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DistressedAm I alone in finding the cover of The World of Embroidery January 2000, and the accompanying article, subtitled 'Creating aged textiles', a rather strange choice? I admit to becoming bored with the concentration on 'ageing and distressing', and, it has to be said, on ethnic textiles, lovely as these often are. I write as one who values tradition, loves natural materials and patterns used in ethnic work and feels apprehensive about all things new, hard and shiny in this electronic age, but recognises how much the poorer we would be without them. I have seen some very futuristic exhibitions from the university textile departments and would like to see more examples of how domestically produced embroidery can be truly of our own time. I would have thought it better to have had something celebrating the now, the new, the future, on the first issue of 2000. It wasnt so much the featuring of an angel that I found strange, as the concentration on 'creating aged textiles'. An angel with a nod in the direction of 'Behold, I create all things new' might have had a message which looked in both directions, to the past and the future.
Vivienne Rowett
Grimsby
Ed: We also had several letters from people saying how much they had enjoyed Karina Thompson's work and the angel in particular, so you can't please everyone. What do other readers think?
DistressingDear World of Embroidery
There are many of us out here to whom the art of distressing is possibly as
essential as breathing! I for one can't create a piece without wanting at some
point to "UN-create it. I do however find great pleasure in the work I see that
isn't distressed or damaged as much as I enjoy those that are. There is a vast
field of techniques and unexplored horizons to accommodate all of us in our
creative moments. I feel that we should try to be open minded about the work
we see and gain from it in some way even if we don't like it. After all some
response I suppose is better than "lovely dear, thats very nice" Please allow
those of us who enjoy it to "distress" without censure and we'll let you create
beautiful unharmed things and not complain!
Lesley Goodall, lesley@goodall-lboro.freeserve.co.uk
Millennium HypeIt seems that your reader, Vivienne Rowett, is unhappy with my work on the cover of The World of Embroidery's January issue, on two counts. First, that the issue should have been all bells and whistles about the millennium and second that my work was not 'truly of our time'. On the first count, I would like to congratulate the editorial team of The World of Embroidery for not falling into the cliché trap of millennium hype used by everyone from Sunday supplements to cereal packets. On the count of not being 'truly of our time', I would like to defend my work with the following points. The piece was finished in September 1999, four months before publication. As stated in the accompanying article, 'my work is about how time affects surfaces ... not about trying to reproduce antiques or archaeological fragments'. In this respect, I see it as having a timeless quality and not, therefore, tied to a specific date - hence entirely appropriate for a millennium issue. The article was deliberately focused as a guide to using vanishing muslin because that, more than anything else, is what people ask me about - accessibility and empowerment - wanting people to understand the technique I use.
I feel that a paradox lies within my work. The past is important to me. We are shaped and formed by the embroiderers, artists and makers who have gone before us and I refuse to deny this heritage. However, at the same time, it is about the present. For instance, the 'Squawking Harpies' featured in the January 2000 issue is about two acquaintances who are always arguing. The 'Leopard Holding a Palm Leaf', also featured, is based on a 10th century Islamic bowl but has the face of the cartoon character Betty Boop.
My attitude comes from the late 20th-century postmodernist ethos of looking to the past to look to the future. It is only by understanding our history that we can understand who we are. I do not believe that the future will be 'new, hard and shiny'. Your reader's statement that she is 'bored with ... ageing, distressing and ... ethnic textiles' indicates an approach that ties us to shallow gimmicks and fashions which, in turn, ensures that other visual art forms regard embroidery as a second-class skill and the general public continues to view it as a quaint hobby. I believe that we all deserve better than that.
Karina Thompson
Selly Park, Birmingham
...and...Some words in response to Vivienne Rowett's letter (The World of Embroidery, May 2000). I am sure that the angel on the cover of the January issue would have been far more distressed not to have been heralding in a new millennium. Karina Thompson also helped the Oxford Gallery and the Ashmolean Museum to celebrate the new millennium by participating in their 'Old for New' project. She was one of three textile artists (Dawn Dupree and Carole Waller being the others) each commissioned to produce a piece of work based on the collections within the Ashmolean. Highlighting the invaluable role of museums and their collections was vital to the project, as was the melding of the historical with the modern. The past is an inescapable route to the present and influences all that we do, however ground-breaking and modern it may seem. Karina's work, I feel, manages to seduce the viewer through the apparent vulnerability and instability of the work. We feel a sense of pity and almost a sense of loss, be it for the past, for the tradition of the craft or simply for the image itself. The modern twist is that these pieces are not likely to decay half as quickly as their historical counterparts. Karina's work is, I would hazard, firmly based in the present.
Merlin Brooke-Little
Oxford Gallery