Here’s the first update on the work. I’m currently stitching all the outlines of the buildings, gardens and fences on the original map.

Once this is done, I will stitch the outlines of the steganographic tavern image. Then the final stage will be to work the fill, which to an extent will be influenced by the portion of the image to be filled.

I stitch, therefore I am…

As I may (or may not) have mentioned before, in keeping with the theme of the exhibition of investigating official narratives (which also happens to fit with my own Art Historical focus), I am basing my work on the official map of Montreal from 1704, which is the year that Jean Berger went on trial.

You can find the archived version I am using at archivescanadafrance.org (direct: http://bd.archivescanadafrance.org/acf-pleade-3-images/img-viewer/FRCAOM/FRCAOM_03DFC_468A/viewer.html)

Amazingly, I chose the same image that was used for the cover of Dr. François-Marc Gagnon’s book for which the exhibition is being done. I didn’t realise it until I saw a copy of the book, and no one on the curatorial team ever mentioned it.

At the moment, I am recreating the outlines of the buildings and gardens in embroidery floss in similar colours to those on the map. Once that is done I will add the outlines for my less than official narrative of a tavern scene with soldiers ( and others) behaving badly (the first level of steganography). Then I will complete the work by doing the fill, using geometric versions of wine casks, tankards, coins, chains, fleurs-de-lys, pistols, knives, etc. (the second level of steganography).

I will post an image of my progress, once I’ve progressed a bit further…

;-)

Here’s the link for my artist profile on the Jean Berger Project:

http://jeanbergerproject.tumblr.com/post/14318784477/featured-artist-joanna-lemon

I should have posted this when it first came out, but I’ve been rather busy writing my Master’s thesis, contemplating applying for a PhD program, and working on the JBP embroidery my last post mentioned.

I am thrilled to announce that my proposed work has been accepted for the Jean Berger Project, to be exhibited at Concordia University’s FOFA Gallery vitrine in June of next year. It will be my first large scale Blackwork embroidery project, and will recreate the plan of the city of Montreal as it was published in 1704. In it will be the standard steganography that is a common motif in this kind of stitching, but in addition I will be building another level of imagery into it, taking advantage of the ability to change the density if the fill. This will allow me to hide images of the seedy dark side of 18th C Montreal within the official representation of the city.

I will post links for the project, the map and maybe some examples of Blackwork a little later.

There are many great books on many topics, including the one on tatting I mentioned early on here, by Takako Kitano, and a particular favorite, The Art of Bead Embroidery by Heidi Kummli and Sheri Serafini. But what I find most important is the inspiration a book can give, though it doesn’t have to be a book—it could be a web site, a gallery/museum visit, a nature magazine, a walk in the park, a vacation photo. Techniques can be learned in many places, but inspiration and creativity are much harder to find, or should I say harder to recognise and respond to.

I can’t say that I have a specific process because I have too many different directions that I’m pulled in, but there are things that commonly inspire me to start a new project. Often it is a combination of colours, my introduction to a new technique, or others’ works of art that lead me to take up a particular combination of media or textures or whatever the specific project seems to require, and the actual topic of the work usually comes when I start working to find a way to put those pieces together.

In exploring an idea, it usually comes out of the exploration of the media, which for the large part is appealing to me because of the tactility of the process, and the textures of the results. With Pamp-elle-mousse, for example, the teardrop shape of the rings, as well as the picots themselves, were reminiscent of the sections of a grapefruit. The colours came from a specific yarn, which also influenced the choice of the subject, but was heavier than I wanted to use for the entire work, so I assembled the variety of threads that I ultimately used.

Someone I care about severely broke her leg recently, and will be out of commission for quite a while. But I can’t be with her, so I made her a card. I don’t believe in cutting flowers to send them to someone. If I would send flowers, I would send a plant, but since she won’t be able to care for one, the card has an embroidered mandala with leaf elements, so my loved one can think of all the lovely plants she has known over the years with her green thumbs, and have some peace while she heals.

Get well soon!

As my second work for the Yellow auction I have completed a tatted grapefruit cross-section I call Pamp-elle-mousse (2011), which is a play on the French name for the fruit. It was a joke a francophone friend and I used to make, but it highlights the word “elle”, which is French for “she”. Tatting, and other lace-making has in more recent times, say the past 200 years, been the domain of women, and highlights the prejudice many have against the so-called feminine arts, and their part in the keeping busy of idle hands, which came with their relegation to the home. As such, with the advent of feminism, and the stripping of decoration with the development of the Modern aesthetic, these types of artistic production fell out of favour, along with the doilies and lace-trimmed handkerchiefs this hand work produced.

Tatting is often referred to as “poor-man’s lace”. It only requires a needle or shuttle and a single spool of thread, which in my experience, can be just about anything, from cotton, or linen, as is traditional, to hemp twine, and I suspect, but have yet to attempt, fine wire and maybe even chain.

Here I have used various weights of cotton, including embroidery floss and medium weight yarn. The round, external form is maintained with a core of brass wire.

I specifically chose to have a puckered result, to avoid the work being like a doily, which many people today find to be a useless or old-fashioned household item.

I have been a long time proponent of environmental responsibility, and do what I can within my budget constraints to minimize my impact. I am also a former science major, and continue to remain connected to the news of advances in a variety of fields, so climate change, and its nay-sayers, has been a big concern to me. While it is obvious that one person cannot make a difference on her own, when many come together, amazing things can happen. So to that end, I have started on a journey of stitching and public display to bring awareness to the impacts humans have had on the environment through the creation of a series of unique pins focused on a variety of visible impacts worldwide.

Environmental Craftivism will consist of multiple hand-embroidered, hand-painted, hand-needleworked, hand-tatted, hand-crocheted, hand-beaded buttons. Some of the techniques can be found through the Embroiderer’s Guild, and in particular through an on-line project they have posted called Encrusting Calico. Volunteers will be asked to wear the buttons in public (thank you Carolina), and when asked about them, to discuss realities of climate change. They will also be asked to collect data, such as the date, time, location, gender, age-group, and positive or negative response to the discussion, which will be posted on-line (location to be determined).

The first has been inspired by Margaret Wertheim’s presentation of “The beautiful math of coral (and crochet)” on youtube, which I was very disappointed to see that it has already been going on for more than 5 years and I hadn’t known anything about it until very recently, but I found the subject and the treatment absolutely fascinating! I am very interested in geometry, from Euclid to the structures of organic molecules and complex proteins, so the mathematical implications of the project are very attractive, but what holds the attention is the potential this project has for creating and improving awareness of the death of coral reefs worldwide due to the acidification of the oceans through the dissolving of carbon dioxide in the sea water.

The base is unbleached cotton muslin/calico, and the threads or yarns are cotton, linen and wool of a variety of types. The embedded items are rescued buttons, as well as seedbeads, which were also used in the final embellishment. they are then mounted on a self-cover button form, with a broach pin through the shank, for easy wearability.

First phase, with embedding and major embroidery completed.

Just a touch of dye and paint.

Coral Bleaching 1 (2011), from the Environmental Craftivism series (2011-).

I have recently (in the past few days) developed a fascination with Blackwork, which was popularised in England during the Tudor period, but dates back (on the isle) to at least the time of Chaucer. Traditionally it is black thread worked on a white or off-white background, and is popular in many European traditions across the continent.

The reason for my fascination is that a customer at the store placed a special order for a book on the subject published by the Royal School of Needlework, and it showed just how intricate a product such a simple process can give. I was particularly impressed with the way different patterns of stiches can produce a gradient of density of “colour”, which reminds me of my work in textile design (and jewellery) developing ways of blending colours together without actually being about to mix them, as one could with paint. I’ve managed to find a lot of free online resources on the subject, too.

So while I am not an enthusiast of the 2 dimensional form in my artistic projects, I will have to explore this method to create textile motifs, which will likely end up on Spoonflower.com, but I have to work on other things first, like finishing my lit review for my thesis… All right then, nose back to the grindstone.