happy to be at the party once I get there, but because my nature is introverted, I need time alone or in very private company the next day or week to regenerate.

Too much information? This is all a roundabout way of saying that community is a concept that's been elusive for me. I am by no means an expert at it, and when I experience it, in ways other people take for granted, it can be revelatory. And not always comfortable. Yet I am a firm believer that community matters. In the world of Slow Cloth (which my keyboard wants to abbreviate to Sloth . . .that can't be good, can it?) we are all linked by some form of community, and for many of us, it's one of the great unexpected rewards and pleasures of making things with fiber.

Some of my very best experiences of community have been facilitated by common interest in textile art and craft. Like everything under the sun, this isn't new. Quilting bees are the best-known form of the special camaraderie that happens. Gen Y-ers didn't invent knitting gatherings. And today the internet and blog world has expanded infinitely our capacity to connect through a shared love or use of fiber. For many of us who work alone, this is a fantastic gift of community. Few of even the most introverted among us have the resources or endurance to be Georgia O'Keeffe alone in the desert; we have to find that happy medium between solitude and society.

I've refrained a little from referring to "those who stitch" as female, but mostly, we are. So when we gather, virtually or physically, both the way we connect with each other and the traditionally female activities that we do while connecting tend to be undervalued in society. A man might put "relationship management" on his resume as a valuable skill; it's what women do all the time. Creating community consciously, with intent and integrity is definitely valuable and life-enriching.

Formal or informal, communities always take work and there are always complications and challenges in the ways we relate. As the world gets smaller and the news gets more ominous, none of us will survive alone. There's a lot more to say about this, but that's enough for today. I don't have a conclusion except to say that I'm glad for the ways that textiles and cloth help me stay connected. The analogy of the thread that holds things together, often in a beautiful way, is a good one.

Photo of Gee's Bend quilting bee by Andre Natta. Some rights reserved under Creative Commons license.

Apropos of: Expressions of Culture

Right on time, the New York Times has a review of some very culturally expressive textiles at the New York Historical Society. The exhibition is "Woven Splendor from Timbuktu to Tibet," and the article is "All the Colors of the Rugs the Nomads Walked On." There are lots of interesting quotes about the makers of these textiles in a desert culture that relate to my previous post.

I especially love that journalist Glenn Collins talks about some of the objects being "seemingly so much more glorious than they need to be." In a sense he's right. Knee pads for camels could probably have been quite ordinary and gotten the job done. But isn't that the whole history of textile arts? We are driven to add color, texture, decoration, beauty and symbolism, and to express ourselves and our communities. We may not strictly need those things to survive a day in the desert, but we do have a need to create them where we can in our lives. Cultures that suppress creative expression don't appear to do very well in the long run.

To be clear, I'm not advocating that Slow Cloth means replicating these forms just as they were, but looking at them with open eyes and minds provides a lot of inspiration and appreciation.

Elsewhere, here's a fun blog for those of us who just plain love fabric and pattern: TrueUp.net.