Words Spoken--Design and Construction

This project started a couple of years ago, when I began writing down sentences that have been stuck in my mind for a long time. "You're the one who goes away" was first on the list, but there are another dozen or so, words spoken to me that continue to have a place in my psychic geography. My first thought of how to give them a life in art was to combine them with a line drawing of an object, with the sentence below. For "You're the one who goes away," the object would have been the rolling laptop bag. But some of the sentences didn't have an obvious image associated with them, and I decided that it was the words themselves that were key--that the words themselves needed to be the whole composition.

I've used words/text in other pieces in my body of work on Loss. I stamped a narrative in "Accident." I did a large screen-printed version of the same narrative in "Accident II." I wrote out my many regrets on the back of "Regret." And I fused foot-high letters in "Self-Portrait, Year 2: Beneath the Surface." Each text has demanded its own form. For this recent project, I got the idea early on of using the hand-writing of the speaker for the letter style of each sentence. For scale, I decided on a size significantly larger than ordinary handwriting, but still small enough that you needed to stand fairly close to view it; the stitched letters are about 1-1/2" high. (In "Self-Portrait," in contrast, I was aiming for something like a billboard, both in size and style.)

It pleased me that to replicate the style of another's handwriting, I could rely on paleographic skills I'd learned fifty years ago when studying medieval history in graduate school. I used a technique for deciphering difficult handwritten texts, which is to isolate individual letters in a text and copy them out into an alphabet. After you've done that, it's much easier to decipher words that previously were impenetrable. For this project it wasn't an issue of not being able to read Jeremy's handwriting, but rather that I wanted to be able to create new words from the small sample that I had.  Here's a photo of the sample of Jeremy's script that I used (a birthday poem for me, lightly adapted from Calvin and Hobbes, done when Jeremy was eleven), along with the alphabet I pulled out, and my first writing of the sentence in the style of Jeremy's handwriting. I was astonished that I got it on the first try. Then it was a simple matter to enlarge it for the stitched piece. (Click on any photo to enlarge it.)

I liked the idea of using a heavy-weight linen fabric as the base, and did some trials of dyeing it gray, thinking of a link to my work "Holiness."  But I decided instead on a natural-colored linen, and got a heavy-weight variety from a company recommended by Susan Brandeis, whose book, The Intentional Thread: A Guide to Drawing, Gesture, and Color in Stitch was a great help to me on many issues related to stitched lettering. Fabrics-store.com sells samples for a very reasonable price, so I was able to look at a number before choosing 4C22.  Another book I studied was Sara Impey, Text in Textile Art.

How to lay out the sentence on the cloth? I tried out a couple of different layouts. Putting the text all on one line results in an awkward size (42x14"). Splitting it over two lines results in a more pleasing size. But it seemed to me that the integrity of the quotation as a whole was better maintained if it were on one line. Also, if it's split over two lines, the whole quotation can be taken in at once. In a long line, your eye has to travel down it, slowing down the reading of the sentence.

As I finish other pieces in the series and hang them together, the overall shape of the display will create a different experience than just one piece hung on its own.

How to stitch the lettering? I quickly settled on couching as the best way to get a smooth, continuous line. Here's a quick explanation if you'd like to know what "couching" refers to.  The thread I used to form the letters is a beautiful silk wrapped paper yarn made from linen by Habu Textiles that I found in a yarn store in New York several years ago.  The paper base gives the yarn a crispness that helps to get sharp points in some letters, while also working well for curved shapes. Here's a repeat of a close-up from my first post that shows the thread and how it's couched. I used a very thin black thread  for the couching (80 wt Aurifil), so it's difficult to see, which is good.  

I considered doubling the linen/silk thread of the lettering, or using a heavier yarn to get a bolder look, but the single strand of thread is very beautiful, and I'm happy with the result. Another possibility would have been to use this thread on white linen, which would also have given a more striking look. But I needed this to be more quiet.

One other process element: Taking the advice of Susan Brandeis, I backed the linen with a light fabric, to keep it from shifting as I did the embroidery. That's the reason for the basting stitches across the fabric in the photo below--long stitches of thin gray and brown threads that are taken out once the stitching is done. I used a 12" hoop, propped against the table, which allowed me to stitch from both above and below. I've since purchased a floor stand to hold the hoop, which will make the next piece in the series easier to work. 

I started on a second piece for the series shortly after I finished the first, this next one to be words spoken by my mother. I did the same process of creating an alphabet from examples of her handwriting: some recipe cards, a list of the work done on our house in Woodbridge, CT purchased in the 1950s, and notes that she took on her cancer treatment in 2002. 

But when I tried to create the sentence in a larger version of my mother's handwriting, I couldn't get it to look like hers. I think it may have to do with the fact that my own handwriting is much closer to hers than it was to Jeremy's, which somehow makes it more difficult to re-create. Also, there's quite a bit of spacing between her letters, that when enlarged looks odd. I put it away some months ago and haven't gone back to it. One of these days, I will try again.  

So, this is the conclusion of my posts on "Words Spoken 1." Writing this out and sharing it has lifted a burden. Thanks to all who have sent me your responses and kind words.

 

Words Spoken--An explanation of the work

An explanation of "Words Spoken"

When my son Jeremy was growing up, he had a talent for remembering things that David and I had forgotten, so we would sometimes call him "The Rememberer." And David had a talent for finding things that Jeremy or I had mislaid, so we would sometimes call him "The Finder." At one point, I asked the two of them, "If Jeremy's the rememberer, and David is the Finder, what would a nickname be for me?" Jeremy answered, "You're the one who goes away."

Of course this phrase has been with me ever since. In the morass of guilt that any parent carries after the death of their child, these words are an unchanging catalyst that over and over again, across the sixteen years since Jeremy's death, precipitates my sense of failure and loss. 

And why this nickname? It was true that my job involved some travel, a night or two or three away from time to time, attending a conference or giving a guest lecture somewhere. It had never occurred to me that these were significant absences to Jeremy. Although the nickname did not make its way into later conversation, the next birthday gift Jeremy got me was a wheeled laptop bag, to make it easier for me when I was traveling with my computer. 

The nickname may have referred to my travel away from home, but I think also of the significant part of the day that Jeremy was in day care or after school care, rather than at home with me or David.  One of the things I discovered about Jeremy after his death, talking with his friends, was that his being adopted as an infant was a larger part of his mental landscape than I knew. I think that may have given him vulnerability to a sense of abandonment that I didn't have a clue about. 

In July of 2016, preparing for an exhibition of my work about loss, I wrote in a blog post: "The series of quilts I've been making for the last twelve years is complete—this work that has been about the death of my son Jeremy and what it is like to live with loss. I have put out into the world, as best I can, what there has been in me to say.  There are no more angles to cover.  This doesn't mean that my deep sense of loss is over, just that I have said what I can about it." Perhaps no new angles, as my previous work included a quilt on regret. But guilt is different from regret, even while overlapping. So, here's something else I found I had to say.

As I thought about the place of these words of Jeremy in my life, I realized that there were other clips of speech that live on in my head, bits of concentrate of a relationship, of a person's meaning to me. My plan is to do a series of these in stitched panels. I will do at least one more, words spoken by my mother. Perhaps I'll do a half-dozen. The others are not so painful. . .  

I'd also like to tell you about the design and construction of the work, but I'll save that for a later post. 

I showed a draft of this post to my husband, and in addition to improving the prose here and there, he asked me, "Why are you writing publicly about this?" Good question—why not just keep it private? My first answer is that I've learned, through people's responses to my earlier work, that others really appreciate having difficult messages out in public, that it gives them a chance to consider similar things in their own lives, and it also helps them understand people they know who have gone through such an experience. This was most notable in the outpouring of response I received when I showed "Self-Portrait, Year 2: Beneath the Surface" at a national exhibit. In the case of "Words Spoken," even if the specific words may have no resonance, I'm thinking many of you carry words from long ago in your head, an isolated phrase or sentence that stays with you, standing in for a person, a relationship. 

Then my second answer to David's question, after I thought a bit more:  Writing publicly about this is also a form of penance. 

 

Words Spoken

Here is the difficult piece that I have held back. It is intended as the first in a series.  

It is hand-stitching on linen, 42 x 14", stretched over a wooden frame. A detail to give you a better sense of the texture.

I will let this stand on its own for a day or two, and then post something more about the work.

Half-Square Triangles and Flying Geese

Although I haven't posted since August of last year, I've been thinking about posting. I've even started a half-dozen posts, all still waiting to be finished or discarded. And wondered why I wasn't finishing any of them. I think it's because I've been holding back on writing publicly about a difficult piece. Nothing to do but to go ahead and write it. But to warm up, I'll write about a couple of simpler pieces I've finished in the last few months.

Simpler in the sense that there's no complex emotion behind these quilts, just a love of shape and color, and enjoyment of the design challenge of coming up with a pleasing whole.

The quilt below began about a year and a half ago when I happened to have out on the table some blue/turquoise/teal batiks from my stash. These are all leftovers from making Shelter. The fabrics looked lovely gathered together. I cut some up into half-square triangles, liked how they looked, and cut up the rest of the fabric into squares, ready to make HSTs. This fall I sewed the blocks, working up a design for a quilt for a friend.  I was thinking of having the squares all contiguous to each other, as I had done for other HST quilts, like this one, or the second and third photos in this post. But my friend suggested adding in some black. What a good idea! It really makes the turquoise glow.

After finishing this quilt, I started on a quilt using another simple, standard quilting block--flying geese. I've not used this block much, because its design (in its classic form) relies on precise piecing, necessary to get precise point. Precision piecing is not a strong point of mine, so I generally avoid it. I did make one flying geese quilt with improvisation rather than precision, which came out very well. But I was recently introduced to a specialty ruler that makes it really simple to up-size the block and then trim them accurately to size. I don't usually buy specialty rulers--just more money spent on something you can usually do with the normal quilters' rulers. But this ruler is definitely worth it! The quilt design comes straight from a pattern called "Remixed Geese," offered free by the Robert Kaufman company. I followed the pattern quite closely, changing the orientation of geese only in a few places.

I had a bin of fabrics that were "white with one other color" that I had collected for another quilt, and the leftovers

were perfect for this quilt. I paired these fabrics with solids, both commercial and hand-dyed.

I made extra blocks, to give me flexibility in placement; this gave me enough leftover blocks to make a baby quilt as well. This gave a home for a few problem blocks that didn't make the cut into the larger quilt, blocks that didn't have enough contrast between the "goose" (big triangle) and the "sky" (2 small triangles): the yellow print and solid blocks at left and bottom, and the blocks that use orange fabric with large white polka dots in upper right and lower left.

 

 

 

Conversation between Dorothy Caldwell and Claire Benn--watch the livestream or catch up later

A special opportunity to see two superb textile artists in conversation with each other is coming up in a couple of days. I've been lucky enough to take classes with both Dorothy Caldwell and Claire Benn and am eager to watch this event. Dorothy and Claire work in abstraction, in close relationship with the land and its component elements. The conversation this Friday will be available both in real time, and then later on youtube.  Here are the details:

Friday, March 12, 4:00 p.m. EST

Link to the facebook page of Fibre Arts Take Two where the video will be hosted: https://www.facebook.com/fibreartstaketwo

Link to the YouTube live stream, where the conversation will be archived: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbSWEfUADOE