Rainbows in art, life, etc

You get sent a link to a website, and it takes you in many directions....

Interview: Artist Stretches Delicate Strands of Thread to Produce Awe-Inspiring Rainbows Indoors

Plexus no.24
 "when people encounter my work ... they just go to this childlike wonder space ... 
the other thing is ... how the insulation is going to activate a space"
(see more at mymodernmet.com/gabriel-dawe-thread-art/)

Scrolling through, I found the thoughts coming and going faster than I could catch them. For one thing, this use of thread is like stitching without using fabric: "they dazzle with reflected light". I like that this artist, Gabriel Dawe, is "challenging the constraints of masculinity and the patriarchy" by through "embroidery" and colour; he uses "hues to help subvert the world’s narrow view of gender and identity ".

Here are a few of the thoughts the photos of the work gave rise to, in no particular order. 

1. Thread installations of Chiharu Shiota, filling entire rooms (at Blain/Southern last year, and this one (from a Berlin show) with boats is gorgeous -  

Chiharu Shiota (via)

also Pae White, at South London Gallery 2013 - 

Pae White (via)

 ..........google "thread installation art" to see many images and other artists

2. Large airy outdoor sculptures, such as those by Janet Echelman - some years back there was one at the winter lights event, at Oxford Circus - 

Janet Echelman (via)

A different medium but the same "omg" effect on the viewer, the desire to see "more" of the work, in Dawe's case by walking around, for Echelman just waiting to see the changes

3. Interaction of colours in stitched work of ...?... about 20 years ago (not easy to find, it was the pre-digital era, but I'm sure it will simply appear, soon*)  and more recently Evelin Kasikov - 

Analogue-digital embroidery by Evelin Kasikov (via)

4. Barbara Hepworth's use of string in some sculptures like this one from the late 1930s -

Barbara Hepworth (via)

And Naum Gabo, this "translucent variation on a spheric theme" is from 1937, for instance -

(via)

5. Double rainbows and other atmospheric phenomena, which often occur because of factors unknown to the viewer, eg this one -

(via)

"Rainbows take many forms" - http://www.atoptics.co.uk/bows.htm 

6. Exhibition that included threads+dark room+lighting - Lygia Pape at Hauser & Wirth, 2016 -

(via)

7. The idea of the loom waiting to be woven upon, the warp stretched ... lots of metaphors there!

8. The single stretched thread - It can connect two points, and/or its length determines the frequency of the note sounded when it's plucked, and/or other physical phenomena (https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/stretched-string) - that makes my brain hurt, so let's move on to consider the metaphysical question "how long is a piece of string"...

9. A few more questions ... (a) where are the shadows (b) how is the work best displayed (c) how does the site affect the work - and, a very practical question: what happens when it's taken down, is it binned and remade afresh next time 

10. Moire, and perceptual processes [my psychology degree contained a lot of info about perception, especially visual perception - no doubt research has moved on since the 60s! - something to research on a rainy day....]

11. Songs with rainbows in them ... "somewhere / under the rainbow ..." etc

12. Superstitions and folktales about rainbows - pots of gold, wot? But there's so much more .... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_in_mythology

13. Can you see rainbows from space? Would it look like a circle? The conditions have to be just right, and full-circle rainbows are most often seen by pilots. Like this -

(via)

*when the name does eventually appear, or a photo of the work shows up, it will suddenly reappear, and probably several times - apparently this is called the Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon: 

"The illusion in which a word, a name, or other thing that has recently come to one's attention suddenly seems to appear with improbable frequency shortly afterwards  ... (not to be confused with the recency illusion or selection bias). This illusion is sometimes referred to as the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon." (from Wikipedia, cognitive biases article)

Threadends

Do you gather your threadends ... and if so, what do you do with them once the container is full?

The great tangle disturbs me rather - but the layers of colour are quite wonderful -

Ghosts of the unsewn. Or just another midden, ripe for a postmodern archaeology.

Drawn threads

Something so insubstantial, even invisible - how often do we notice the shadow of a thread?

I'm drawn to fabric, threads, stitches as a source of ... drawings! ... and am aiming to do a series, noticing these small things.


Linked to Nina-Marie's blog - Off the Wall Friday.

Balls of string ... and related things

While musing on the "memory balls" I made all those years ago, and wondering if they could morph into some sort of museum project (given the increasingly urgent need to do the homework for the course), I turned to an image-search to see if anything would catch my interest and lead down surprising byways, as so often happens...

29 years of winding string...  (via)

Different types of string balls - largest, most expensive, etc ("All sting balls possess a certain history") - including one wound by pupils of an elementary school in Australia " as a symbol of how their education and lives would always be connected. Each string represented a student and each knot connected one to the other. They tied in mementos as they built their ball of dyed twine. What they ended up with was part art, part history, and part love story. "

Made by pupils of Penguin Primary School (via)

Newspaper recycling by Ivano Vitale - no dyes or glue are used in the yarn ball -

Lin Tianmiao  uses thread wrapping and  balls of thread in her artworks -

The Proliferation of Thread Winding (1995) also contains 20,000 needles (via)

Gillian Collyer's and Janet Kawada's works were briefly mentioned on this blog already -

Janet's 2012 exhibit, Shift in Time, marked 15 years of work about time ... the link includes a time-lapse video - 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, 5 weeks of winding yarn -

Temari are also balls of yarn - but definitely in a league of their own (there's an edible version!) -

On another tangent... a thread wrapping machine (designed by Anton Alvarez) was used to make this -

and these-

And while we're at it, remind me ... why might we need one of these?

Yet another tangent - string art (there seems to be a lot of it about) - this is by Kristin Rauch -

Then, when it all unravels ...

Detail from "Gathering my thoughts" by Susan Lenz

So, after gathering all that together ... could this be the required project for the draft brief for the developing practice course? The next bit is mere thinking aloud; though the writing felt like pulling teeth, it's only here for the record, for my documentation in the style of reflective journaling - feel free to ignore it, and thanks for reading this far! 

(1) At the moment one possibility is doing "something" with the travel lines, perhaps taking them to the Transport Museum and proposing some sort of workshop with staff, along the lines of "look at what I did, now go out and do the same" which, baldly put, doesn't thrill me. Unpacking that, though - "my journey": why did I do what I did? how did it develop? what does it show? how did my understanding of what it showed change? how did it move beyond the page it was written on? - that would be an introduction and would include pix of the various configurations I tried and different journey lengths, and the sketchbook containing my journeys on all the tube lines, alphabetically ... and other things that would hopefully get people thinking this is a fun thing to do and not as barmy as it looks. If you're doing this in the context of an art course, if you're thinking in that art-school sort of way ("this is about time and chance"), it's not particularly barmy ... but to Jo(e) Public it can look daft - hey, a 4-yr-old could do that!

First thing that's needed is a "hook" to interest people in coming along to the workshop. What would they get out of it? All too often people want a visible outcome, something to take home. But this is about encouraging them to go into the world with a little book and a pen and doing it outside in the hostile world, not in the room where everyone knows what's going on. So that's a big hurdle. 

Perhaps if I went along to the museum this line of thinking would become clearer. One thing that intimidates me is the thought (whether it happens or not!) of doing a workshop with strangers in a strange place. Another thing that holds me back is my ulterior motive - to get my Travel Line stuff into the Transport Museum shop ... yet it's this part of the project that any workshop might be linked to. Hmm, it also offers an idea for the "visible outcome" - to find a way to turn participants' "lines" into something usable, eg a travelcard holder. A matter of transferring to cloth, then sewing or gluing together. Needs thought. It would have to be two sessions...

(2) Another project possibility, and the reason for revisiting the memory balls and similar projects with thread and wrapping and time and memory (and memory loss, and thereby identity), is a handling display of various "memory balls" and a "winding session" where people can come and sit and wind and chat. I've done this at a book fair and was fascinated to hear people's stories of winding wool for Auntie, and seeing young people learn this new skill - it does take a bit of physical coordination. Having something to do with the hands seems to get the mouth going and the talk flowing. Except, through being involved in the moment, I can't later remember much of what's been said! That's not a problem because the project would be about what the participants got out of it, though a visible outcome would be the size of balls produced. Each would have the contributions of several people, so it would be a social thing - perhaps the names of each winder would be on a slip of paper inside, or if they could spend longer, it could contain more writing or drawing, say of events in their lives or objects in their childhood home, all wrapped up and kept safe among the continuous thread, perhaps glimpsed as an outer layer or perhaps completely hidden. (It's possible to roll out the ball, rewind the thread, and release all the memories. Then roll them back up again. Ad infinitum.)

I like the "winding thread" idea because it's more "normal", less off-putting, than writing lines. Also it hardly needs an explanation, and it's about the other person - what the activity gives them is a chance to do something different and new, or familiar and evocative. The interaction could be augmented with some stories involving thread/yarn - the minotaur and the labyrinth; penelope and her un-weaving; some of the spinning folktales like Rumplestiltskin; the chinese story about the red thread of connection. I'd find it interesting to see if and how stories could be woven into conversations.

Where could this Thread Story thing happen? Is there something specific in a museum it could be linked to? Could it be a collaboration with an experienced storyteller, eg for kids? How would that work - getting the kids drawing things or choosing words or objects, then wrapping them round with thread, and doing that while they listen to the stories maybe. (Except I'm scared of working with kids - no, let me rephrase that: working with (lively, excited, rambunctious!) kids would definitely be a challenge. Would be an "interesting" challenge...)

(1&2) To end on a positive note - those ruminations give me material for not one but two draft briefs. OK they're preliminary thoughts only, but my understanding is that what's required is preliminary. A bit more thought about possible venues for the thread thing, and a visit to the museum for the travel lines thing, could clarify that. Maybe some headings when writing it up - what, who, where, when, why, how, that sort of thing. Nicely formatted to add credibility. 

Solace for the soul

Coincidence, or destiny, or maybe the 134 bus, brought me to Kentish Town, where the London Bead Co has a shop, right opposite the tube station. I have long needed some blue darning wool, so it was imperative to visit the shop immediately. The front room is full of beads and the back room is full of embroidery threads, and oh what a luscious display the colours make, guaranteed to lift the spirits ...

The "darning wool" is appleton's tapestry wool, 2 ply - which comes in quite a few shades of blue; slightly problematic as I knew the holey jumper was dark blue but - what sort of dark blue? (Shade card is here.)

 

Shade 784, next to the pinks, was my stab in the dark. It turned out to be ok, once blended with a very thin bit of black wool, because the holey jumper (cashmere and merion) was on closer examination, knitted from a thin mottled yarn. I thought I'd found all the areas of weakness and (moth) holes, but when the jumper was washed after darning, another hole appeared. (Here is some advice on getting rid of moths, though it doesn't mention freezing, the textile curators' treatment of choice.)

A silky little present to myself, much more satisfying (and only slightly more expensive) than a cup of coffee. The colour is gorgeous in real life - perhaps the feel of silk enhances the hue?

One to watch

Suddenly thread is cool enough to be used in a music video - http://vimeo.com/58893010. Flip-side things happen -

needles thread themselves

words ravel into readability

a bit of burning goes on

and there is thread

lots of thread

Help from a needle

Stitching on a new "journey to the studio" piece - working title "Black and White and Red All Over" - I was noticing my inefficient sewing method - poke the needle in, dither about a while to get the stitch length right, bring needle up, less dither to stitch in, back to dithering about where to poke it UP again... so I practised not-dithering about exact stitch length for a while.OK the stitches are getting a bit longer than in the previous versions of this work.

Even though I was being more resolute about jabbing the piece with the needle, there was still a great deal of back-and-forth and quivering-of-hand when it came to pulling the needle, with its two stitches (four jabs) out of the fabric. Little tug, another little tug, slightly greater tug - finally it was through. I was using the long thin needle at the top of the photo, threaded with the fine perle that you see at the bottom - perhaps that thread was too thick for the needle - or rather, the eye of the needle not large enough to allow the thread to pass smoothly through the fabric. The only other needle immediately to hand looked too large - would it make giant holes in the fabric (better not risk it) - though the holes weren't as big as expected, I went hunting for something medium-sized, and started paying attention to my movements in pulling the needle through.

The idea is to sew more efficiently - and to do that without particularly thinking about it. What you use affects what you do. I well remember Julia Caprara saying "Don't fight with your materials" - in other words, if it's a struggle, find something different to use.

That fine needle is ok for the red, very thin, perle, and for two strands of stranded cotton. In fact the stranded cotton is probably easier to stitch with than the perle. But the off-white and pale grey perle (acquired via Winifred Cottage, over the years) are so soft and have such subtle variations of colour ... worth a bit of struggle with the materials, for the joy of using them.

Threads and their labels

My current Morning Stitching needed some green, so I took this one out of the box of stranded* cotton - the box with threads passed on to me by friends whose mothers hadn't used them in their lifetime. (*Doesn't that give a new meaning to "stranded cotton"?)

Though "vintage", it's a brand new skein -  neatly tied up so you can easily find the end of the thread and carefully pull it out. And look at the lovely lines on the label! They prompted me to look closer at other labels - a mini-history of the evolution of Coats Anchor, and a glimpse at other brands -

Looking for information on the history or manufacture of embroidery threads, I found this, and was not tempted -

460 colours! (DMC has 465...) Just as with those huge sets of crayons we lusted for a children, some colours would disappear quickly and others would be left sadly around for years. Also, it was instructive to see that individual skeins (8 metres) now sell for prices randing from 47p to 77p - or,  three or four skeins for the price of a cup of coffee.

Memory ball - weekend at Alston Hall

It started with a box of fabric scraps and some cones of fine yarn. In the middle are stones from outside the building -

The pink thread represents Friday, the yellow and beige are Saturday, and the green is Sunday.

First the lumpy stones had to be padded out to make the shape more spherical. Then the words - written on slips of fabric, or cut from the schedule - were wound in. 

Same procedure for Saturday, incorporating sights and sounds from my morning walk and snippets of overheard conversation throughout the day. And the wrappers from cough sweets -

Each participant in the retreat session supplied a bit of fabric with her name written on it, and that was wound in -

We speculated on what it would look like if it were cut open -

Sunday's main memory is of winding in scraps of ever-increasing size as we travelled down the M6 -

I didn't intend it to be quite so big, but that very fine yarn goes a long way! (Plus, it's very satisfying to wind and wrap and make those nice round "holes".)