Tag: journey

Small wins / Gratitude

I had forgotten to read, almost forgotten how to read. Reading used to be my go to, my come down, my love but now, my time being taken up with work and knitting admin, I had forgotten how the written words of others, feed my own written words.

Nourishing transient words and thoughts flowing from the simple act of reading.

To neglect my relationship with the written word removes one of my senses – not sound, nor sight, nor taste, touch or smell but the 6th sense of inspiration. 

I am visiting Kyoto for 3 weeks in December / January – to nourish excitement, to be in the moment, to be baffled by everything in front of me by not recognising a thing – not the written or spoken word, nor the food or shops or culture – to have, in essence, my senses born again.  I am also going whilst I still have most of my own faculties, though I may have to tie my name and Japanese address on a string around my neck. 

To pursue a real and floating world that I never knew existed is exciting.  Who knows where it may lead. Three weeks, or thereabout, give or take forty hours of travel in the sky and waiting in my old beloved Pudong airport, is a wonderful hard-earned gift in life.   To leave a son and a daughter at Christmas would be unthinkable to most, but ‘Christmas’ is brief and we will make it up at the beginning of December – tree and all.

My trip to Kyoto slots in between a holiday break given at work (plus a few days either end) and, although a great financial cost, I will make do – cycling around the city, walking and eating cheaply.  I will wash my clothes in the wash tubs on the roof of the hostel over looking the mountain and I will live small with big thoughts.   I will stay in the attic of a hostel owned in Kyoto by a couple that I met in China in 2008, when they owed a hostel in Chengdu. They sold up and moved to Kyoto.  I never thought that I would ever see them again but I return, to people, to places.  They are beautiful people and Maki has been in touch regarding the booking. I feel quietly excited although a little nervous. 

I am knitting Maki a gift, which I will wrap beautifully and hand over to her with two hands and a faint bow as a sign of respect – something I learned in China and became second nature. Respect for a hard working woman, for communication, and mutual respect.

So much still to organise,  the thoughts are on a little back burner, slowly simmering.

For now, on this rainy day in Sheffield, I am having a delicious hour with the three books that I bought in the summer from a real book shop. That day,  I returned to work and said to my colleague, ‘ I think I’ll nip to Japan.  After all, I bought the books so now I have to go. ‘

I’m thinking of taking a small business card to reflect my knitting, this is a mock up, it is not the finished image but an idea – quite ridiculous and not at all corporate – What do you think?

Stash buster neck warmer is here

Leave No Trace, Shetland

Place of return

At every visit to Shetland over the past 4 years, I always take time to return to an isolated, derelict, lonely croft house on Bressay where I respectfully and quietly develop a creative practice that speaks to me of connections and belonging. 

The deterioration of this 2 roomed croft house has been logged since I first saw hand stencilled flowers painted across the walls at waist height in 2015.  The last family who lived in this small home painted those flowers but now they are gone.  The croft house may be small in size but I have spoken to a woman who was born there, as were her brothers and sisters and her mother and her own children.  It was her grandmother’s house and I heard of three generations of women who went home to give birth to their children there.

march 2017

Because I know this, I hear the sounds in the plaster on the walls that is now, year by year, disappearing away down to the stone fabric of the build. 

For weeks before returning this time, I had made preparation for my reunion with the shell of a house, by making it a gift of hand-block printed wallpaper with a Shetland Bird’s eye and a Brother / Sister lace design.  This wallpaper has been a couple of years in the making from learning CAD knit to using the stitch pattern to create a laser etched rubber stamp to print the design.   Material process and practice led research has always been the core of the development of my art practice.  I have long questioned – is it craft or art and is it relevant today a Contemporary Art arena in a time of changing families, fragmented families, home life, belonging, gendered women’s domestic craft of knitting and narratives of those women.  

The world is speedily changing and what can we say through art that will make a difference to someone for a moment to stop and think and feel.

Last week, on my first day back on Shetland, I nipped to see the derelict croft house.  As I was rounding the corner on the hill, my pace and heart quickened at what sight may greet me as it had been 15 months and a cycle of 7 raw weather seasons each taking its toll on the exposed walls since my last visit.   I hoped the house would be standing proudly as before which it was.   It felt like meeting an old friend.  Returning to make work here is not a safe option.  It feels as if I am breaking and entering, although the house has no roof and takes the label of ‘barn’.   I know it was a loving family home that just happens to be falling down on farm land which is owned by another person.  I visit it like an old relative. I look forward to first sight of out and in. Each year, I notice change.

On Tuesday, I returned again. This time, I carried the wallpaper, paste, brushes and measure to wallpaper around a window that I know so well. I had a hope of making creative work that spoke of belonging and connection to place and women’s domestic craft of knitting, maybe something of my own personal journey to this point.  

I measured, sized the walls, and hung the strips of paper on crumbling plaster in the hope of creating something that touched on the embedded experiences I had during the making process.   A connection of past and present. I’m interested what other people see.  My critical eye firstly noted that the water based ink ran when touched by water based glue, and that the design would have probably looked better with one style of lace pattern and at best it could be described as imperfect and at its worst – well, you can only say but actually, on a practice led research level, the piece did work because in the right place, with the right print, I know I can create a piece of work that does speak of belonging.

After I stepped back from it, I recorded my initial responses and photographed the work then I pulled the paper off the wall, folded it and took it away for the bin back in Lerwick and Left No Trace.

leave no trace

Leave no trace, only record the moment of a coming together of a conceptual and expressive property which remains personal.  What is this work – is it Art? Textile art? Ethnography? Materiality? Am I telling stories? Am I making stories?  I’m trying to understand it in a way in which textile materials and techniques are expressed in contemporary site-specific art in order to tell a story.