from cloth to story from story to cloth
Thank you for joining me here for this quiet little conversation, taking a moment to be with these thoughts, words and images.
it begins with the cloth...pristine yardage unspooling off the bolt...lustre and sheen and wide open spaces filled with possibility...
glistening with moisture...water, pigment, seaweed thickener landing as colour and texture...
Warmth and time working together with the pigment to form a permanent bond of colour to cloth...then rinsing away seaweed paste excess dye...
fresh and dry out of the dryer, ready now to become part of the palette for a painting...
searching searching the pieces of cloth in the palette, tactile and visual sensations looking for just the right stroke of colour, just the right amount of movement texture transition, cutting each slender piece of cloth organically merging building brushstroke after brushstroke of colour and texture building up this first layer of the painting...
layering over bamboo batting and a layer of cloth choosing threads the next wash of colour and texture stitch by stitch by stitch the variegated thread unwinding across the painting, back and forth back and forth top to bottom bottom to top
many hours sitting in the window seat with the daylight noticing the ways the machine stitching makes a subtle delicate mark as it travels across the painting...the machine created stitches a backdrop and a canvas for the stitches created now by hand with the richness of a more substantial thread listening softly to the painting as it guides me where to make the next motion with the sashiko needle, each stitch completely unique, completely it's own statement and completely a part of the overall story
...finished and floating off the wall on the metal frame, shifting light catching the contours of the cloth where it is compressed by the stitch, then released again, subtle little waves always a subconscious reference to my touchstone the sea
And as always, I want to express my gratitude to be living and working on the ancestral & unceded territories of the hən̓̓qəmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh speaking peoples.I honour the incredible depths of grace, courage and perseverance of Indigenous Peoples, and look to them as an example as they find their voices amidst the noise and obfuscation of colonization.
until next time,
Mardell