daughters of daughters

Second experiments with staging and photographing this piece, playing, seeing where/how it makes sense to me. Daughters of Daughters comes into my head when thinking about it, so that may be the title. Tomorrow I'm taking the dresses into the Derbyshire landscape to see how it/they sits there.  

8 dresses

First experiments in hanging this (as yet untitled) work and beginning to understand what it does. Enjoyed its weight and the tension between each dress form. Plan to play further by taking this piece into the Derbyshire landscape. It's an unwieldy, slippery thing!

red and white organza dresses

All eight dress forms are finished in my current project to make a sculptural piece in organza. Each hand stitched and cut from a 1970's pattern. I'm unsure how I'll join them and intrigued to discover the process that will reveal itself as I make... More stitching, more ironing needed to complete this piece...   

red organza dress

I'm making a work thats been in my head for a while. I'm 6 dresses in (there will be 8), all cut from a 1970's pattern. The pattern cutting takes almost as long as the hand stitching of each dress, organza is so slippery it requires ironing and pinning into position in an attempt to stop distortion within the fabric before cutting. I decided to hand stitch the dresses, as each represents one of the seven generations of women before me, the women who birthed daughters who birthed daughters who birthed daughters and this line that stretches back to the first humans ends with me.   

knitted branches

Through trial and error I replicated these branches in hand knit, using double-point needles, increase and decrease. Knowing how to make a sock was a great advantage.

Working out how to do it through doing it. Carefully replicating each branches twists and undulations, unwinding and re-knitting one branch dissatisfied by the accuracy of my first efforts. Yarn passing twice though my fingers in slow, puzzling learning.

And, now these exist, soft, foldable, reminding me of snakeskin. What shedding happened as I made? What growth?

See previous post for images of the yarn pre-knit, it had been wrapped round trees in Epping Forest and left for 15 years.    

tree/time dyed yarn

Two years ago I visited Epping Forest, near my childhood home and unwound acrylic yarn I'd wrapped around tree trunks 15 years before. See 15 years for reflections on that day.

Last week I went to my studio at Haarlem Artspace and collected plants, basic art materials and two projects I've been intending to work on - the yarn came home with me.

I'm finding it difficult to relate to my pre COVID-19 'to-do' lists and I'm resisting the upsurge of 'doing' all over social media BUT, think I can get my head and hands around making knitted branches using the tree/time dyed yarn.

Lets see what happens.

Images show the yarn, branches gathered in Matlock and an old set of double-point knitting needles.

#meettheartist takeover

I'm doing my first ever Instagram takeover for East Midlands Contemporary Visual Arts Network this week (9-15 March)!

Check it out here 💛