textiles now

Last Saturday this lovely book arrived in the post - Textiles Now by Drusilla Cole. I got so excited when I picked it up, thinking 'I can feel it! I can feel it!' and running my fingers across the textures while staring blankly into space. I'm not going to tell you any more about that so you can have the delight too if you get the book yourself or decide to hunt it out it in a bookshop or library. I do have a habit of feeling textures with the tips of my fingers. Sometimes it worries people! But texture is just wonderful, and touch/feeling an under-appreciated sense.

Textiles Now has around 250 pages of contemporary textile art. Gorgeous colour, form and texture in sections - 1 Constructed, 2 Dyed, printed and painted, and 3 Mixed media and stitched.

A couple of my river batiks are in the second section - Source of the Penpont and one with a long title that was abbreviated to De Lank Camel which will mean little to many but confuse North Cornwall folk who'll know it's the name of two major rivers (and yes, I am a little annoyed about the amendment). The full title is De Lank near the Confluence with the Camel. See them on my website here and here, but not here right now as the colours don't fit with those of the cover.

There are also batiks by Isabella Whitworth, Pat Hodson, Dorothy 'Bunny' Bowen, and Betsy Sterling Benjamin, and dyed felt pictures by Helen Melvin amongst other artists work or names I admire or recognise.

The book is not oriented to artists working sustainably or towards sustainability, but there are some included. For instance Helen Melvin's and India Flint's work is with natural dyes and Bunny Bowen has researched soy wax as substitute for paraffin wax in batik. At a stretch my river batiks also fall into the sustainable approach category by utilising whatever was around to apply wax for resist or, as I usually describe it, using scrap, found and home made tools.

It seems right to combine sustainable-approach art alongside - how to describe it? other art that hasn't deliberately incorporated such methods or materials, rather than keep 'eco-art' in an elitist niche. I know organic farmers who think this way... their approach is that it is just a different way of farming (though they obviously think it the better way!). By keeping in with the mainstream those others won't see organic as elitist so shouldn't feel 'threatened' or 'looked down on', and are more likely to be open-minded as to the benefits of organic and negatives of their own practice (and vice versa?). These farmers are good role models for me...

'Textiles Now' is published by Laurence King, where you can also view some pages. But you don't get to feel the cover!

art, environment, politics

A few weeks ago I gave a slide-talk to a lovely art group in St Agnes (mid Cornwall) about my batik and inspiration. Hopefully they were inspired enough for a workshop next year!

While running through and updating 'the talk' beforehand, two slides in particular made me think. 'For Antarctica' was made in 1991 when I was back in England for a few months for family reasons. I had been living away, working and travelling, for over three years by then, including in Australia. In 1989, to show my support for the World Park Antarctica movement then in full swing in Australia, I handed in my letter to prime minister Bob Hawke on the afternoon I cycled into Canberra. To my surprise, the very next morning he announced that Australia would join with France and sign the Antarctica treaty. Of course it's unlikely it was my letter that had swayed it, but the timing made me feel good and that taking action brings results!

Two years later in Shropshire I was astounded, dismayed, aghast... British environmental groups were only just gearing up for the Antarctica campaign here! Feeling very emotional and energetic about the matter, I absolutely had to make a batik - my contribution to the campaign.

I've just remembered... I also made a second Antarctica batik using the same words as in the Hawke letter ("the purse may lose but the penguins will be happy") and sent it to the then British prime minister. I can't recall who that was off hand - Major I think. But it didn't have the same effect, there was no next day announcement. I'll see if I can dig a photo of the batik out and post it later.

The second batik is 'Pacific Revenge', made in 1996. It was a response to the latest French nuclear testing in the Pacific, something that made me really angry yet feel so helpless that the only way I could express the anger constructively was through art.

I have a deeper connection with the issue of nuclear testing in the Pacific: in 1985 I was staying in France with a former French neighbour when the Rainbow Warrior was blown up in New Zealand. My friend was a member of Greenpeace in France (as was I in Britain) - she was distressed but unwilling to translate the newspaper front pages for me. Of course I didn't understand until I got back home and learned the French government was responsible.

In late 1987 I arrived in New Zealand and heard that the Rainbow Warrior was soon to be towed out to sea to be sunk to form a living reef (and memorial). I paid my respects in Auckland harbour beforehand, an emotional time (even all these years later).

So, by the mid-90s, the last thing I and many others expected was the French to carry out more nuclear tests in the Pacific. I kind of thought nations had grown up, beyond all that aggressive stuff, things they'd never use anyway (after Hiroshima). So this symbolic batik emerged: it's a shield bug on a french bean. The bug has been genetically modified by Pacific Islanders* and is now indestructible... and so that's it for the bean crop.

GM was another environmental issue of the day (and still is sadly) and like nuclear a technology that can be put to evil as well as good purposes. As much Pacific art stems from family, ancestry, generations etc, it seemed appropriate to bring this into the art.

Anyway, back to my thoughts of a few weeks ago when looking through the slides. Over the last few months a lot of my time has been spent analysing the Environmental Statement (ES) for a local windfarm proposal. I am without doubt a supporter of wind energy, but not at the cost of nature and ecosystems. This site is renowned for various species, including wintering golden plover. Several years ago I'd assisted the RSPB with a new survey of these birds and so I knew of the importance of the site. I had expected only to spend a few days getting a response together but the ES was so big and complex that it just went on and on... other than woad processing I have got very little proper work done in this time.

The windfarm response went off last Monday, and I have learned my lesson: don't take on stuff that's above my abilities! And, if I again feel that emotionally strongly about something, make a batik instead! Art is what I do!

*not to suggest that Pacific Islanders were thinking of doing this, but I wouldn't have blamed them if they had.

waxing

The woad is growing nicely now, and it's time to get waxing to have something ready for dyeing. Here's one just finished, taken from a sketch of the Brown Willy skyline (Cornwall's highest peak) at sunset from a favourite perch, Black Rock. Because woad-dyeing will be a learning process I want to keep the first ones simple in terms of waxing - so less wax is wasted on (possible) disasters. A series of batiks of moorland peaks may not be particularly creative or ambitious but is a nice excuse to get out for some longer walks than I've been doing lately! Also, being nearly midsummer, my mind turns to our inherited stone circles and other monuments with solstice and equinox alignments. Roughtor (second highest hill) was, apparently, very important to our Iron Age forebears. So respecting their beliefs and knowledge by focusing on views of Roughtor from prominent peaks and places doesn't seem quite so shallow after all, and maybe I will learn something too.

Minimal lines will also help me get a feel for predicting balance of (should I call it 'colour' or 'tone'?) after dyeing - the impact white lines in a deep blue will have. At least I hope to get deep blue!

Also, as many of my past batiks have treated wax as though there's no tomorrow, literally swamping the cloth with it, I need to start from the opposite extreme of less is more. I do now recognise there are limitations to the amount of wax I should use per batik, as there are limitations to the amount bees can be expected to produce annually (on the one hand) and availability of paraffin wax relates directly to availability of oil stocks (on the other). And production of paraffin wax contributes to global warming, but all-about-wax is for another post another time.

A new problem hit just after I'd waxed this piece - where to store it? Up until now I've worked on just one or occasionally a few related pieces at a time - waxing, dyeing and finishing - before moving on to the next. But not now... I will need a number of pieces ready for the woad and then do the dyeing in a batch. The cloth can't be folded and put in a drawer - the wax would crack on the fold lines. It really needs to stay flat. My mind sees it hanging from one of those coat hangers with clips on but I don't have any, nor a bound-to-stay-clean and unlikely-to-get-bashed (=cracked wax) spare hanging place in the studio, or house. I'm trying to approach this sideways, hoping tangentiality will let the obvious solution slip into view.

There's another reason for waxing these pieces now. Before I start any woad dyeing I need to finish the birds batik mentioned back in January and to do that I need to get some canting practice in for very long smooth curved lines - requiring a move of the whole body in sync with the line. Like all craft skills, you have to keep practising - stop for any length of time and you get rusty. Like me. The design calls for two perfect spirals within the white circle - any imperfection would just kill the picture. So I'm nervous and need to get confident before starting.

I also mixed up some Procion dyes yesterday and am running a fastness test on them. Three of the colours were first opened about 18 months ago, theoretically past their shelf life, the fourth is about a year old. I really don't want to buy new Procions just now... but the thought of having to re-wax because the dyes didn't fix is too scary!

all in the mind

Those following my postings will know I was struggling last week to draw clean wax lines but had practised and practised to refind the ability. Last Thursday was crunch time for waxing a commission. I had a terrible time all day, all skills gone to pot again. My mind was all over the place, forever drifting to the upcoming weekend and family visits and planning for a trip away the next week. I couldn't concentrate and it was preventing good craftsmanship. And I'd been up late blogging – late nights a good waxer do not make, a point made in the last post! So early evening I popped off to bed and slept for an hour, waking up refreshed and focused. Off I went and waxed such gorgeous lines I could cry! Even the grouping I'd been finding extra-problematic came out... well... how I'd expect a seasoned batikker to make them! Sadly though one line worries me, well two really, and a third ends not quite perfectly. But I think I am getting too perfectionist, too honed in on exactness that the spontaneous feel of art, batik, drawing might get lost. Niggly, but not wiggly, lines are fine.

The dyeing and final waxing stage will be next week. This is where real stress and worry comes in! Wax without dye can be boiled out and re-started. When dye meets cloth it starts fixing and can't be removed (assuming fix has been put in dye or cloth). So once the dye is there there is only one way forward... only one chance to get it right. I will post pics when it's finished. It's too scary beforehand...

In life I believe everything is a learning experience, everything happens for a reason and everything happens for the best. These pearls of wisdom came from an aged step-great-aunt I used to visit as a student and young graphic designer in London. In the 1920s she'd been an actress touring India with a theatre group, and as I saw it had that kind of rational positive approach to life and its ups and downs that I later found Indians and other Asians to have.

So... what am I learning from this commission? Simplicity and complications... the title of my last post. My own approach to batik has become complex, multi-layered and wrapped up in technique. The textural achievements are pretty wonderful, if I say so myself, but are they really necessary? The old saying "less is more" couldn't be more relevant.

But, as came up in the comments section of this blog on happiness, you cannot have, know, or experience one extreme without having, knowing or experiencing the other. (And there is no blanket extremes but much grey in between areas.) There may well be further to explore in the realms of complex batik, but I feel I have gone far enough that way to know that "more" can be achieved with "less".

In terms of sustainability less also seems to suggest more. Less wax, less energy, less water, less dye... less time taken (=less financial cost). It is not to say less effort though, as to reduce to just that which is needed often requires as much – or more - understanding of design and process as a complex procedure and quite possibly greater skills.

Aaagh. I see. Early nights are here to stay.

simplicity and complications

Over the past few weeks I've been working again on the commission that needed a wet-sand coloured background mentioned in a previous post. I am making a new version of a 1960s batik from Taiwan, inherited by my client from her parents and one with special meaning for her.

Sadly it got damaged by being stored in her loft and then a cellar – both insects and mould have destroyed the cloth itself, and the dyes have not only faded but also acted in astonishing ways, such as vertical blue "veins" running through areas of a particular colour. The client and I had long conversations about the original colours. She had known the batik for decades but I could only guess – from what I saw and from extrapolation to the circumstances of its original production.

I believe the batik came from a Buddhist temple her parents visited, where they were produced by temple boys to raise funds for the monastery. Living a resourceful way of life they would have been made on old, torn or otherwise unwearable robes. The batik shows no white, the first wax went on the wet-sand colour (I stopped calling it saffron when the client called the first sample "too saffron"!).

So the background colour was sorted. The secondary overdyed colours being painted not dipped made me assume they were chemical not natural dyes (a natural dyer told me you could paint plant dyes but it seemed a longwinded way to achieve these effects. Wouldn't it make more sense to adapt the design and dip if using natural dyes?). And because all (assumed) original colours were reproducible with Procions (and very simply – black* and magenta/black mix making green-black and a dark reddish over the wet-sand) I chose to make the background with Procions as well. Fibre-reactive dyes became available in the 60s, quite probably in Taiwan too.

Most recently I've been struggling to discover how a particular waxed texture was created. Again working from what I could see alongside extrapolation (from my visits to Thai and Laotian monasteries, and from Pira Sudham's novels) took me into the garden to gather various 'twigs' to make brushes; and when none fitted to gather and test other potential wax tools.

The effects achievable from some came close but none felt right. It came back to simplicity – I was certain the original would have been painted/overdyed with blended colours and needed nothing more complex... yet I could see 'texture'. But attempting to reproduce this texture showed it would have taken extraordinary and seemingly unnecessary time yet I didn't believe damp, mould, fungus or insects had caused the dye to disappear in such patterns. Such a big dilemma... I asked the client. 'Feathered', she remembered. So, no textural waxing!

I should have started the final batik last week. But I had been shocked by my shaky waxing hand! My canting drawn lines were dreadful, like beginners. I hadn't realised how out of practice I was, so have spent days waxing, boiling out and re-waxing the same piece of cloth (not very resourceful I know, but better than using new cotton each time which anyway would have had the same quantity of wax and water/power for boiling out).

I cleaned my cantings and changed the wax. I considered my posture, my arm movements, my hold on the canting. I thought of all those things I tell students to do or not do. I tried sitting on the floor to work, thinking it was my legs and back being too tired and my shoulder too tense. I tried meditating and exercising, which helped. I practised and practised and practised. It got better but not enough.

Looking again at the smooth and confident lines in the original I felt the artist couldn't possibly have used a canting, though a very fine Chinese brush (such as I didn't have) may have been. Individual lines denoting folds in the Buddha's robe ended in a point, similar to wired batik (a length of wire used to make smooth and repeatable curves). So I tried wire. Successful with short curves, riskily unworth it with longer lines or 'S' bend curves requiring two joining wire marks. Wire it wasn't.

This morning I made a new stretcher from remnant timber in the shed, designed to the right size for working on this batik. Previously I had been using a big old one, the right height but too wide. I had wondered if over-reaching was causing wobbly lines. The dedicated stretcher helped, definitely. Attitude as much as access. Making it was akin to a ceremony, a meditation and new starting point.

I also had planned to cut cardboard guides to draw along. Although the task of cutting approximately 25-30 curved guides would eat time for a one-off use, it would have simplified good curve-waxing skills for when the temple boy was having an off-time, like I was. But I baulked. No curves were repeated, each had to be cut individually. How to remember which went where? How fiddly to hunt through the pile for 'S3' or 'T7'. Suddenly this simplicity-logic vanished. I knew the lines had been made by canting. It was the easiest way.

I practised all afternoon. Most lines were well improved, except for a persistent grouping. I waxed them from the reverse. I angled and re-angled the stretcher to change to drawing angle. I swapped the canting: a Malaysian Ahmad one for a Javanese Don Harper one. It sat differently in my hand, the wax flowed fast and free, and there I was drawing nice smoothly curved lines! Just like that!

Was it really as simple as changing the canting? I don't believe so. Yesterday I pondered simplicity, wondering about my life. Being out of practise was a major factor, but why had I let things slip to this? Taking on and doing too much, being often in a rush, late nights/not early mornings, and too much time standing and not enough sitting/resting comfortably. Anything but the simple life, the slow life, indeed!

Last night I moved the router downstairs and worked on the laptop in a comfy chair (as I am now). I didn't get to bed as early as intended (like now) but felt rested today, not tired on my feet - my whole body responded better to moving with the canting.

So tomorrow's the day for waxing the final batik.

And then I will muse on the role of simplicity for sustainability in my practice.

* the black is Kenactive black not Procion black

take me to the river, drop me in the water...

I read the water meter today. Usually it's the water company owing me money... but this time I was feeling apprehensive: over the last few months I have been dip-dyeing...

It was for a long-standing commission which requires a flat evenly-coloured background. The colour is something like the colour of saffron, cardboard or wet sand. Achieving an even colour over a large area by painting dyes on is not easy, but is - or should be - a doddle by dip-dyeing. I've dip-dyed the odd piece of clothing in the past, but nothing where the colour and even-ness was as paramount as now. So I had some learning to do.

To get the exact right colour took over ten attempts... boy was this a learning curve! My initial problem was in getting the right dye dilution to achieve the right tone. I mixed my own exactly-right wet sand colour from the Procion primaries (cyan, magenta, yellow, black as I call them, though didn't use cyan this time) and diluted this down, initially 3 or 4 times, later 8 times, with water. The first few dyeings came out gorgeous deep reds - stunning colours though, I love them and they will not be wasted! Try as I did I just couldn't get the final dip-dyed colour to resemble the initial one I mixed. They were new dyes, freshly mixed, so that wasn't the problem. It seemed that the reddish or magenta "pigment" (do dyes have pigments?) fixed more readily, strongly and quickly than whatever was left - Ian Bowers at Fibrecrafts later confirmed this with a technical explanation, including a fascinating account of how exactly the dyes go about (literally!) their chemical process of binding to the fibre.

Suddenly I understood why pre-mixed Procion colours are there on the market... if your initial colour isn't going to relate to your end colour, then how can you mix the initial colour that will? Ian's suggestion was to dye twice, first green then orange (my wet sand came from mixing a yellow-black green into a yellow-magenta orange), though I dyed the orange first. He also floated buying a pre-mixed Fibrecrafts colour though this easy way out was stalled by their range not having a wet sand colour - and besides, I wasn't yet defeated! But I did buy an orange in the hope of overcoming the reddening problem. Although the legwork had doubled, overdyeing the green instead of pre-mixing it into orange did the trick and after a few more attempts sussing quantities, I got... wet sand!

Experience is without doubt the best way to learn, and had I achieved what I had wanted on the first attempt I would have learned nothing. I'm grateful to Noel Dyrenforth, Rosi Robinson and Fibrecrafts for publishing dip-dyeing recipes (the first two in books, the latter on their website) that initially guided me. The method, quantities and proportions are now in my head and moving into my instinct (from where I prefer to work).

Quantities brings me back to water. Yes, dip-dyeing uses tankfuls! After the first few dyeings I felt I should start measuring the litres but didn't - it wasn't the right time to shift focus. But I will have a think and post that suss later.

Dipping also requires a lot of salt. More easily calculable, I went through six or seven 750 gram containers. The packaging gives no information at all about the salt's origin or method of production. Although I bought these from the local mini-market (walking distance) I will start looking out for salt packs listing origin and production so I can research and get properly informed before needing any more.

I do know where my water comes from - and I don't mean the taps! Five Lanes' water comes via a small works beside Withey Brook, a moorland stream on the far side of East Moor. Rushyford Water, one of my Bodmin Moor river batiks, flows into the Withey. I like it that I can walk across the moor to see and appreciate the source of my water. I had never realised before living near the "supply" how anonymous my water was.

How come South West Water usually owes me? We agreed some time back that I use about 7 or 8 cubic metres/quarter and pay £14 monthly. But 3 x £14 comes to more than the cost of 7 or 8 cubic metres, but they won't take less than £14/month. I did give myself a pat on the back for assumed resourcefulness... until I read that my water footprint is still way above the global average. I will write more about this later too.

South West Water are sending a new bill... yes, this time I owe them.