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Embroidery:
Art or CraftWhatever the outcome of the debate, Embroidery: Art or Craft, one thing is sure - it's a wonderful therapy. As a craft, complete concentration is required to use one's skills as well as possible. As an art, it is necessary to leave other problems behind and concentrate on design and other 'artistic' considerations. May I add (very quietly, not to stir up war-like debate between those who claim that embroidery is an art and those who say it is a craft) that to be a good craftsman is something to be proud of, and to be an artist is very rare, which can creep up on one unaware. The latter can certainly not function without the former and, if a craftsman is really a good craftsman, artistry will certainly be somewhere in the work.
Just to lower the tone a little bit, why does Alison King use a 'painterly' eye (The World of Embroidery, November 1999) when she is dealing with embroidery? Maybe she should be considering painting as a creative expression to her talents, not embroidery which needs an embroiderer's eye.
Putzi Roberts
Guildford, Surrey
...
And ...I have just been reading a book on East Anglia which described a person as being an artist in textiles. I really like that expression and hope that it gets used more often.
Margaret Talbot, margaret@elmswell.force9.co.uk
Painterly
EyeThank you for a wonderful March 2000 issue of The World of Embroidery - an abundance of joyous inspiration - amazing!
BUT - no, Putzi Roberts! I could not disagree more with your comment about Alison King's 'painterly eye' which she applies to her embroidery creations. As a painter/stitcher myself, I find that the two are inseparable. My paintings help me with all aspects of my embroidery, heightening my awareness of lines, forms, textures and colours. I'm sure that I am not alone in this.
Angela Benwell
Worthing, West Sussex
In the end does it matter?In the end does it really matter what we call ourselves, what we call the things we do, or what other people think?
Everything I have learned in over fifty years of very complicated living is united when I sit down to sew, and if I had heeded all the dissenting voices I would have missed out on one of the best parts of my life.
One naturalist told me it was "idiosyncratic" to try to capture living things in thread. One painter told me "it's just sewing", and no one will ever take "darning seriously". One photographer said it would "offend him" and would somehow "insult" and "diminish" his work if it was turned into an embroidery. One new friend said "let me get this right, you cut pieces of fabric into little bits and then stitch it together again, and you like doing this! That's just plain weird."
I do it because I must. Because this creative act is essential to some part of me.This making is as involving to my emotions and my imagination as pregnancy was, and it stretches my ingenuity every bit as much as parenting did. Maybe it isn't Art. Maybe it is strange to find so much satisfaction in watching the individual parts become a whole that was not there before.
What I do more than pleases me, and if the end result can be used to raise funds for conservation projects then I have both the cake and the icing too. So I really do not care if it is Art or not.
My daughter put it best. When asked: "and what does your mother do, dear?", she replied: "She makes stuff."
Exactly.
Tori, featheredforms@aol.com