Waxed into fullness

The inspiration for this quilt emerged during the current season, spring into summer 2024, the time of year that draws blooms of all varieties into magnificent manifestation. The warratah (telopea speciosissima) in our native bush lands always evokes awe and appreciation of our environment. I’ve made several attempts to grow a commercial variety in my garden without success. It was also the time when I received the news of the passing of a very special person, a man who had come into my life in the last few years who was a special love in my life.

As part of my still life series, I was a concerned about presenting them as cut flowers, because it is not permitted to take them from the bush. Here they float with ease full of beauty-fullness surrounding a moon that has waxed into her monthly periodic fullness. No wonder she represents the creative power of women. 

The silver vase sits ready to receive the beautiful creations of the bush after they have waxed into their fullness and dropped to Mother Earth. I had created another vase based on a glazed ceramic I’d recently acquired, but it went back in the folder for later inspiration. It occurred to me that the vessel may appear to be one for containing the ashes of a cremation. But here it is collecting the Waratah seeds forming for the next bush generation, for the continual procreation of this beauty. Each piece is outwardly a design that encompasses the elements of composition, colours, and other artistic details. But they always have more to say if I look closely and listen to my inner soul story carefully. During the creative process material manifestations emerge from the personal, making the link between reality in the search for meaning. In this case it was the passing between the veils of a dearly loved man who had recently come into my life bringing home a sense of personal love and fullness I’d never before experienced. The initial peach beside the vase is a metaphor: the fruitful flesh of ripeness is not a permanent state: change is the regular cycle of birth, coming to fullness, needing to move towards decay to return to rebirth and renewed fullness. Extra peaches were added as a last thought for several reasons, from the personal to the creative process that endlessly moves through the cycle of change and promise by the waxing and waning - we feel it in our own lives and see it in all life. 

Jarod Anderson wrote: "..reality lives somewhere between matter and meaning. One makes us. The other we make to bear our mortality and the confusions of being alive." (from Something in the woods loves you). I certainly experience this loving connection when in my garden and the bushland at my backyard, which contains the cycle of life in all it's various forms - other than peaches!

Waxed into fullness: waned into darkness (19x15")

"Staying alive: threads in time" at the Upstairs Hub Gallery, April 3 - June 3

Carpe diem 

In the ‘still life’ genre, these works explore the timeless passages in a lifetime.Textiles, woven, stitched, embroidered, record personal and universal stories - as do flowers. Material fabrications and floral presentations acknowledge all of life’s rites of passage. Flowers evoke memories, giving recognition to feelings of joy and love, sorrow and forgiveness. The natural, personal and universal meld here in vases of flowers, collaged onto layers of leftover patchwork pieces, hand-dyed and commercial fabrics with machine stitchery to sketch them in place. Hovering celestial bodies register both the passing and permanence of time, pasts, presents and futures. Viewer’s experiences and perspectives are invited in viewing the works. 

Soul Seasons Quilts

Textile wall hangings 

Annabelle Solomon (PhD)

“Staying alive: threads in time”

A series of art quilts selected for exhibition

Blue Mountains Theatre and Community Hub

Springwood NSW

3 April - 3 June 2025

approx. 20”x15” (500x 350mms), 

ready to be installed.

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2: Evening's twilight SOLD

1: Sun wise SOLD

10. Moonflowers SOLD

 4: Love blooms SOLD

3: Morning's twilight SOLD

7: Under harvest moon

9. Rising harvest moon

 

5: Smiling pansies 

 
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6. In full bloom

8. Red rose bowl

12. The pink vase

11. A host of golden daffodils 

16. Five red apples

14. Damascus urn

           

        

17. White roses

18. Silvery moon SOLD               

           
          

           

25. Mel's vase SOLD

26. Night and day

27. Moonlight sonata

28. As above, so below SOLD

29. Blue moon roses

30 Dark new moon

31. Dawn breaks

32. Pandora's vase

33. Red pot with roses

43. At the horizon

35. Rising blue moon

36. Waxed into fullness

37. For the love of trees

39. Out of darkness SOLD

40. Pensive pansies

41. Moon shadow

As above, so below

The name of this quilt derives from an old pagan saying used to describe the idea that the microcosm mirrors the macrocosm, and vice versa. It was of course adopted by other religious and spiritual genres Put simply: the material world reflects the state of the spiritual world. It could be interpreted as the effects of celestial movements on terrestrial events, such air the moon upon the tides or the sun on the changing of Earth’s seasonal cycles. Of course, by extension, it can be a reflection on the way Earth’s warming temperatures are affecting life in the ocean. This little quilted wall hanging doesn’t have a vase in it. Nevertheless, it fits into the series I’m creating, which is really about Earth’s prolific and unstoppable fecundity, regardless of what we as humans do to her, she will survive. The concept derived from a large number of already cut items that were to be used in one of the early ‘circle’ arrangements for an underwater scene (see Dec 2021). As often occurs, they were not used there and were migrated to the ocean scape as it was developing here. As I have pointed out before, one idea’s leftovers often become part of the next quilt. Nor was the inclusion of the previously-cut Gerbera flowers that sit across the horizon between sky and sea premeditated to be position there. They had been envisaged as being part of an underwater garden, as coral platelets on the sea floor, as part of a coral reef. Through a spontaneous twist of direction, they were positioned on the horizon, with the sun beating down from a sunburnt sky holding within a Gerber, representing the fecundity of the planet we live on in symbiosis with all life. The ocean can be envisaged as a giant vase which displays the health of the gardens we so appreciate for their beauty and rely on for our very existence. The water of the oceans is the basis for all life on Earth, but that fecundity is becoming threatened as shown by the appearance of dead and dying coral in our oceans. With the addition of fish the commentary on the opportunity for addressing that very real threat are symbols of beauty and reason for hope.

"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 - or did he tempt her, who knows? 

 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 that good can come out of adversity when things fall apart. The small vessel in the right hand corner has a lid that can be removed to let the light in. This 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 from Damascus for his wife and daughters to be made into frocks. I treasure them

 SOLD

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")

Flying high

 Again using leftover fabrics from a quilt made long ago, it was not clear at the outset whether the sky background made from home dyed fabrics fit in with the vase series currently in process. I found that the effect of the overlapping triangles and quadrilaterals was evoking a sense of perspective that had been my vision explored through my PhD thesis as it relates to the season festivals on the Wheel of the Year for the Southern Hemisphere . Although not layered – the are joined pieces, there is the illusion of distance as the eye moves across the various tones of blue and mauve patches, both coming forward and receding into the background.  

https://researchdirect.westernsydney.edu.au/islandora/object/uws%3A12868

No call for vases or flowers this time. Outlines of birds with their wings outstretched in full flight became the subject matter, flying towards or across the light of a fecund full moon. Cut out in white silk and pale blue satin, the way the forms pick up the light gives a strange eeriness of gentle movement between the perspectival views of the background due to the nap of the fabrics. Light plays with the fabrics, such that some birds drop out of visibility as others emerge into sight. A pale grey binding seemed in order to suggest the cloud patterns and sky colours stretching in all directions.

SOLD