The Enduring Antarctic Adventure of Clare Plug

 Illustration: Clare Plug. Ice Crack 2, 2008.

The New Zealand textile artist Clare Plug has spent the last few years of her career developing a fascinating body of work that entails intimately observed details along with wider conceptions and observations of the most rarely visited of all the planets continents.

In 2006 Plug was lucky enough to visit the continent of Antarctica as part of a fellowship, staying with the official government Antarctica NZ at Scott Base in the vicinity of the Ross Ice Shelf. It is no small exaggeration to say that this experience fundamentally changed her views and the entire aspect of her work, so much so that much of the textile art work that she produces to this day is haunted by this most spectacular and hauntingly beautiful continent.

Illustration: Clare Plug. Ice Crack 2 (detail), 2008.

The three works shown here are examples of Plug's Antarctica Series which explores a number of aspects of the continent from the fragile and relatively recent human experience, to the much older and grander sweep of geological and climatic history that has become so pressingly relevant in our own contemporary world.

Through discharge dyeing, applique and quilting techniques, Plug has been able to not only detail her own experiences along with those of others past and present, but perhaps more importantly to focus our attention on the emotional ambience of the landscape and the sense of harsh beauty that it entails. Through her sensitive use of textural colour and stitching, the artist can help us to identify the strange combination of a climate that is so harsh that it can kill most life forms, while at the same time being supremely fragile, delicate and sensitive and so easily prone to destruction by outside forces.

Illustration: Clare Plug. Midnight at the Barne Glacier, 2008.

These moody and sometimes even ethereal textile pieces are in many regards emotionally observed landscapes. Admittedly, they can only give us an indication as to the multiple experiences that would be observed on the continent itself. However, Plugs work has such a defined ambient compositional quality to it that although most of us will probably never visit the continent itself, we can at least share some of the wonder and sheer magnetism of this most intriguing and other-worldly part of the planet.

Through her landscapes, both climatically and geographically based, humans seem to make only the barest and most tenuous of impressions. No more obvious an example of this underlying feeling is Out on the Barrier which seems to give a hint of a hauntingly indistinct portrayal of a possible human symbol, or not. To show our lack of domination of one continent out of seven, everything in Antarctica seems transient, misleading, even misdirected seeming at times to be playing tricks on our senses and our preconceptions. The physical and emotional scale of the experience seems well beyond the human scale in which to focus, catalogue and identify. This often featureless and unimaginably empty continent challenges us to imagine a world where the human species cannot automatically deem themselves dominant, and for our own sanity that feeling of inadequacy mixed with awe, can only be for the betterment of us all.

Illustration: Clare Plug. Out on the Barrier, 2008.

A wide range of Plug's textile art pieces were part of the Look South exhibition held at the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch New Zealand. This exhibition was due to continue until the end of September. However, due to the major earthquake experienced by South Island, the exhibition has had to disappointingly close early, though I am sure Plugs hauntingly beautiful textile work will be seen at many more venues in the near future.

Clare Plug has a web presence where much more of her work can be seen. She has exhibited in New Zealand, the US and Europe as well as being featured in a number of publications. Another interesting site listed is that of Antarctica NZ which gives details of New Zealand's official work in Antarctica as well as information on Scott Base where Plug stayed in 2006. On the site there is a webcam of the base which updates every 15 minutes. Both sites can be found in the Reference links section below.

Illustration: Clare Plug. Out on the Barrier (detail), 2008.

All images were used with the kind persmission of the artist.

Reference links:
Clare Plug website
Antarctica New Zealand

Tambour Embroidery Work

Illustration: Nineteenth century tambour work.

Tambour style embroidery work is said to have originated in China and then travelled throughout Asia via India, Persia and Turkey, eventually reaching Europe in the eighteenth century. Alternatively, it has been suggested that the style was brought directly to Europe from China by the French, also in the eighteenth century. Whichever is true, tambour work did not become widely popular until the middle of the latter half of the eighteenth century.

One of the main characteristics of the production of tambour or tambouring as it was often called was the use of two circular frames, one fitting snugly into another. This was in order to hold the backing fabric taught in order to produce the embroidered stitch work without the fabric losing its taughtness. The word tambour derives from the French word for drum, which the outline of the hooped frame resembled.

Much of the earlier tambour work was produced using white stitching on a white background. This minimal but effective and accomplished embroidery technique proved to be extremely popular during the last half of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century. 

Although it was an accomplishment of many women of the upper classes in Europe, much of the real work was produced by lower class women. Tambour work was produced on a variety of finely woven backing fabrics, muslin being a particular favourite. 

Nineteenth century versions of the discipline tended towards a more colourful spectrum. A wide range of coloured silks and gold thread became popular, allowing the discipline to expand and diversify from the original whitework. By today's standard, many might well see the original whitework as being of a superior nature to that of the later coloured work. However, it must be remembered that many of these traditional handcrafts, and particularly those concerning textiles, were struggling to survive in the nineteenth century. The marketplace had reached a particularly competitive and robust phase with industry putting intense pressure on the scope and availability of handcrafts. 

The nineteenth century saw a range of innovations and transformations, many of which were speedily introduced into the domestic and interiors market. A wide colour range was an integral part of the nineteenth century's decorative palette and therefore tambour work, along with many other versions of textile craft, could only helplessly reflect those trends and impositions.

True tambour work used a hook with a wooden handle, as opposed to the more usual needle as can be found used in many other forms of embroidery craft. This has led many to see a link, or at least certain similarities, between tambour work and crochet some even believing that crochet directly derived from the earlier tambour work. Although having certain similarities, a tambour hook is much finer and sharper that the average crochet hook.

Tambour work has been used highly successfully and effectively within the fashion world, very much since its original popularity in the eighteenth century. It is still used, to a certain extent, within the confines of the haute couture world. However, it is also still popular with a number of individuals, both amateur and professional. It is a relatively cheap craft to launch into, and seems likely to remain in use in a variety of guises for at least the foreseeable future.

Further reading links:
The dictionary of needlework;: An encyclopaedia of artistic, plain, and fancy needlework
Mary Thomas's Dictionary of Embroidery Stitches
Clover Kantan Couture Bead Embroidery Tool-
Clover Turnable Hoop-7-1/2"
Tambour Beading With a Ring Frame
Embroidery Stitches - 1912 Reprint
Complete Book of Embroidery: Includes Crewelwork, Goldwork, Ribbon Embroidery, and Embellishments
Fine Embellishment Techniques: Classic Details for Today's Clothing
Tambour Work
Metal Thread Embroidery
18th Century Embroidery Techniques
Embroidery or the Craft of the Needle
Tambour Work: 80 Patterns for Lacemakers and Embroiders

Dominie Nash and Haunting Studies of a Dying Leaf

Illustration: Dominie Nash. Big Leaf Impromptu #8, 2008.

The Big Leaf series of textile art pieces by the artist Dominie Nash allows us to see both the robustness of the natural world along with the delicate and transient character that we often associate with particular aspects of nature. Leaves seem especially poignant to us with their ability to haunt us with ideas about decay and death. However, leaves should also be seen as an aspect of the cycle of life, dropped leaves in autumn only showing us part of that cycle.

Illustration: Dominie Nash. Big Leaf Impromptu #9, 2008.

Nash may well have been initially inspired to produce a series of textile art pieces using the construction, both delicate and robust, of a leaf, however the sequence of compositions that she has produced go a long way past any mere observational interest or aspect. These pieces have taken the most important features of the leaf from its complex colour tones to the emulation of the skeletal structure of the leaf through the use of hand stitching. All are portrayed within compositions that cover two very different aspects of fine art. On the one hand, is the analytical, almost medical approach to the anatomy of the leaf. Through that detailed analysis, comes an understanding of the anatomy of nature itself. However, another important aspect that Nash includes in all her work is the creative and inspirational character that underlies all of her work. The artist has an intrinsic understanding of colour tone and texture, which she uses with the confidence of compositional arrangement.

Illustration: Dominie Nash. Big Leaf Series #15, 2008.

To bring together the analytical, observational, compositional and creative features of her work while using the often difficult format of textiles, is a feat that Nash has managed to pull off. With these fascinating and at the same time haunting contained studies of both the dying leaf and the larger cycle of nature, the artist has managed to create for us a multi-focused compiled survey of the ever changing environment around us. In some respects, it is similar to one person stopping a moment in life's busy schedule, stooping down and picking a dead leaf up from the ground. That is the job of the creative, to allow us to observe a moment in time that they themselves have captured.

Illustration: Dominie Nash. Big Leaf Series #16, 2008.

Dominie Nash has exhibited her work across the US, as well as in the UK. She has a comprehensive website where much more of her work can be found. The link to her site is as always, in the reference links section below.

Illustration: Dominie Nash. Big Leaf Series #17, 2008.

All images are used with the kind permission of the artist.

Reference links:

Dominie Nash website

English Embroidered Crewelwork

Illustration: English crewelwork.

Crewelwork, or perhaps a more technically accurate phrase would be crewel embroidery, is a distinct technique of embroidery that has a long history in Europe, and in England can trace its history back to the construction of the Bayeux tapestry and beyond.

Although crewelwork often used outlined compositional aids in order to guide the stitching, it could equally be constructed without any guides, or only basic and roughly drawn guides, allowing the crewel worker an element of creative freedom, adding details as they progressed.

 Illustration: Motif for embroidered crewelwork, 17th century.

Crewel embroidery was usually produced using wool rather than cotton or silk, which separates it from the main embroidery medium, though this does not make it unique. Even though the woollen yarn used was fine in comparison to general wool yarn use, the wool still gave a much thicker stitch producing a raised aspect to the finished embroidery, which gave it its unique style. However, because of the thickness of the yarn an embroidery hoop or frame was needed in order to maintain an even tension so that the yarn did not distort the base fabric.

Probably the best examples of English crewelwork were that produced during the Jacobean period, the first part of the seventeenth century. Some examples are luckily still with us. They give us an insight into the high quality and standard that was regularly achieved by the women who produced these historical gems of embroidery. It is a tribute to them that we still admire these Jacobean crewel work pieces four hundred years after they were first produced.

Illustration: Leaf motif for embroidered crewelwork, 17th century.

Much of the crewelwork was created for domestic settings. Bedroom furnishings were particularly popular and most large country houses had crewelwork bed hangings and covers that were being used generations after their creation. Crewelwork was also used to a certain extent in clothing, with crewel-embroidered jackets being popular for both sexes at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

English crewelwork had at its root the decorative theme of the natural world of flora and fauna. Much of the work consisted of stylised flowers, leaves and trees. These could take the form of landscapes, with forest hunting scenes being particularly popular. However, some of the decorative work was much more complex and intertwined, using highly stylised flowers and leaves, giving a rich and detailed surface to the fabric.

Illustration: Leaf motif for embroidered crewelwork, 17th century.

This form of Jacobean crewelwork became inspirational to many who used embroidery within the nineteenth century Arts & Crafts movement. William Morris and his daughter May produced an element of their embroidered, printed and woven textile work that used this traditional and highly stylised English decorative art as its inspiration. It was its distinctive rural Englishness that seemed to appeal to the Morris's and the Arts & Crafts movement in general. The love of the English natural world was a magnet to the creative craft makers of the later nineteenth century. The high standards of hand production achieved by English Jacobean crewelwork deeply impressed them and the combination of the two meant that this form of crewelwork featured across the English Arts & Crafts movement for much of life of the movement.

Illustration: Peter Saltonstall wearing an embroidered crewelwork jacket, 1610.

Further reading links:
English Embroidery Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries: Collections of the Royal Ontario Museum
Early American Crewel Design (International Design Library)
Crewel embroidered bed hangings in old and New England (Boston Museum Bulletin)
American Crewelwork
Complete Book of Embroidery: Includes Crewelwork, Goldwork, Ribbon Embroidery, and Embellishments
American Crewelwork Stitches of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Crewelwork (Essential Stitch Guide)
Beginner's Guide to Crewel Embroidery
Encyclopedia of Embroidery Stitches, Including Crewel
The New Crewel: Exquisite Designs in Contemporary Embroidery
Early American Crewel Design (International Design Library)
American Crewelwork: Stitches of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Introduction to Crewel Embroidery (Master Craftsmen)
The crewel book: Stitchery that gets down to basics (The Royal-craft library)
Pleasures of crewel;: A book of elementary to elegant stitches and new embroidery designs (The Betty Crocker home library)

Wen Redmond and the Complex Nature of Observation

Illustration: Wen Redmond. Trees Seen, Forest Remembered, 2008.

Of all the images and work produced by textile artist Wen Redmond, I have chosen a sequence of work produced by her over a couple of years. An observational and emotional tie to the theme of the tree links the images together, but it is perhaps her wide ranging and varied working methods that make the link all the more apparent.

Redmond is an artist that has strived to incorporate some particularly personal elements into her work. Photography seems to loom large, but it is the personal nature of observation and an emotional link with the subject that has guided the artist. An artist with a camera is a powerful combination. They tend not to randomly choose subjects that may prove useful at some point in the future, but are guided more to that of  individual elements within the environment, elements that are not always explainable individually, but become segments of a composition that may well be built up over a fairly considerable time period, or could well fit into place at an early stage of the creative process.

Illustration: Wen Redmond. Tree Forms, 2006.

By taking her own photographs and then printing them onto various textile formats, Redmond is able to control a much wider aspect of the emotional attraction that her work instils in the observer. Although only part of the process, it is an intrinsically important one. The layers of painting, dyeing, and stitching overlap the initial observation, helping to guide and support the composition so that many more aspects of Redmond's bond with the subject matter, becomes apparent.

Although abstract in nature, the narrative in each of these examples of Redmond's work is still very much linked to that of the real world around us. That the artist has chosen to show us much more and at a number of different levels, including colour, texture and dimension, allows us a glimpse at least of the thought processes, both analytical and emotional, that powered that initial photo opportunity, an opportunity that is at the root or foundation of the complex composition that has been built around and over that initial creative judgement.

Illustration: Wen Redmond. Winters Patience, 2008.

One of the most important aspects of Redmond's work is the question of observation. What is observation? How many aspects or plains of thought are involved when looking at a tree for example? By observing the complex nature of Redmond's work, we are made aware that what we observe around us contains a whole raft of layers full of meaning and context. We are aware that we are observing a tree, but so much more information is gathered at the same time. We are usually unaware of the depth of our understanding of one initial focus of our eyesight, but Redmond shows us through her work, the process that is continually being played out between observation and evaluation. Our eyes may well be open, but are we really seeing?

Illustration: Wen Redmond. Turn Around Tree, 2006.

This is one of the fundamental tools of any artist, allowing us to see what we really see. That Redmond has successfully achieved this aspect through the often difficult medium of textiles is doubly in need of praise. Her work will allow us to reach levels in which we can observe her understanding of observation.

Wen Redmond has exhibited her work since the mid-1980s and received various awards along the way. She has a comprehensive website where much more of her work can be seen and she also maintains a regular blog where those interested in her creative and thought processes, can follow her work.

Illustration: Wen Redmond. Root of the Matter. 2008.

All images provided with permission of the artist.

Reference links:

Wen Redmond website 

Wen Redmond blog

Ellin Larimer and the Journey of the Line

 Illustration: Ellin Larimer. Winter.

Ellin Larimer's work celebrates colour, texture, and ultimately that of the drawn line. Through textiles, Larimer is able to express an innate understanding of both the complexities and subtleties that are involved within the parameters of a fine art context.

Through the five pieces shown here, part of her Counterpoint series, Larimer takes segments of her work and produces through a fascinating process of construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction, a composition that flows in harmony colourwise, but seems to stagger with juxtapositions, linewise. There is a strange mixture of both tranquillity and movement within the work. The colours and textures play their part in allaying any fears the eye might have as to harsh, sharp, or drastic breaks in the composition, while the drawn line still retains these elements it seems less so because the clever use of colour balance. 

Illustration: Ellin Larimer. Tumult.

There lies the strength in Larimer's compositions. These are not mere cut-ups rearranged in order to form an all over pattern. In fact, all elements of the finished piece go to make up the ultimate journey of the drawn line, a line that uses both colour and texture as its support. The line that Larimer ingeniously draws, takes numerous pathways that at first glance appear to be mostly false starts, but in a way it is true to say that the journey of the drawn line is constantly reinvigorated and recreated. There is never a beginning or an ending to Larimer's work as everything folds in on itself. Whenever it appears that there may be a loose strand unaccounted for, that strand is taken up again and led somewhere else.

Illustration: Ellin Larimer. Verdant Counterpoint.

This constant journey of colour, texture, and line shows a confidence in some of the subtler aspects of fine art drawing which is often made more complex and harder to achieve by the very nature of those mediums. Trying to take a line on a journey using textiles as a base is particularly difficult.

With this particular set of five textile pieces, Larimer is confident in taking us deep within the constructs of her compositions. Follow a line and you are led deep within the confines of her creation on an endlessly looping pathway going behind and underneath, only to reappear again in a slightly different place at a different level. There is no real beginning and definitely no end to this journey and nor should there be.

Illustration: Ellin Larimer. Red Mums in Cloud Shape.

Ellin Larimer has exhibited her work extensively across the US. She has a comprehensive website where much more of her work can be seen. The website is listed below in the reference links section.

All images were provided with the kind permission of the artist.

Illustration: Ellin Larimer. Earth.

Reference links:

Ellin Larimer website