#State of Mind Map is my new textile art series. It is inspired by journal writing and the visual representation of words.It builds on two 100 Day Projects, #100 Days of Beautiful Words and #100 Day Result, my Affirmative Applique Oyster/Card series and my #Yes I Can mini quilts.
They all use hand cut fabric letters with machine or hand stitch embellishment and express a cheerful side, to reach the beauty in life.
Nothing beats the first time thrill of recognising the vibrant beauty of colour as laid out in that box of wax crayons, aged four. Each #State of Mind Map starts as a quick draw pen on paper association to the key words :’word’, ‘cloth’, ‘colour’, which I see as defining aspects of my work. Working with colour now is to strive to recreate that moment over and over.
With my foot on the treadle, power stitching, as the fabric surface is transformed with coloured thread, the sewing machine becomes a painting tool, Cloth as a medium provides colour in swathes, it is familiar, comforting and versatile. It can be worked in a whole host of ways, dyed, printed, painted, cut, burnt, fused, sculpted, quilted, embroidered, stitched, by hand or machine.
And Words, well they bring their own love, their own salvation. During the period in my life when I turned away from visual art, I invested my creative energy into journal writing. Words became my expressive outlet and my teachers.
So far I’ve been working from the pen and paper mind map you see above, writing about the topics first, then responding with needle and thread. This is my process for the first piece and begins with ‘words’. It is to identify what they mean to me, it is pausing to take the time to look at the word associations I quickly reeled off, to go a little deeper.
So it’s now time to learn some more, with words in glorious technicolor and fabric and stitch. I invite you to see how it all unfolds.
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