Following up on "Found Shapes"

Since my workshop with Susan Moss, I've done some further work with the "found shapes" that I happened upon. Here's a reminder of what they looked like in my small sketchbook:

I tried enlarging a couple of shapes and doing a version of them with fabric; the shapes below are each about 6" high.  I made two shapes with hand-dyed fabric, using appliqué. The first one looked clunky. The second one was better, but still didn't move me. Finally I tried a drawing made by couching down some silk-wrapped linen thread that I like. Still no interest in going further.

I decided the found shapes should just stay what they were originally, swatches of gouache outlined with a pen (my favorite for this was a Tombow Fudenosuke brush pen, hard tip). One friend who wrote me about my last post, said that she could see me using these on the cards that I make. Yes, a good use for them, thank you Mary Beth! So I started by putting six on a card, just because that's how many swatches I had put on a page in my sketchbook.

But these seemed too crowded to me, so I cut them all out individually and put just two on a card, and I like this better. I also tried out some colored paper that I had on hand, for the card, and I like that too. So here are eight cards, ready to go:

And then, as I looked again at the squared shapes, I got an idea for a new direction for one of my menhirs  projects, the one that focuses on a grouping of a few stones. Here's a rough sketch that I did back in October; the shapes were based on my photographs of a section of a line of neolithic standing stones at Carnac.

I don't need to stay so close to the original shapes, but I haven't had a sense of another direction to take. On the other hand, I've come to understand better the nature of my attraction to these stones, as I have read and thought about them over the last year or two. I now think of this project with the name "My Beloved Dead," a kind of memorial for my mother, my father, and my son. I recently did another drawing, influenced by looking at the "found shapes" from my sketchbook; I moved the shapes in closer relationship to each other, together forming an overall shape.

This is now going in a more fruitful direction. The new relationship between the shapes connects up with a mental image that came to me in the wake of Jeremy's death--that of Jeremy being comforted by my parents, who had both died in the previous year. And writing this, I realize that I'm working with a theme close to that of "Shelter," a quilt made in 2010.

In the meantime, I have also gone back to "Persistence," my other menhirs project, a hand-stitching project that focuses on the phenomenon of the thousands of stones that make up the alignments of Carnac. Once I get this project to the point where I can begin the actual stitching, not much thought will be needed, and I can turn back to concentrated work on "My Beloved Dead." I will work first on drawings, perhaps with charcoal, which I enjoyed using in the April workshop. I may try watercolor. I may also try painting fabric. I expect that this will eventually turn more abstract and gestural, but it will take a long while to get there. I'm in no hurry. The final piece will likely be about 45" x 60," to fit a space I have in my studio.

I am very glad to once again be engaged with these larger art projects, which have their origin in a 2019 trip to Brittany, where I was entranced by the menhirs. I recently found this 15-minute video that shows multiple aerial videos of the alignments, which give a very good sense of the nature and scope of these monuments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoQYMA3_kB8

The April sketchbook workshop definitely spurred me to get back into my own work!

 

Persistence

Here's what I'm thinking about for my work about "persistence"--a large piece of cloth (about 90" in longest dimension), on which I stitch thousands of marks in linear configurations.  I've made a full-size sketch that roughly replicates the layout of the three major alignments in Carnac. This is just a very early starting point and the final piece may bear little resemblance to this, but it's enough to serve as a kind of placeholder. Right now, it is hanging vertically on my design wall, but it may end up horizontal.

This rough sketch in place, I went on to do stitching trials, trying out the kinds of marks I might make, with what kind of thread, and in what colors.  I started out with the heavy natural linen I enjoy working with (4C22 from Fabrics-Store), and a black silk-wrapped linen thread that I had on hand from Habu Textiles. 

Then more sampling with different threads, this time stitching on linen that has been colored with different hues/values of earth pigments (more on earth pigments below):

This helped me decide that I prefer a light or medium-light color for the stitches, on a dark background. 

In order to try out a range of colors/values for the thread, I purchased a few different flat threads from Habu, which I can dye myself. (I like how a flat thread yields unexpected shapes in the stitches.)

Here's one of the threads, dyed with 2 different light grays, though it is difficult to tell the difference in hue at this light value.

And here are trials with three different threads from Habu, all dyed very light gray:

Now to explain the earth pigmented fabric. From an early stage, I've been talking with my friend Sheryl St. Germain about this project. Sheryl and I both attended a 2022 workshop by Susan Brandeis that centered on hand-stitching. I focused on stitching that I might use for my work about menhirs, and Sheryl was working with cloth that she had painted with earth pigments, a method of coloring cloth that she had recently learned from Claire Benn. We continued to e-mail back and forth about our work after the workshop. When I wrote about my decision to not use the natural linen, along with some thoughts about dyeing the background fabric, Sheryl suggested using earth pigments instead of chemical dyes. I liked the idea of this--because of the close association of earth and stone in these neolithic monuments--but I knew from hearing about Sheryl's experience that the process of using earth pigments was very different from anything I had done before, and I just didn't have it in me to learn a whole new process that I might not use again after this one project. Sheryl then offered to color the cloth for me. This was such a deeply generous offer that I hesitated to accept, but her offer came from the heart, and I opened my heart to accept. (It happens that this was one thing that has led me to think about how hard it can be to accept help, and I'm learning that accepting help is as important to a life well lived as is giving help.) 

Here are the samples that Sheryl worked up for me early in the design process, before I had decided whether I wanted the background to be light or dark. Sheryl tested three different earth pigments (all in the grayish/brown range that I wanted), in 2 or 3 different values.

I've picked the color in the lower right corner. My cloth will have the earth pigment applied late in August, and then it will need another four weeks to cure before I can work with it. This gives me the additional time I need to do some further thread trials, both of dyeing and stitching.

This is the first time that one of my personal works has become a collaborative project, and that scared me at first--how could I give over a central, physical part of the project to someone else? All of my work has been shaped significantly by extended discussion with friends and teachers, but I've always done all the actual work myself. But giving up control can be a good thing, and having Sheryl move forward with the cloth experiments has helped keep me moving forward on my part of the project. And of course our discussions all along the way have helped me find my way to the composition this will become.

THANK YOU SHERYL!!

Menhirs

In 2019, my husband and I went to France, and we spent several days in Brittany, including two days in Carnac. The neolithic stone monuments there made a deep impression on me--thousands of menhirs (large stones placed upright) arranged in rows over a space of over two miles.  The monuments date from about 4500-3300 BCE, so about 6,000 years ago (1,000 or more years earlier than Stonehenge). 

Here are a couple of aerial views of portions of the stone alignments: from way above and closer in. And here's a video that puts together aerial views of many alignments in Brittany. (Ignore the creepy music at the start; it soon quiets down. There's no narration.)

Of course standing amongst the stones, one doesn't get such an overview. Instead, there is a feeling of immersion in a massive enterprise.

The stones range in size from about 2 to 13 feet. You can see the scale of some of the larger stones in the next photo, which includes a human visitor in the center foreground.

The stones are many different shapes, and were taken from outcrops of stones right in the area. The stones are mostly unworked, but some have been lightly shaped.

You can see the overall plan of the 3 major alignments here, and some additional photos here. [Added 8-25-25: And here's a video with great aerial views of the alignments in Brittany.]

My initial response was a sense of awe at the enormity of the human project, which must have required persistence over many years. There had to be a collective commitment to an endeavor that would eventually result in the lines of stones and the corridors in between them. This was my starting place: that the stones were a kind of witness to the persistence of humans, creating together a monument of deep meaning to them.  So, the first words I had in mind as I thought about a possible art work in response to the alignments were "persistence" and "witness," and I have one piece sketched out that is centered on this theme. (More about that in a subsequent post.)

But I was also driven to find out what I could about the possible meaning of these lines of stones to the neolithic people who placed them. From the museum in Carnac and from early reading, it quickly became clear that there will never be a consensus on the issue of meaning. Archaeoastronomical explanations (e.g. connection to a solstice) don't work for these configurations, and of course there is no written record to refer to. I've been driven to do a fair amount of reading in the scholarship on these and other neolithic sites--a practice of reading and note-taking that I thought I'd left behind when I stopped doing historical scholarship in 2004. But here I am again, trying to piece together what some human actions meant, based on whatever evidence one could find--in this case physical evidence rather than written.

I am still reading and thinking about this, but it now makes sense to me that the overarching meaning of the alignments, taken together with other kinds of contemporary monuments in the same area--dolmens (stone tombs) and tumuli (burial mounds)--is connected to death and remembrance. That the manipulation of stone and earth (the stones "planted" in the earth, and earth mounded over stones) is an elemental response to human loss. (There are no burials associated with the menhirs, but the location of the lines of menhirs in relationship to the dolmens and tumuli puts the overall complex in close relationship to death and its associated emotions and practices.)

So. . . this brings me back to familiar territory, as a significant part of my previous work on loss was centered on stone, described here. I am in the midst of sketching out a second piece on the alignments that centers on this theme. I'll also write more about this in a later post.