14" x 14"
The story of "In My Elements"
The title of this Canvas Collage encompasses many memories and chapters of my life.
I was born in Kirkland Lake, which is in the northern part of the province of Ontario, Canada. At the time of my birth in 1938 this was gold mining country. I have memories of being in my father's jewellery store on the main street of the town and feeling the floor shaking beneath my feet. "Don't worry", I was told, "It's just the mine". Gold was my first elemental association.
Being so far north, the weather Elements played an important role in my life. The weather was a frequent topic of conversation. I experienced the changing seasons, brilliant rust, orange and plum colours of the fall leaves, white and silver of snow and ice, greens and pastels of spring awakening, the solid greens of summer.
The Element of texture appeared in my life in the form of thread and embroidery at the early age of around seven or eight. My maternal grandfather, Charles Gross, had a dry good store in Cleveland Ohio. I have fond memories of visiting his store and being allowed to choose a stamped linen tea towel or apron to embroider. Then I had the whole display of DMC floss boxes from which to chose my colours. These were some of my early "paints". Every beige cardboard box had a wealth of exciting colour beneath the lid.
To this day I get a thrill from going to shops to select thread, fabric, and canvases for needlepoint. Whenever I pass an old fabric shop, I must go inside just to stand there and breathe in the comfortable smells from my childhood. I'm always surprised that no one in the shop seems to notice this strange behaviour. When I visit my favourite needlepoint shop (they are all favourites) I don't want to leave. I think that I enlarge my stash just to have the pleasure of being surrounded with all of this tactile inspiration. When I think that my mood needs uplifting I go to the quilting or fabric stores to get myself excited again. Then I am back In My Elements.
This piece, In My Elements, began on one of those shopping missions. I needed inspiration and the inspiration arose from the fabric. I lovingly call this chosen fabric "the ugliest fabric that I've ever seen". Why? Because the colours of greens were spiked with a sharp red (and too much of the red) which didn't suit my esthetic sense. On the other hand, I wanted the fabric because of the geometric design. The fabric print was just "asking" to be cut and distorted and surface stitched to become tactile and exciting.
The first problem arose when I did just that: I cut, distorted, positioned the pieces and after hours of work I couldn't create a design that had a pleasing flow and balance. After a short break I returned and I changed the exterior shape of the piece, creating a diamond instead of a square. "The diamond shape repeats the Element theme", I rationalized.
When I had placed all of the pieces to my liking, I then had to decide what would bring this piece to life. Who wants to look at a puzzle of geometric pieces without any apparent purpose? In fact, who wants to stitch it? Not me! I knew that I was in my Element, the excitement of creating with fabric, but I was still missing an Element.
Aha! Photo transfer to the rescue. I searched my stash of photos and found this picture of me in my nature Element. Excitedly I thought, "that's it!" The next day I rushed to have the picture phototransfered only to find that the colours had became muted in reproduction. I was too excited to be daunted by this detail. I can be very stubborn when I want some aspect of a design to work. I found that I could surface stitch on the transfer with bright threads and by doing this, intensify the image. I also create some of my own colour rules: less matching is more effective. In fact, the colour variations allow all aspects of the piece to stand out and make a contribution to the total effect. As in the true Elements of nature, matching is not a concern.
Having completed my basic design concept and my Elements direction, I again rushed off to shop. This time I wanted to enhance my stash of threads. I then proceeded to 'paint' with my fibres, stitches imitating leaves, flowers, rocks, stepping stones, spiders, spider webs, paths, sun's rays, warm days waning as cool weather moves forward in nature and In My Elements.
>Click within the stitchings to
see the detail images: