This work began with a cloth that was buried in the soil beside a Douglas-fir tree. Before the cloth began to decay I dug it up. It was now my turn to respond to the cloth. I liked the bits of leaves stuck to the cloth so stitched over some of them to hold them in place. […]
Read More...After sampling… …I used the colour studies to find matching coloured threads… …and headed outside to stitch on the cloth.
Read More...I went back to sampling more eco-printing using India Flint’s methods. There was dyeing rather than leaf printing… …but they weren’t my marks. Did I need to leave a body print, visible evidence I have touched the cloths and left my DNA, just as the trees have done?Image of Colin Jenkins’ stitched body print ‘Purge’ […]
Read More...‘In Praise of Ironing’It has to be spread out, the skin of this planet,has to be ironed, the sea in its whiteness;and the hands keep on moving,soothing the holy surfaces.poem by Pablo Neruda I continued to search for a way to respond to the marks the tree left on the cloth.I rejected making a bed […]
Read More...(Source: Google images, source unknown)I wondered how I would respond to the trees’ staining on the bed sheets. Could I make a bed? How have other artists used beds? Bed linen enveloped in natural biological cycles – repulsive rather than inviting.(Source: tigeyguz’s Flicker photostream) Stitching the bed. Jane McKeating’s book on a double bed is a metaphor for […]
Read More...To encourage staining on the tree cloths I made up a tannic acid solution…. …and sponged it on the cloths while they were wrapped around the trees… …and after it had rained while the cloth was wet. Staining did appear to be most active on the tannic acid soaked parts of the cloth.
Read More...Over the months I checked the sheets for signs of staining.Animals continued to run up and down this cedar trunk…. …moving the sheet and leaving their marks. The Maple sheet worked loose but I decided not to disturb it … …because staining was happening.
Read More...My BA(Hons) studies resumed again in September. I told my tutor, Sarah Burgess, of my decision to continue with the tree cloths for my graduating exhibition work. She suggested I wrap 4 more sheets around trees as insurance. I bought 4 single-sized bed sheets and scoured them to remove all sizing. I pre-mordanted them in the nearby sea. […]
Read More...The obvious response was to repair and mend the holes and tears in the tree cloths. Mending techniques by their nature aim to be invisible so this would be a necessary but not obvious response. I needed to do something more to the tree cloths.
Read More...After washing and ironing the eco-printed samples… ..i found them uninspiring. This Cedar stem showed the most potential as a dye source. I tore off pieces of the Cedar tree cloth and soaked them in a number of different pre-mordants,sea water… … almond milk and ash water. Each sample was coded with the different combinations of pre-mordants it […]
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