Are they eyes, eggs, areolas, holes, moon craters, pollen or bubbles?
Light as they rise to the Milky Way, darkening in shadow and deep water. They’ll rise above and darken again in dusk.
Author: arlee
I am a Canadian textile artist in Calgary, Alberta. As textile artists, we connect and are connected to communities larger than our Selves, or our immediate environs. We encapsulate culture, technique, history and innovation every time we touch cloth.
roots trees roots
They anchor, they protect and provide. Encircling, hidden but supportive, invisible but aware.
What is anything without roots? No connection, no growth, no change, no immutabilty. Paradox, needed but forgotten.
A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail. H.Hesse
she rises
She is attached to her background now, though i’m going to add somewhat “ripply” stitching to the sides–she looks as though she’s rising, but not from water, just rising!! Still lots of roots to do, but i’m actually quite close to finishing. (And i need the wire cutters to get that safety pin out–i stoopidly stitched over it on the machine when i was basting edges!)
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On a side note about our “official” status now: neither of us are used to wearing rings, so it’s startling sometimes to catch sight of them out of the corner of the eye 🙂
guess what happened under the apple tree on April 29?
background auditions again
More circles on the large moon piece last night, and yes, the glowing rhubarb root yellow thread for clouds, but today i must also get the figure where she belongs too!
Several choices, reminding me of searching for the perfect background for “Mother’s Heart” in 2013. (Looking for that post opens thought processes again for more of those wonderful anatomical hearts….) I don’t want her “dancing” on this work–though that would be difficult with no feet!– but i don’t want her “standing still” either. She must float, wave, hover, but still rise from, if that makes any sense.
Weak:
It *could* work, but not in this context.
Better, but the borgles going under the figure would be problematic, even trimmed away:
Rather dull too.
AHHHHHHHHHHHH, yes.
Some movement, some areas of interest, a contrast in texture.
I’ll trim away behind the figure though, because i’d really like to use the textured area in something else as well, maybe another small moon piece.
round and round –and round again, we go
Picked out most of the intrusive “WTH was i thinking” stitch areas (except for the bottom left still to be removed), and sticking to one slow circle a day. Well, actually a circle a twenty minutes…. I’m undecided yet about the cloud and mountain shapes–do i stick to the blue, or do i add that wonderful rhubarb root thread for the incredible glow it gives?
It’s going to be interesting to see if much distortion will occur when i stretch this one, or if the distortion will *be* stretched *out*–hoping it all works if that happens! I’ll just say it’s part of the “organic” process 🙂
I’m quite enjoying all this indigo work, but i’m ready for new stuff too–back to neutrals and rust? A different colour? Might be spending a month with some new sampling in the sketchbook and some different techniques. Or maybe a different medium. Time to ratchet things in a new direction. I love my work and my way of working, but i don’t want to be bored, stagnating or repeating myself.
standing alone
She’s ready for attaching to her background.
I have still to audition the fabric that will hold her–and that woogle in her arm on the right side of the photo will be straightened in the stitching.
There will be more roots as everything comes together as well. She rises from river and earth as my Mother.
dragging my feet
Fortunately, *she* doesn’t have any, or they’d be dragging too….
I do love the “crackle” stitch approach for the indigo areas, and relatively fast they are, but they aren’t, too ;( !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! At least the roots work up fastly! I’m thinking she may be ready to attach to her background by the weekend. Of course, that means i now have to start auditioning fabrics for behind her–and am getting the feeling i may have to either indigo up some cotton, or go in a slightly different feel. She has to be integrated: she rises from Nature, but she also has to stand “out”, alone.
I’ll have to start mixing strands of thread together for the roots—-my variegated browns in thickness and colourways are all too different from each other!
I have started the fifth moon in the series as well, but here is the 4th one done. Kept it simple simple, but i think the surround needs a *wee* bit more of that wonderful rhubarb root dyed thread.
The next few of these are slightly different in configuration–a circle can be a sum of the parts, and the parts can be unique.
mooning again
One (now in Australia!):
Two, the big one from the main exhibit piece, still in progress (sigh):
Three:
Four, almost done, a few squigglies left to do,reminding me of Van Gogh’s Starry Night:
Again, indigo and Procion, a bit of indigo batik in the centre pieces, possibly some potassium permanganate, as the background fabric was scrounged from the student reject box at ACAD a few years ago. I’m also going to have to fire up the rhubarb root dye pot, as the yellow threads are running out. They GLOW in silk and cotton, and without them, there’s not quite as much “life” in these.
I could make a million of these, and still have more ideas. I’m also eyeballing the few rusted fabrics i have left, for larger work, multiples, different moods.
Five, six and seven are in the pipe as well.
time is a river
Periodically, i dig through my old Flickr account, and to my surprise, found this from July 2009. And Greyman thinks she might be in the basement rolled up in an old garbage bag! Apparently from the notes on the flickr photo, she was to be part of my plans for my first residency at ACAD through Contextural, and actually was going to be a Hoodoo figure. (No, not the WooWoo Voodoo Hoodoo type, but one of these.) Since that first residency was a HUGE bust, she got packed away and forgotten.
Sometimes i find my ideas go nowhere for a long time: not because i don’t want to implement them, but because i don’t have the skill set at the time of the concept, sometimes because everything hasn’t been thought through for end result, execution of idea and face it, true interest. Sampling is a wonderful thing, but obviously at the time, i got lost, biting off more than i could chew.
THIS is the Blue figure i mentioned in a previous post–i just hadn’t realized it at the time. She needs to be a little less “pointy”, though i also don’t want an obvious “head” either. The first step will be to take her apart completely. After being stored for all these years in a basement that was flooded in the 2013 Calgary disaster, i don’t want to be finding any surprises in her.
I discharged blue velveteen for this piece:
Not indigo dyed, but sure looks like it! When i take her apart to check for possible damage, i think i’m going to add some more of the mokume style discharge, just a bit as i love that contrast of earth and water.
As is my wont, i am thinking of rivers again/still. Can one represent a river as a vertical 3d form? In the Feminine, i think so. Notebook scribblings:
a river is a space, a river is time one ripple sweeps another changing the first and shaping the second, forming a third but still the mother
old rivers become ripples in shape, winding and wandering back to themselves, carving deep veins in the earth
old rivers are womanly, curving and undulating, swift along banks but still and deep in the centre
she/river nurtures but sweeps roots to cross and tangle, knotting nets and weaving links
albedo too 
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