“I am the gleam on a dragonfly’s wing; I am the pollen the honeybees bring; I am the tamed and I am the wild; I am adventure that calls to the child.”
Daniel Lock
As late spring moves towards summer, gardens come alive with colour, texture and movement. This is the time when Textile Art really comes into its own because more than many other creative or artistic disciplines, working with fabrics and thread allow you to play with colour, texture and movement. Part of the Coblynnau Project involves creating pieces of Textile Art which are inspired by and respond to a particular location. This is called Site Specific Art and is becoming much more popular. The artwork becomes a physical part of a locality and, at the same time, its presence encourages a sense of ownership by users and inhabitants of the area. In order to make Site Specific Art, the artist really needs to get to know the place where the art will eventually be displayed and know it not just as an artist, but also in a much simpler, more childlike way. I’ll give you an example of what I mean. Last week, Bryngarw Country Park hosted a Moths & Mammals evening which had everything from Tracks & Trails to Bats and Birdsong. As about 20 adults concentrated very, very hard on trying to disseminate songs from all of the different birds that were singing, one child made her way to the front of the crowd and stood in front of Keith the Ranger with her hand outstretched. Explanations paused while a fuss was made of the broken Blackbird egg that she’d found in the undergrowth. Whilst the grown ups were in sensory overload trying to make sure they were making the right identification rather that enjoying the song, that little girl was displaying the sheer joy simplicity can bring along with her broken egg trophy.
It’s the same when you create a piece of Textile Art. You can very easily get mired by techniques and planning, samples and stitchery. The beauty of design sketching is that it is quick, easy and can be done anywhere. I spent the morning with Gill and Hollie at The Cedars . Whilst they made me tea and toast, I popped down to the gardens to take some pictures.
It took me about 2 minutes to dash off the first sketch. I used watercolour pencils to get a sense of the colours and forms I wanted and then painted over with clear water to get a much looser image.
For the second sketch, I used both the photographs I had taken and also the words from Dan’s script for The Keeper of the Garden to get a sense rather than an image of what I wanted. Some of the phrases are particularly easy to visualise:
I am the curving paths, I am the lawns; I am the ponds where the tadpoles were born; And I am the leaves that glow like flame; When Autumn falls on the garden again.
If this was going to be a piece of figurative art, a photograph or a painting, it might not be so important for me to have actually been on site to do the design sketch. Whilst there are Textile Artists who work figuratively (Ruth Packham for example) , this piece for the Coblynnau project is to be created by free weaving and will, necessarily, be much more abstract. I’ve got my wool, hand spun and coloured with natural dyes by Charlotte Lodge at Woolcraft Wales and two circular pieces of wire to form the frame of the weaving. Hopefully it will be finished ready for next week’s blog. Finally, if you should need one other reason to have a go at doing some sketching outside and listening to the call of your inner child, it’s that when you do, you can meet lovely little beings like Albert …
