Textend 2020 Challenge | January - Inspiration
Textend holds monthly workshops about textiles and needlecrafts of all kinds. In January, they had an Inspiration Day for the Textend 2020 Challenge.
Textend 2020 Challenge - "Inspired by Artists"
Guidelines
Inspired by the work of your chosen artist(s).
Using any technique or mixture of techniques of your choosing as long as they contain some textile work (fabric or stitching).
Can be 2D or 3D, no restriction on size.
Made by one person from the Textend group.
Completed by 30th November for sharing on 12th December.
At the Inspiration Day we were presented with a gallery of about 60 A3 quilts made by contemporary quilters and inspired by an artist. Many were interesting, some were highly creative about how they had used different techniques to colour and stitch the quilts.
I chose four that resonated with me. They seem to fall into two themes, which I'll be exploring in separate posts in this series, although there is also a connection between the themes.
Theme 1: Migration
Nerida Lloyd, after Antony Gormley's Another Place
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By Chris Howells - Edited version of Image:Another Place3.jpg., CC BY 2.5
Another Place is a sculpture installation on Crosby Beach, north of Liverpool. It consists of 100 cast iron human figures facing the sea, over a distance of about three kilometres. The figures are submerged and re-appear as the tide ebbs and flows.
The original is a haunting piece of work. Nerida Lloyd's quilt, of all the ones in the collection, was the one that called to me. It kept something of the eerie atmosphere and bleak loneliness of the original and reminded me of stories last winter about refugees trying to reach the south coast of England.
Cosmo Whyte - The Enigma of Arrival in 4 parts. Part 1: Guess Who is Coming to Dinner? (2017) Life jackets, mussel shells and a wooden pallet. You'll find a better photograph at Anat Egbi.
I saw Cosmo Whyte's piece as part of the Get Up, Stand Up Now exhibition at Somerset House last year. Again, like the quilt by Nerida, it was a very moving piece. When I first saw it, I couldn't understand what I was seeing, the clumps of mussel shells looked like flowers on an exotic garland. Although there is no stitching involved, it felt a very textural piece.
Theme 2: Identity and Intimacy
Avril Horn, after Victor Vasarely "Anti-Racist Drawing", 1939. This inspired a kind of love-hate reaction in me, too. I was fascinated and repelled by it, and impressed with the feather machine quilting on the right.
Andrea Lee, after Constantin Brancusi "The Kiss", 1908
"Self Portrait", Brenda Thomas, after Picasso. It took me a while to see the sewing machine and quilt at the front of the picture.
Each of these quilts and their original artistic inspiration called to me in a way I can't yet explain in words. I'm looking forward to exploring them further and seeing where they lead me.
For the identity theme, as a starting point, I made two galleries in my Textend 2020 Challenge sketchbook. I have a postcard of the original "Anti-Racist Drawing" which I was able to buy from Postcard HQ which specialises in aviation and railway postcards (note for @nathen007).
Another gallery in the sketchbook that references Picasso's portraits. From the left clockwise: Nude Woman in a Red Armchair (1932); Brenda Thomas's self-portrait, with the dual face, stylised hair, cocked head and multiple textures; Girl before a Mirror (1932) and Weeping Woman (1937). Behind the portraits on the right sits The Dream (1932) with its textural wallpaper.
Audrey Coyne, a fashion blogger, is developing her wardrobe as a work of art (my interpretation). She has a formula for adding new pieces to her "forever wardrobe". The first stage is being inspired, collecting images that attract you. She organises her images on Pinterest, I've put mine together in the two galleries in my sketchbook.
Then she analyses what she likes from the images that she's selected, and looks to see what themes emerge. That's stage two for me and my next post in this series.
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I can understand very well why you are drawn to the first quilt. It has something archaic to it with the black figures. The stitches of these figures remind me of the myth of Celtic wicker men as they create the allusion of branches.
The figures seem to be hollowed out and their lifes are lost and forgotten by time.
I have to admit that I am partial as I also like Antony Gormley‘s artwork.
And I am highly interested in the next posts, were you want to explore a curated wardrobe... something I like as an idea but seem to be unable to transfer into reality :-D
That's an interesting comment about the mythic quality of the emerging figures. It seemed to encapsulate both the survival of the people arriving at a place of safety and opportunity and the fear - real or manufactured - that people have of newcomers.
Curated wardrobe - what I was talking about in the post is using the techniques of curating a wardrobe to curate my images ... I have gathered some inspirational images the next stage is to analyse them.
I also need some better adhesive for putting things in my sketchbook! I was using paper glue but it's not strong enough for the thicker card - everything falls off when I lift the page 😂
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