"Starburst"

This is number 21 in my vase and flowers series This little quilt hanging eventuated from two elements: the window frame perspective and a flower that I’d constructed a year ago using non-cotton fabrics. I had made the white rose-like image to include in another textile destined for my niece for her wedding gift, but had used another. There were a few left over hand-dyed sky fabrics also from a previous quilt, which I formed into a rectangular window frame. The surrounding casement for it simply followed without too much creative friction.

Sometimes that happens, as was the obvious placement for the embellished white flower, with the rising moon sitting above. Also clear was the need for a vessel to hold the flower/star was what is commonly called a ‘specimen’ vase, which I based on a very small dark but clear blue tubular vase brought back from Venice as a souvenir of my European travels at the young age of twenty-five. The composition was taking place. Next step saw the creation of a small, lidded pot to sit beside the vase from long stored old fabrics. Here the word ‘old’ carries extra weight given that the fabrics used are from Damascus, brought back by a British soldier under the Mandate for Palestine and Transjordan following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in WWI. It is woven through with actual gold thread – a very special fabric, likely around a hundred years old. It feels very precious to me, and good to use it again. It made the textile hanging complete, because stars are pretty ancient too! And it seemed to give extra light to the name.

There's a crack in everything...

The name for this quilted wall hanging came slowly, as did the final design. As usual, the largish vase was cut out in one piece, and attached to a chequered background, together with the celestial icon on another piece. Appropriate strips of fabrics had already been roughly selected and all had been sitting in a box for quite some time, awaiting renewal. And as often happens with such a move towards resurrection, the design started to re-order itself into a totally new form. Because the urn-like vase was already embellished with floral motifs, it seemed redundant to have it actually hold flowers; and for those I had on hand this vase would not be suitable. Time to re-view possible outcomes. I had been considering tiles for some time, from your European countries such as Portugal to Islamic designs on mosques. So with the flowers left over from the fabric for the vase I made a collection of fabric ‘tiles’. Voila – there were the flowers! But the vase was big, bold, maybe even dominating the scene. I considered inverting the vase in an attempt to reclaim the story of Pandora’s box from Greek mythology: that she poured out all the evils from the vessel she was holding onto the world. I’m not sure why she would want to do that because it certainly hasn’t served her independence. The interpretations of the beginning of evil have been laid on the shoulders of women for two millennia since the advent of Christian story of Eve tempting Adam. Vases do sometimes fall to the floor and get smashed. I have a treasured one given to me for my fortieth birthday. It was large, uniquely designed and made by a Melbourne pottery group called Monkey. One day when full of tall flowers a gust of wind knocked it over leaving an indiscernible vertical crack. The lovely vase was still intact, but it had been rendered useless for holding flowers in water. Here was my clue: I cut the vase into four sections and reconnected them to suggest the whole shape of the vase. Not long after the title filtered through: There’s a crack in everything. I’ve always loved Leonard Cohen, the precision of his words with his music. The words that complete the phrase are: …it lets the lights in. How true! There is a practice in Japan known as ‘kintsugi’, when broken vessels are reconstructed using gold to join the pieces. It comes from the idea that by embracing flaws and imperfections it is possible to create an even stronger and more beautiful vessel, and offers a reminder to stay positive when things fall apart. Can’t dispute that! The small vessel in the right hand corner has a lid that can be removed to let the light in. The fabric itself is very likely a hundred years old, having been brought back from Damascus (then part of the British mandate for the area known as Palestine) following the defeat in WWII of the Ottoman rule in this area of the Middle East. A friend’s father had been stationed there and he brought back these beautiful fabrics for his wife and daughters to be made into frocks. I treasure them.

Red poppies at sunset

For over a year now I’ve been concentrating my textile creative pursuits in one direction. That may sound limiting. Fabrics themselves of course offer limitations by the permanency of designs, colour and type of fabric itself. But they also seek to evoke a different perspective in the looking. But being only in the thematic content it is actually very liberating while being contained mainly to context. A paradox? Perhaps, in theory, but the practice has shown to be otherwise. There has been a rediscovery of older techniques and in the process, finding alternative ways of achieving the desired effect– including paint on fabric!

The main approach has been of course machine applique, placed on top of pieced blocks stored over time and awaiting resurrection as part of the background. With the theme being vases, usually containing flowers, I have used the floral fabrics collected over the past 30 years to provide me with a botanic array from the endless beauty that surrounds us in nature – though limited by my collection! (I mentioned in an earlier post that I was not buying any new fabrics, and I have broken that only once – so far!)  

I had initially placed some conditions around the design for the background that possibly had come from the influence of the ‘still life’ genre. There would be a window revealing a moon or sun scape, a curtain or frame divide, and of course a tablecloth for the vase of flowers to rest on. In this there is continuity throughout the exploration of diversity. What I wanted to avoid was the overwhelming demand for the traditional notion of perspective – what we call the ‘vanishing point’ as discovered by Renaissance painters in their quest to accurately represent what they saw before them. David Hockney has shown with many examples how the use of a grid helped in achieving this appearance of three-dimensional perceptions that we are familiar with in landscape art…the way we are accustomed to seeing it.  

It was a viewpoint that challenged those of the day. Art was bound by religious dogma and two-dimensionally flat, presenting themes not of this world but of the world to come in the afterlife from following the rules of the Church in life. The vases are my way to challenge that belief, and engender one that is relevant to our times: heaven is here on earth in all its beauty and grandeur if only we can see it. And then do all we can to protect it as our home. 

 Red poppies at sunset (20x16")