Filed under: book binding, craft, surrounds | Tags: artist book, book binding, embroidery
I’ve been pottering along working on embroideries. A slow process with limited moments of revelation and excitement but sustained pleasure and growth. Today I finished this new book cover which will soon (don’t ask me to define soon) be bursting with drawings that will spill out of the covers.
I’ve begun work on a new very special book cover. To simplify the process and avoid mistakes I’ve broken the design into eighths. Over 8,000 stitches will be sewn before it is complete but I already see it all before me.
Expect some posts over the next week that look at some older books I’ve made both complete and incomplete.
And apparently I’m not the only person who thinks textiles and book covers make a perfect pair.
A new colour palette for a new map, this time of clifton hill with merri creek running through. Contrasting vibrant colours juxtaposed next to each other dull the whole down whilst retaining some essential purity.
I’ve been writing lots of applications lately and have not yet been able to put coherently into words what these maps are and mean to me. Women’s labour codifying the land, exerting a passive categorical control through slow observation and documentation. An intimate colonisation.
Filed under: 2009, made in, craft | Tags: cartography, cross stitch, embroidery, mapping
My first completed embroidery map. My finger tips may be swollen and sore from the final stitches but I am so pleased to have this finished. The bulk of the cotton thread makes stitching hard but gives a weight to the fabric; distorting and warping the image out from its grid like origins.
To give an idea of the bulk of the thread here’s an image of the back taken before the edges of the linen were trimmed.
Filed under: 2009, made in, book binding, craft, drawing | Tags: artist book, embroidery, home, watercolour
Finally finished. This book is a chronology of all the buildings I’ve known as home. A personal history of colonising the land. The covers are laser engraved with an adapted William Morris motif, recalling both internal intimate spaces, and the english sensibility that is projected onto the land. The inset embroidery brings the feminine to the fore, the hand crafted as gift, a gesture of love, a sharing of perspectives. The handcrafted nature of the work is restated by the exposed stitching, including it’s visible flaws and tensions. Beginning with the home I returned from the hospital to as a newborn, and moving through to a building I have not yet set foot in, but is the form of my future home, where my daydreams reside.
Filed under: craft, drawing, surrounds | Tags: craft, embroidery, watercolour
Contemplating windows, the blueprint of interior spaces and the experiences held in them emerge, housemates and lovers, settling and escaping, individual and shared histories.
Whilst painting and stitching away at my current project I contemplate the zine format. A format of reproduction and distribution, reaching it’s audience through a cheap transaction, taken home, examined intimately. Do I have anything to express through a format that does not require hundreds of hours production, that is cheaply and easily reprinted and rebound? And what does the beautiful piece of expensive paper hanging on my studio wall have to do with it?
In studio news, I’m now sharing my space with the lovely Phebe Parisia.
Filed under: book binding, craft, surrounds | Tags: artist book, desk, embroidery, studio
My beloved drop leaf table easily forms a home studio. A perfect base for my embroidery work and the occasional watercolour. Also the site where I plan book formats and designs.
Embroidering from designs on my computer screen, hours pass without my realising, I hadn’t planned on spending the entire weekend here, working on textile maps and watercolours.
Filed under: book binding, craft, surrounds | Tags: embroidery, ideas, watercolour
A snapshot of my current output, slow processes govern my work. An embroidered map takes many hours longer than anticipated, intended as the first of a series, a series that will be a life time task.
The emergent beginnings of a book, documenting the buildings I’ve known as home. A complex mix of binding, embroidery, wood engraving, pigment flocking and watercolour. I consider adding more to the plan, perhaps words need be involved.
My mind is endlessly engaged with new projects, yet must be reeled in and contained, assessments to be written instead.
Filed under: 2009, made in, book binding, craft, drawing | Tags: artist book, drawing, embroidery
I finished my latest work today, managing to squeeze drawing time in between classes, reading and report writing. This book is as much about touch and the tactile as it is about vision and viewpoint. It is made to be interacted with, from the supple give of cotton embroidery to the brittle ruptures of the folds.
The map is something I have been attempting to incorporate in or alongside my landscapes for sometime. An attempt at that can be seen in my previous post waxy colour. The map is a locater, a guide, the history of a journey and a place that exists beyond the aspect I represent. The pastels of the street directory have held great appeal since childhood and recently created a charming excuse to buy more embroidery threads.
Filed under: book binding, craft, drawing, surrounds | Tags: artist book, drawing, embroidery, graphite
My current work in progress an embroidery covered concertina book drawn with my beloved grey leads.
I have the strong urge to drop everything in my life to focus on my art right now. I love my masters but every morning I’m drawn to skipping class and heading to my studio, I don’t. My studio is currently my only constant with three different homes so far this year I feel in a never ending state of transience. I depend on my studio space for comfort yet am unable to commit to truly embracing it as my future there is uncertain beyond the end of the year. I long for a long term space, to sleep and make art, the two intwined in the same room and no other obligations.
