Pulling Threads

Warp and Weft

In my first pass at Aunt Francis and Potpourri, I thought about trying to weave parts of the image. Constructing a loom of my mother’s fibers, directly into the image. Then, use methyl cellulose to redirect the threads off the warp and into organic forms.

Perhaps this might work, but at this scale it was nothing but frustration and mess. This piece led to quite an art block, that was only broken by my settling on the Holbein sketchbook format.

It was this work that convinced me that dried flowers, and the art paper was not the path I wanted in this project. I also discarded the idea of having such literal backdrops of my grandmother’s house.

It doesn’t come across whatsoever, but I was thinking about Wayne Thiebaud as I was considering how to get the warp to be drawn into shape. I was introduced to Thiebaud via the Modern Arts Notes podcast, episode 324 ². The episode was replayed over Christmas 2021, on the event of the artist’s passing.

When I saw this painting, and a few similar ones by Thiebaud, I was immediately struck by how much like textile it looks. If I could figure out how to affix the threads, I’d love to do a fiber-based study of this painting.

Creating Space

A common conversation between myself and my Tutor was about the Space within an image. In particular, my habit of leaving backgrounds white. I can’t say I fully resolved that habit in these works, but I did spend a great deal of time thinking about the space created within the images.

Fibers leapt into the foreground, and even closer to the viewer. Ink and watercolour fell backwards into the middle ground and background. Where it made sense to the image, I tried to play between the layers to produce interesting spacial effects.

What is Real

Reflecting on my use of the ink, watercolour and fiber, I noticed a motif of sorts in my work.

When I planned out this project, the fibers of my mother’s loom were to echo my mother’s voice in the stories. This expanded in concept to start representing anything metaphorical, or dreamlike associated to the events.

This moved the watercolour and ink into the role of representing the ‘physically real’ aspects of the story. this doesn’t hold perfectly, but is common enough that it jumped out at me.

This juxtaposition is interesting, given it is the thread that jumps off the page into three dimensions and it is the watercolour and ink that remains flat.

As I was thinking about the green lawn of this painting, I thinking about how to show a thick painted impasto using fiber. In particular, Thiebaud’s Painting from Wimbledon for Sports Illustrated. Although unlike I linked further up, it still reminds me of closely clustered fiber.

Aunt Francis and the Potpourri

Dinner was delayed, and everyone was getting hungry. Aunt Francis, whose eyesight hadn’t been good for many years, was happily snacking on the bowl of bits&bites that Grandma had put out. Of course, the bowls of snacks had already been emptied and cleared away. Aunt Francis was eating the potpourri

I had the thought that there would be an audience to the events, as the story took place at a dinner party. I dislike them now, and if I redo this, I will rethink the figures.

Grandma’s Brownie Box Camera

The last conversation I had with my grandmother, was late at night in her living room. She told me stories of her youth, taking her brownie box camera up into the mountains of Alaska to take pictures.

I wonder what happened to those pictures.

By coincidence, I was creating this work on the date of my Grandmother’s birthday. My Uncle Stu posted this photo on social media, and I couldn’t ignore the serendipity.

Dancing with Spiders

A memory of a blackwidow spider in my grandmother’s house, reminded me of a story of my father’s. As a kid, he and his brothers would collect blackwidow spiders in jars. Then, in the way that only young boys can possibly consider “smart”, they’d dump the spiders on the floor and kick them about with their bare feet.

My Thirties were About Pain

I spent my thirties in severe pain. Nearly crippled by sciatica that rendered my left leg randomly paralyzed. Learning functional exercises with kettlebells, and incredibly painful stretching, finally corrected the problem.

I wanted a prison. Broken bars. I don’t consider this a particularly strong work, and maybe I’ll revisit it in the future. Though I’m not sure what I’d change.

Martin and the Goose

My mother relates a story of a visit to her Aunt Shirley’s farm when I was a toddler. They had a goose that would attack my great Uncle Chester, or any other adult. but not me. The goose and I were friends.

Since I was quite young — perhaps even before I was born — this print has hung in my parent’s house. I have never been able to find an image of it online, though it is registered in the National Gallery of Canada’s database of Inuit art. I recently traveled back to my parent’s and was able to take a rather bad photo, so I could record it here in my log.

The print tells a story of a sorcerer who disguises themself as a polar bear, high in the arctic. Two Canadian geese begin harassing the polar bear, and in response the bear grows these additional goose heads in order to defend themself. It was from here that I gained much of the idea to use the personal story of myself with the goose on my Great Aunt Shirley’s farm.

The Doctors all said his story should have ended

In my teens, my father fell of Mount Andromeda in the Canadian Rockies. The injuries he suffered were both incredibly severe, and far less than they should have been given how far he fell.

He walked seven hours out to the ambulance.

I needed this work to be simple. What does the mountain mean? Can you see the frayed rope? The plants that grew strong after the accident? Would you know what this meant if you didn’t know the story?

C

At the time I was finishing Part 4 of this unit, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. I had been creating pastels, with my blue nitrile gloves. The pastels were a particularly bloody shade of red. I knew I needed to work these coincidences together.

The cancer is minor. As I type, she has begun radiation treatment. She’ll be fine, physically, but emotionally this takes its toll.

Cancer grows its loops and lesions throughout the body. I wanted it to invade the viewer’s space, and look organic. Creating ribbons by bundling up the threads and looping them around a structure of straight lines.

Most of these threads are from my mother’s loom. My mother’s body.

There are three or four knots made of commercial cotton fiber. Invading. Seeds that twisted the rest.

Nours.

Nour Bishouty

I had attended an exhibit at the MOCA, here in Toronto, where I first encountered Nour Bishouty’s work in the form a video installation, Aḏrāʾ Samar, showing her ice sculptures melting in situ of mundane locations. Her sculptures are created from religious icon moulds that her father once used in his own artistic practice. In the video, the artist has used the moulds to shape ice, and then placed them in the contexts those icons would have been used and recorded them melting.

Watching the video was a profound and moving experience for me. I believe this is where I decided on using my mother’s thread in the works. Of embedding my own sense of nostalgia — and inevitable loss — of my mother’s art into something I am creating.

Mark Newport

I was drawn to how Mark Newport intervened with thread into pre-existing imagery. He was creating something new, out of collage and stitching, but not using those stitches to define a new drawing. They were, instead, working within the pre-existing confines and overlaying a dimension quality. To the right I have shown a detail of his work “Freedom Bedcover: Zachary” which is a quilt made from comic book pages and then embroidered. I like how this plays with preconceptions, and brings fiber craft into the conversation.

Melissa Zexter

Melissa Zexter’s work circled around intervening onto photographs. Unlike Mark Newport, above, she uses the thread to tell alternate stories or to alter the narrative that the underlying photograph provides.

I think you can see a direct line between her work and mine.

Adam Jon Moore

An artist in the LGBTQ+ community, Adam Jon Moore re-interprets gay themed illustrations into embroidery. When I first encountered his work I thought I was looking at ink on paper, but when I realized this was all stitched it led me to consider different ways a drawing might come about.

One of the unsurprising yet surprising discoveries that led off from my stumbling upon Adam Jon Moore’s work is that there is an entire global community of queer artists producing embroidered queer erotica. I really shouldn’t be surprised, as humans will human, but I find it absolutely fascinating the choice of materials and methods that this community has coalesced around.

And then I stumble on Earth, a tapestry work. Here, I see something similar to my work in the project. I can see a layering of narrative, and many “personal symbols”. The woman in the image is mature, aging and tattooed. A real person, seemingly, not some photoshoped model. Floating eyes watch the viewer, perhaps turning the viewer’s gaze back upon them?

Its interesting how the figure is balacned between symbols of life (leaves, plants, trees) and more threatening symbols(the snake). Is this an Eden allegory? The snake reminds me of some of my early sketches for this project (seen at top of post).

For example Bomb, Dove and Victims (1967). When I first look at this, I see a fountain perhaps, with a bird emerging. Flying humanoid forms are threatening or chasing the bird.

But reading the title, the fountain becomes a mushroom cloud. The yellow trails become indications of incineration.

I find myself thinking about my own planning in this project. How I considered how viewers might not understand the content of a piece because the symbols are personal. Without the context of the pieces, part of the narrative is obscured.