Current issue | Letters Online | What's on | Webwatch | About us | Previous issues | Contact us | Subscribe/renew | Index | Terms & conditions | Your basket
I began work on my current collection of sculptured body pieces in March 1997. These elaborate, three-dimensional embroideries evolved from a series of air-brush paintings entitled Find the Painted Lady produced ten years ago while teaching drawing at the Barry summer school in south Wales in the hot summer of 1987. Indeed, this is where the story really begins. I took my students on a field trip to Duffren Gardens where we discovered and witnessed the water lilies and the timely arrival of dragonflies when the sun was at its hottest and stillest, electrifying their magnificent blue bodies. This magical, visible feast fired the imagination and prompted me to record and develop a series of tinted drawings with accompanying text in which viewers and readers are invited into a secret garden, taken on a journey through the seasons by two fabulous winged creatures in search of a haven of water lilies.
This current Painted Lady collection is ongoing and comprises eight garments. (I see my work as a form of hybrid art anchored in aspects of embroidery, fashion, sculpture, costume and fairy tales.) The method of working recently developed amounts to an interpretation of my 1987 drawings but, instead of paper, I work directly on the dressmaker's stand and then proceed to make thumbnail fashion sketches from the three-dimensional constructions. As far as materials and processes are concerned, I use a combination of materials which are diverse and unexpected as are their sources: threads, second-hand plastic doilies, out of season Christmas decorations bought from car boot sales, plastic snowflakes from Poundstretcher, silly second-hand hats to crinoline net (from Chapelier in Ossett, Yorkshire), florist's cellophane, Austrian crystals, B&Q's industrial plastic tags, paraphernalia bought from the House of Toy, London, and many more sources too numerous to mention.
Click the image to see a bigger version (30K)
One of the most important ingredients underpinning the production of this work is cold water dissolvable fabric. This is stretched over a circular wooden embroidery hoop and the design is then drawn on the plastic base using a silver pen. Appropriate mixed-media items are sewn onto the plastic using my 29-year-old Bernina Record machine with straight stitch or zigzag (a lot of magic and a little luck). When complete, the work is taken off the hoop and immersed in a bowl of cold water to dissolve the plastic base, leaving a mutually dependent interweave of threads and plundered artefacts.
Click the image to see a bigger version (46K)
To a certain extent, this multi-disciplinary focus on body based textiles is a new departure for me in that I am now working with machine rather than hand embroidery and focusing on the body rather than on smaller wall pieces. I have always used drawing as part of the creative process to harness my imaginative and innovative skills. In addition, memory plays an important part in my work, particularly the rich childhood experiences of the first seven years of my life in the lush Yorkshire countryside where home was a double-decker bus located not far from where I live now.
Finally, a few words about 'Twenty-six below', perhaps the most exciting piece in the Painted Lady collection. This piece was inspired by the landscape and climatic conditions experienced during a recent Christmas visit to Austria and constructed from 1,000 Austrian crystals which are studded into the bodice, collar and part of the skirt and 1,000 plastic snowflakes which were cut up and recycled in the form of a repeat pattern and used as the basic structure for the subsequent machine embroidery. The idea for this piece was based on having witnessed the ways in which sub-zero temperatures mummify and entrap nature. The transparent cellophane of the full-length skirt is used as a metaphor for both the glacial conditions and the release mechanisms of the melting processes in the spring.
Click the image to see a bigger version (32K)
Diane Bates trained in Textiles at Goldsmith's College, University of London, and currently lectures in textiles and drawing at Bradford & Ilkley Community College, West Yorkshire.
This article is from The World of Embroidery, Volume 49 No.6, © Diane Bates.
highlights from November 1998 issue