My starting point for last semester was somewhat confused. Firstly, I wasn’t sure what I was doing after the long summer break, and secondly, I found myself caught up in the symbolism of birds, a concept I struggled with in a determined fashion to translate it into painting. Not just any painting, however, but the type of painting that was predominant in the Renaissance – oh yes – I was going to explore the techniques and skills displayed by the masters through the imagery of: magpies.
I soon however hit a wall and decided this was not the way to proceed, mostly due to the rather pathetic-looking half-baked magpie-painting that sat in a solitary fashion on my studio wall.
There was another logical option of course, embroidery. I had, over the summer and in my boredom, attempted to stitch an image into a thin fabric that vaguely looked like the linen from the Bayeux Tapestry, and thus came back to university with a very confused rendition of a – you guessed it – magpie in knots and wobbly lines that resembled a jay more than anything else. Suffice to say my tutor and I soon decided that this, whatever ‘this’ was, wasn’t working, and that wouldn’t it be a splendid idea to try working with needlework and the universe.
As out of the blue as this sounds, it was not a spur of the moment thing. In fact I had over the summer been reading up on theories of our cosmos in Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow’s The Grand Design. It was my own words that led me to stitching ideas of the universe, the words that I started with in my first tutorial, the words ‘I’ve been looking at needlework and the universe’.
And magpies, of course, but for the sake of narrative we shall omit that fact. That weekend I then found myself – during a lovely visit to my aunt’s house – frantically being antisocial in my attempt to create some sort of rendition of the Jupiter’s Great Red spot in stitch. I suppose now is when I say: I haven’t looked back since.
Well, I haven’t. Sixty-three needle injuries and eight embroideries later, I’m still steaming ahead (as fast as one can steam ahead with such a medium) with embroidering more. I have of course found that my crude-knot-type attempts on flimsy fabric have improved: I am now working with linen and the stitches and number of colours present in the Bayeux Tapestry. Why? Because it is an early example of an interaction with a celestial being in ‘pre-telescopic’ art.
Though I am not very good at keeping blogs and, well, anything for that matter, I am going to attempt to use this space as an area to think, develop, and problem-solve. Who knows? The posts may end here, this may be as far as I get. But I thought it a good starting point to set off with the words that I set off with in my blank sketchbook at the start of last semester. It’s rather ominous, so bear with me. But it is the point from which my work this term has evolved.
I. Our Location in Space Time
II. The Universe
III. The Multiverse
IV. The Metaverse
V. The Xenoverse
VI. The Hyperverse
VII. The Omniverse
Everything that is ordered must come to disorder.
Well, there we have it, my starting point to my final year at university. The aim of this project is now clear to me: to explore the universe through needlework. The challenge now is to see how it develops.
