Needlework and the Universe

I have not posted for a few days. This is not negligence, but is due to a busy working week that has involved extensive scrubbing with a wire brush and bleach as well as the ambitious positioning of the work in its final resting place.

There has been so much to think about, mostly little things that will probably be a huge problem later on if they are not resolved now. Firstly the floor needed cleaning which, with help, I did; but then today I realised that I had not cleared enough, and therefore not cleaned enough floor space, so I had to get back on my hands and knees and start spreading my puddle of cleanliness outwards. Even though it is far from clean. It is just decent. Have you ever tried getting ingrained grime out of twelve artists’ workspaces? It’s not easy. Secondly: the skylight. It has some rather annoying (and messy) looking blinds that I must remove – but how? The structure is now up, and the only way to do this would be to get a ladder slap bang in the middle of it before the ceiling goes on. That is if the blinds can be removed. According to some it has never been attempted before.

I do feel guilty for infringing on so much of my colleagues workspaces even though they have told me it is perfectly all right. The structure is further away from the wall than initially planned, but that is due to the inner circle needing to sit flush with the edge of the skylight. I quite like it’s odd positioning, plus it also means the third studio wall is cleared completely for someone else to work into it.

It was not easy to set the circle up – the antechamber was the least problematic to erect and the springy timbers produced unforeseen issues. With the help of an expert however, it was soon all sorted, and is now awaiting the flexi-ply (which will be sorted sometime next week). First I have to figure out how to make frames for the embroideries that will work not only in the piece itself, but also solo and on display in other environments.

That is Monday’s task. And then, who knows? I’m very eager to get the whole thing painted – or at least the antechamber so I can start work in it. Next week is our last week before the Easter holidays, which is horrible. There’s still so much to do and so little time to do it in.

With the rest of the flexi-ply prepared and ready to be put on the final structure, tomorrow I am all set with bleach and wire brushes to scrub clean the studio floor. This is because once the structure is up it will be too heavy to be moved, and so everything has to be pre-prepared for Friday which is when the antechamber, and hopefully the main room, will be erected.

In the meantime I have been working on my tenth embroidery – the silicate crust of Io, one of the innermost of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter. Io jumped out to grasp my attention due to its sickly (of course, colour enhanced) surface, pitted with large spots and pimples that have a range of patterns and complexity. Io’s several volcanoes produce plumes of sulphur and sulphur dioxide, which is quite possibly the cause of Io’s colouring – colouring that looks as if it really might smell.

I have great plans for this embroidery, depending upon how it turns out. My next focus will most likely also be a moon – so far their surfaces have been the most interesting to me, but having embroidered two galaxies, their complex pull is also tempting. I have not yet felt the urge to explore star nurseries, as it is the lure of other worlds that is captivating my interest, not worlds that will be, or worlds that were.

Once the antechamber is up and painted (along with everything else) I will then have to tackle the task of how to frame the embroideries. I have a good idea of stretching and presentation, but this is going to be difficult to see through into reality. I am in week 8 of my course at the moment: after week 9 many resources at Brookes will then be partially closed over Easter. If everything is set up by then, embroidering from home and working into the antechamber should be easy. Looking at the surfaces of planets through images taken by telescopes, however, I am reminded of a musing explored through my creative text in The Divine Stitch:

We cannot touch space, or feel it with our own forms; rather we must experience it through metal, through optics, through machinery, and through technology. We are thus contradictory in ourselves: we are both detached from our universe and a part of it.

The flexi-ply has arrived and the skeleton of the final structure is ready to be put together. I have cleared enough space in my studio to start the construction of the piece, but with a floor to clean and several sections of circle to carry up stairs, it is not going to be easy. My studio wall also needs stripping bare, which then leaves the issue of where to put everything. There will be two dislodged magpies and lots of smaller embroideries lacking a home. I have yet to decide how much of these will feature in the antechamber, but have a lot of research to somehow translate into this final presented format.

The laser cutter failed miserably on the brass, leaving neither imprint nor mark. Because of this I had to approach an engraver in Oxford, who happily told me that the fee for engraving a few words onto brass would be just under £200. I decided to cause myself much agitation and do it myself, spending £14 instead on a battery powered engraving tool (batteries not included). This could be disastrous, but I have warmed to the idea of something so against the grain. Brass plates are usually flawless things, and instead mine will be some unusual hybrid of organic type.

Tomorrow I will be pre-drilling the rest of the flexi-ply (5 sheets), desperately hoping I won’t mess it up. I also have all kinds of paint and wood primer, including sand paper and curtains plus a rail for one of the doors. This week the aim is to get the antechamber built so I can paint it with all this lovely new stuff from B&Q. In the meantime I have finished two more embroideries and finally discovered the benefit of a diary – my practice has never been so organised.

Success! My scale-model of the work is no longer an endeavour: it is a reality. Albeit a kind of half-baked reality, but for someone who doesn’t like to make copies of the work unless it is, actually, part of the work, this feat is rather impressive. I failed in the antechamber department thanks to the fact a) it is already made in wood and b) I ran out of card, but making the cylinder itself enabled me to estimate how the antechamber might look upon it, and also meant I could puncture some holes in the cardboard ceiling for a lighting test, so it served its purpose.

I probably should have gone for black card instead of white card, as whenever I did try to do a lighting test the white card was not adequate enough to show me the full scale of the effect. It was all bright. Still, with a jumper and some cut-offs I managed to work against this problem, and feel relatively confident that it may all go according to plan.

But who knew that curtains were so expensive? Blackout curtains of course: thick, heavy, velvety curtains that are close to fifty pounds. I am feeling my pockets shrivel up like dried prunes, but am determined to see this piece through as I pictured it – if only because I know that nothing ever ends up how it was imagined. Therefore I need to condition the work as much as possible into functioning vaguely like the ‘imagined’ piece in my head.

I want to buy a solid curtain rail too, once I get paid, and perhaps – if I’m feeling really reckless – some thick, velvety fabric to prevent the floor from reflecting light too much and to muffle sound. Tomorrow I begin the task of jig-sawing out the two whopping great circles we drew out in pencil last week – I’m feeling giddy and nervous about that one – I can’t wait to start the actual cylinder structure, but if I cut one wrong line it’ll be an extra sheet of MDF.

With that and work tomorrow, and with writing a cheque for the dearer-than gold flexi-ply, this week looks to be expensive, but productive. I have also a vague idea of where my space will be for the final degree show. I’m hoping I can clear it out once my structure is ready to be erected – it’ll need a lot of work once it’s in the space, and I’ll need it put together to figure out the best way of manipulating light.

Currently however I am rather slowly working on my theory module – attempting to write an MA proposal and polish off the bibliography for my creative text. I feel it is lacking in poets and all my favoured poetry books are sitting at home. Pawing through all of them and typing out book titles will therefore be another job for the weekend.

This weekend I managed to finish the latest embroidery in my – now – series of eight. Of course this is still not enough for me to stop. I feel I should have at least ten to work with by the time the degree show comes around, and today I found myself subconsciously bumping that number up to an ambitious twelve in a quick conversation about my work to my boyfriend.

I should mention here the average time it takes to create one of these small, 9cm by 9cm pieces of work, if only to highlight how unlikely my proposed mental targets are. Two weeks is the general completion-time, and that’s with several five-hour sessions each day. My eyes are going to be ruined. The long hours required to do the making does not seem too problematic to me, as they shoot by. My progress, however, fools me quite often into thinking I have achieved a lot in half an hour, until I check the time and discover that the small 3cm section I have so swiftly sewn actually took several hours.

It is, however, very exciting to untwist the screw in the embroidery hoop when that last stich is laid, to pop out the inner-hoop from the outer support to be left with a fine, flat disk of sublime texture. The colours also excite me deeply. I have just set up my next aim, the bloodied crevasses of Europa, and laid the first tentative stitches that always so neat. It is already too late in the day to do much else tonight thanks to an unwelcome cold, but with just one tutorial tomorrow to discuss my progress with my creative writing task, I am looking forward to several hours of embroidery-related labour on Monday.

This week I will also be sawing out the circular base and roof of my final piece. A prospect I am slightly nervous about as it requires a steady hand, (one thing I do not possess, apart from when it comes to drawing, sewing and painting [but of nothing else, especially not the painting of nails]), and lots of heavy lifting. My rough estimate to get the whole thing made in three weeks however seems to be about right, and I am currently waiting with baited breath to see if my course leader will let me move my final piece into my given gallery space a few weeks early so that I can ‘decorate’ it and work into it with research. I have curtains to make and paint to buy, as well as brass to engrave and vinyl to use. Art, I think, is the most expensive subject to undertake at university.

With this post I have decided not to show my latest work, but rather one of my earlier ones as Enceladus is currently being cleaned. The piece is Volcano on Venus, and is one of my favourites, if only for the Mayan-like design and the bold, boiling colours. All of the images I have been working with are either from Hubble or Cassini, so I am aware that they may not be completely true to their natural colours. But after my investigations into ‘scopic regimes’ I quite like that fact, that the disintegration of the raw image information is to be reconstructed by an isolated view, my view. Much of our interaction with the cosmos is broken down and reconstructed in similar circumstances. Through examining space through optics, the image of what we see can perhaps never be a completely true representation, or be entirely universal among us. This ‘loss’ of information in order to record and digest our interactions is visible through all of art’s attempts to engage with celestial bodies throughout history.

I am aiming to stock up on card tomorrow for my scale-model of the work. I hope it will highlight any issues before I make any mistakes in wood format, so watch this space. I am sure you will know if it has all gone horribly wrong: for there will be a silence on here for quite some time.