The creative process for the most recent quilt

Similar to the previous quilt Carpe Diem, this quilt starts out with the intention of bringing order out of chaos: from leftover strips of different lengths, widths and shades, and assorted small off-cuts lie scattered on the kitchen bench after the latest quilt top was completed. They are dancing before me, begging for attention to find a place of their own in connection and harmony with each other. As yet I don’t know how all these bits and pieces will come together. And I have a suspicion that there’ll be lots left over for the next creative exploration. Will it matter if they are randomly pieced and matched, simply by size and tone? I think not. So I get busy combining the strips into blocks, more like strips, without knowing the end result of size. And without realising that details were to come later.

As per usual, I break my own rules. Firstly by cutting pieces to fit evenly with another compatible colour tone. And by deciding to break the ‘golden rule’ of traditional piecing: to make joins meet at the points. It has a freeing effect in the process of creating my random patches of fabric, because as yet no clear design has been revealed, other than the earlier inspiration from Paul Klee. While I do attach perceived ‘finished’ patches or blocks to a design board, the usual process of pre-empting the final form, the concepts that have arisen during the process of making them are still in hiding. I’m not sure when they might appear, so it’s a case of working in the dark.

But of course suggestions for themes seep through, without imposition or insistence. Among them are those that arose during the making of the previous quilt, Carpe Diem. Themes, such as the four seasons and their cross-quarter mid-season days, those that signal the end of the previous season and herald the one that is on its way are very familiar.  Then there are the daily changes that take us from morning, through to midday and on into the dark of night – also just simple reflections on the variants of weather changes, embedded in the realisation of climatic changes. There is no intention to impart scenic similarities (- though some I have seen are quite stunning, as the one below taken by a resident of Winmalee), but rather to evoke the experiences of seeing these seasons and times of day in the recollection of the viewer.

Like putting the pieces of a jigsaw together – or joining the various individual blocks that come together to form the final pattern in a traditional quilt, placement is important in the grand scheme of things. Eventually ideas for the final placements start to sneak in, make their presence felt as I am suddenly going into 'listening mode'. Instead of being locked into a jigsaw, or pattern, I can play with the pieces before deciding where they might be best placed. And it takes both seeing what is there, and listening to those suggestions from the fabrics. Still hovering in the background is the potentiality of themes to be presented: the four seasons, morning, noon and night, dawn and dusk... others might become more evident during the process of piecing.

The playfulness of creating is now being taken over by the materials themselves, though a conflict with the underlying concepts that have been hovering in the background seem to be emerging. And while I am not really willing to relinquish their offerings, they do seem to restrict choices - about placement in particular. I can and do acknowledge that the role of the artist is to make familiar things seem strange, this project and its process is not about splashing paint on a canvas and riding over it to see what results, a la Jackson Pollock – far too random a process and technique for my personality. There is after all a kind of ritual being observed in the creative process with fabrics, a narrative involving the construction of an emerging as yet to be revealed narrative. 

...on perspectives

Perspective is what we see when we look towards an horizon in nature, or towards an object that prevents further visibility  – which it always does in fact, even out at sea. By looking towards, and then beyond the horizon, perspective presents the illusion of reality through suggesting an invisible distance on a flat surface – as in a photograph or painting. Accurately representing three-dimensional perspective in art is a skill exercised through a combination of observations and mathematical grid measurements, thereby engaging the eye to look towards an unseen, hidden and imaginary vanishing point beyond the horizon, and mimicking the eye’s natural focus.  

David Hockney in ‘Secret Knowledge’ (2006, Thames & Hudson) revealed another ‘lost’ technique that advanced the search for naturalism and a realistic visual perspective. It was the use of optical devices over the mathematical lineal grid, especially for portraiture by which the rise of realism took hold. The ‘camera obscura’ (dark room), containing a glass lens, was a tracing device that was particularly useful in transferring flat patterns into a 3D illusion, such as folds in clothes – and faces. Many of the portraits Hockney researched were of the same size,  about 30x30cms, and of course being portraits the greater the likeness the more acceptable it would be.

Although there is no vanishing point evident, the illusion of an horizon is a powerful way to view this quilt, where the unseen (that which is beyond of the horizon) comes forward to be visibly present, and what is obviously visible on the surface recedes. Reading the quilt holistically, that is in terms of the Earth and the wider Universe, there is no left to right, nor is up/down fixed – both can be seen in reverse and on a wide variety of angles. As we know, no two sunrises or sunsets are the same. They depend on all sorts of factors: the time difference between daylight and dark hours over the seasons; weather conditions, place and time of observation. Such is the wonderful world of the imagination that is aroused through creating art. The sense of wonder, combined with a desire to leave my own impressions of these natural phenomena, persisted in spite of the material limitations. This wall hanging is a celebration of both sunrise and sunset, beginnings and endings - in all their glory. It reminds us to 'carpe diem' – every single one that we have the fortune to live in.

Carpe Diem : inspiration for the design

Although the quilt started to take form in my internal reflections, finding new relationships between colours, and the means to bring the influences together, the structure had unknowingly always been there. I just needed to find it. Creative acts absorb influences from their lives, from other artists. Initially thinking strata formation as representing horizons, I went to my folder of design ideas and came across several A4 colour copies of the work of German/Swiss visual artist Paul Klee, working with the Cubist movement. I was no doubt attracted to the abstract nature of his angular paintings when I collected the prints as they resonated strongly with the grid of patchwork design – though in a more free form. I tend to muse that he could have been a quilter!

I chose one work as my ‘inspirational’ template, no doubt because of its horizontal stratification, and drew up a strategy for building the quilt based loosely on Klee’s elements of design. The name of the work that was produced in 1929 is 'Monument in a Fertile County'(as seen above). The usual process of creating fabric patches by joining strips was confined by size requirements. Then the fabrics had been previously cut into various lengths of about 1’6” (450mm), no wider than 4” (100mm, and many of them had already been sewn together. There had come a point to make a decision. Following the lead of Klee’s striations I would work on building roughly 7” wide striations, roughly 12” long for the width. To arrive at the desired length of 3’4” (1000mms) meant building nine or ten thirty-six inch long strata. It all seemed a bit random. To add a further random element, when each strip was completed it was stitched to the previous one, forming horizontal layers and parallel lines.

I found it interesting to read that Klee experimented with colour, both complimentary according to contemporary painterly usage, and also with colour dissonance that could be explored through abstractionism. Klee used blocks of colours designated by ‘pure’ geometric measurements, halving or doubling strips where layers cross on the vertical, creating points at which each block of strips intersected with the others. A lot can be said about Paul Klee, his life and artworks, a German Jew who fled to Switzerland during the Nazi regime. It’s somewhat incongruous that his works were both banned - and stolen - by perpetrators of the regime. But one quote is notable: when conceiving a view in this way, he suggested that it might “find its way back to reality”. This brought up the notion of perspective for me, which I'd considered as part of my PhD research.

 

Carpe Diem: the fabrics

As I mentioned in a previous post of Leo’s quilt (July ’22), I’d been collecting many of these vibrant fabrics from Dianne Johnston and other hand-dyers over many years. They had been collected for their sheer beauty. Some were destined to become part of a double bed quilt, envisaged by the images of outer space returning to us on Earth via satellite from millions of light years ago. I fancied sleeping under the stars in the comfort of my own bed! Grand, universal limitless space became transformed into the perhaps less grand, but regular events of our journey round sun, witnessed daily on our doorstep, sunrises and sunsets. And continuing the journey with such hand-dyed fabrics, they spoke to me of sunrises and sunsets, of dawn and dusk, the real experience of witnessing Earth’s journey around Sun - and all the metaphors and myths it has given rise to. 

 In my creative journey for designing this smaller quilt boundaries related to size were established. It was to fill a specific space on a wall in a bedroom. Every work of art has a purpose, concealing the artificial division between craft and what we call and revere as ‘the fine arts’. This time its purpose was to cover the unwanted sight of the frame of a small ‘dead’ air conditioner in the bedroom. The design is often limited by space. Space is what constrains – and necessarily designates design, spaces in which reside concept, skills and utility. 

 Cause and effect can be misplaced in the act of creation: we create in the process, the outcome often being as yet unseen, not yet eaten or worn, etc. I don’t have the creative gene in the same way that I have hazel eyes. The will to create has me in its grip. Creativity is definitely in the process rather than in the genes, rather than being 'talented' as is generally presumed. It’s about need, passion and will in equal share, and importantly, the opportunity to express them. Over many cycles of designing quilts, I have consciously tried to ignore the limitations of the well-known colour wheel with its normative suggestions of complementary colours. Fabric has its own limitations. Even though not showing commercial patterns, all fabric is fixed in colour and immutable, unlike a pallet of mixable paint colours. One of the pleasing aspects of hand-dyes is their streaky, blotchy nature, so that a deep red background can also reveal an orange and yellow splash, with a hint of blue. A marbled orange can hide hints of deep purple. And of course it’s all about movement, the changing reflections of Earth’s surface on its daily travels in the annual migration round Sun. 

It's trite to say that sunrises and sunsets are infinite, limited only by people's reactions. I started to collect images for inspiration from friends' photos on Facebook onto my computer. The truly spectacular and dramatic display of the setting sun can be breathtaking. From where I am situated on Earth, facing to the northeast, sunsets are less pronounced. But to watch the almost 180 degrees spread of the morning Sun’s incandescent glow arising in the darkness, emerging behind the bush surrounding the house, elicits immense awe and gratitude.

Other less conscious boundaries can occur through limitations placed on us by our perception – or the dis-ability to perceive differently. It took some time during the early stages to come to the understanding that my original plan was not only NOT going to work, but was unnecessary – coming from the way we usually see sunrises and sunsets: as horizontal; and distinct, and used to admiring the glorious colours of a summer sunset taking precedence over sunrises. As I was unravelling the relationship between sunrises and sunsets, I started to see the similarities in the time of day, at both the rising and setting of the sun. Instead of sunrise bands alternating with bands of sunset, I could see the colours in the fabrics merging into morning and evening horizons, each phenomenon becoming interchangeable. Oranges, yellows and blues are there on both occasions, at the start and end of the day, just as all shades of mauve and pink that streak the sky or light up floating clouds can be present in at both the beginning and ending of the day. The darker purples, ochres and grey-greens can recall the impending squall of a storm over the horizon, or the deepening descent of the night sky. 

 The fabrics started talking through the jangling clatter of my indecisiveness that had been rattling around in my head, I began to play by putting fabric strips beside each other, moving them to another strip, or returning them to their original place. Other ways of seeing became apparent. I started to listen to their suggestion that I had let go of the limitations I'd placed by trying to imitate or re-present and even sequence the beauty of Earth’s embrace of Sun. The fabrics were acknowledging not only their own limitations, but also other colour combinations that would work both horizontally and vertically for the composition, helping me to make the connections between these two magical cosmic phenomena. It was becoming clear that the quilt would be content to render an impression, rather than a distinct representation of sunrise and sunset, as I began learning to let the fabrics take the direction - instead of my ideas. More to come in next post.

Makarrata: peace making through truth telling

This post is long overdue. It doesn’t mean I haven’t been continuing with creative projects. But I’m circling back to circles, where the circling is manifesting as a square containing five circles. This small piece (440x440mms – almost 1’6” squared) came about in order to use up the leftover circular florets after having decided what was needed for the other two panels that I was in the process of finishing. It seemed more manageable to meet my insistent, nagging and self-imposed desire to get something, anything finalised – just to get something finished! This small piece seemed manageable to bring that aim to fruition, but it has taken many more months than I expected to do it, and then write about it. The inspiration started with a painting that a Facebook friend posted called “Possum dreaming” by Molly Peterson (thanks Kathryn) an Indigenous woman living in South Australia. I had kept a copy on file. Then a nearby close friend had a smaller version of the same formation, painted by a local Indigenous person to the Blue Mountains, that she had given me as a gift (thank you Sheila). These paintings were the fertile ground on which to plant my own leftover circles. It wasn’t until I placed them into that formation that the symbolic significance brought to mind the power of the circle, and its practical applications experienced in my own life.

The background fabric is an original Indigenous design from the Babbara Women’s Centre, which is situated on the coast of the Arafura Sea in the Northern Territory, a few hundred kilometres from Darwin. It is a collective of women from twelve language groups of the surrounds that supports the economic independence of Indigenous women in community of Maningrida, Arnhem Land. Designs for the beautifully crafted screen prints are drawn from local wild foods and flora, and the ancestral stories from their ways of life – their unique lives, living on country. It amazes me to think how far back in time these stories originated, passed down through sixty millennia of generations caring for the seas, land and its creatures. I first came across these stunning hand printed fabrics five or more years ago while browsing in Spotlight and was immediately taken by their simple boldness of the repeated impressions, carved into lino and screen printed onto very strong cotton backing colours. I have chosen one piece from my stash as a background for the five-star formation. The one used here is a fish trap, created by Deborah Wurrkidj, a dark earthy colour, reminding me of our shared origins: the Great Mother. (Others with the brighter backgrounds have been used in a lap-sized quilt, with a more modern take.) There are five florets, one in the centre and four at each corner. Those at the four corners of course relate to the directions of North, South, East and West – the directions called when we sit in the sacred circle, for each to bring their powers – fire, water, air and earth into our circle. They support each other through their colour-ways, and although being positioned at corners they are not oppositional. On the contrary, they connect with the centre as well as moving into the wider circle, albeit being housed by a square. How does that happen you might ask…?

What happens when there is a deliberate intention, a conscious, focussed act of listening, hearing. Getting what another is saying without applying ideologies, rules, analysis or personal judgement. In spiritual circles, that occurs where the centre circle sits – the circle that contains the truth of another, absorbs it and takes it as a reality for the one speaking – without the judgment of others sitting in the circle being passed, or advice being offered. It is the power of the union of shared experiences is shared as they circle around, with each other’s experience being acknowledged through listening. In hearing the story of the other an ‘autochthonic’, indigenous (both words meaning from and belonging to earth) self-induced revelation is allowed, given space to emerge. It’s the power of ‘deep listening’ to Earth and other that comes from the heart. It makes a spiritual connection, one that is non-judgmental as so often happens when listening from a particular interest blocks the other. 

The practice in women’s spirituality circles is to call the four cardinal directions, NSEW, represented here in the four corners of the image. They also represent the four elements of air, earth, fire and water. As they relate to the travel of Earth’s circuit around Sun in Southern Hemisphere from where I live, on the East Coast of Australia, Fire is a northern aspect, while water is in the south; air comes from the eastern horizon, and earth is directly western. I’ve explored these conventions in my PhD, and the ritual for creating safe space in a circle. Another source for considering the power of the circle is a small book by Jean Shinoda Bolen “The millionth circle”, in which she explores the power of circular gatherings to inspire and spark the critical number needed for both integration and realising the need for change, and the essential guide to women’s circles. At the end of a gathering, we are invited to remember that ‘the circle is open, but not broken.’ There is always possibility arising from within a circle.

Koala or kookaburra?

I have made two cot quilts for our beautiful boy, Zain. Given the number of koalas coming his way in various shapes and forms, from toys to motifs on his tiny outfits (- can’t think of the right word), his totem may be the koala. Leo and Mel are lucky enough to have koalas in their backyard – in the nearby bush reserve that is part of their wider ‘backyard’. The koala features strongly in my quilts, together with a wee possum and a feisty kookaburra – which might give the koala a bit of competition, given that Leo has a strong connection with kookies. We’ll see how it turns out.

Vanishing points

Over the years I have enjoyed collecting hand-dyed fabrics. I’ve also dyed my own fabrics, including over-dying commercially printed cottons. They can be very beautiful in their own right, but usually require a leap of faith for a possible use in future creations. They are just glorious temptations in their own right, and were collected as such. I have recently resurrected the beginnings of an earlier ‘idea’ for a bed quilt, which formed as a way to use some of these gorgeous fabrics without too much structure. The cut strips had been stored away in a plastic tub for many years, marked ‘Universe Story’. The colours seemed to elicit such a grand concept. I am now involved in using them to create a wall quilted hanging for my son and Mel. But before I report on the new journey those hand-dyes are setting out on, there is another I want to share, one made from hand-dyed blues by Leo over ten years ago. Constructed using a fusing technique, the small quilt was named ‘Vanishing points’, hand quilted using a running stitch and an envelope or pillow case method to contain the three layers. I seem to remember the inspiration for the hand stitching arose from the formation formed by ducks as they swim through water, leaving an expanding V trail behind, a formation they also use in the air. There is something about this piece that overlays the many meeting points and horizons in our lives. It seems an appropriate time to reflect on such points, arising from ‘nothingness’, vanishing and returning as we welcome Leo and Mel’s beautiful boy Zain into our lives, born on 11 June. What lies behind him is fascinating. What lies ahead remains a Mystery.

In the meantime...

I have made little progress making use of the cut out and overlayed fused circles that began to take form at the beginning of Covid19 lockdowns in 2020.They were intended to be used in the construction of two thin vertical panels, celebrating the fractals of created by the intricacy of the petals that flower together so rhythmically in the heads of blooms, and linked together on a shared stem (see archive December 2021). In fact, I have totally digressed, drawn to other smaller projects, those that are less complicated, more straightforward, and have an end in sight. Less of a commitment to my usual mindful creativity, than desiring to have a practical outcome you could say. More of a pursuit to get something finished off, living in times when nothing seems to be coming to an end. The unrelenting rains being released on many parts of the east coast are being referred to as a ‘once-in-five-hundred-years’ occurrence – probably only the fifth since Noah by that count – but the second flood disaster within two months. The overcast, dull grey and often black skies have blocked out summer sun, unleashing violent lightening storms at a whim, while leaving behind virulent weeds, persistent leeches and garden bugs that bite ferociously into even covered flesh. Then there are the non-stop mutations of a global virus that we are now realising may never go away, that will be on our doorstep for some time to come. The pandemic is not over. We continue to live with it, and climate change weather events, and our own burgeoning fears from not knowing what lies ahead. So, the tablemats, put together from furnishing swatches gleaned nearly thirty years ago were simply cut into easy sized squares, then embellished with the remaining length of the gorgeous turquoise polka-dotted black ribbon. In general, they are18x18 inch squares approximately, machine pieced and quilted, sturdy and washable.