Tag Archives: Embroidery

Independent, Resource, Task

NFT Community – Experimenting & Developing

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Bayeux Tapestry

The Bayeux Tapestry is an embroidered cloth nearly 70 metres long and 50 centimetres tall that depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England concerning William, Duke of Normandy, and Harold, Earl of Wessex, later King of England, and culminating in the Battle of Hastings.

It was commissioned to celebrate the ‘William the Conqueror’s’ conquest of England. It begins with the events that led up to it – the death of Edward the confessor the King of England, and the succession of a new king; Harold. It runs through each scene of the Normans invasion and ends in the killing of King Harold.

Death of King Harold showing an arrow in his eye, Bayeux Tapestry, Bayeux, Normandy, France, Europe

The Bayeux tapestry is one of the supreme achievements of the Norman Romanesque. Romanesque art is the art of Europe from approximately 1000 AD to the rise of the Gothic style in the 12th century.

https://www.britannica.com/art/Romanesque-art

The Channel Islands became part of the Anglo-Norman realm when William the Conqueror defeated King Harold and won the English crown at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Jerseymen, or at least close relatives, serving under their Normandy lords, were said to be present at this historical battle. Just who was and was not at Hastings has been the subject of argument for centuries, but Onfroi, Mauger and Roger de Carteret, the sons of Godefroi de Carteret, are believed to have fought in the battle. It is likely that Onfroi’s son Renaud was the first de Carteret to become established in Jersey, and was thus the founder of the dynasty which ruled Jersey for such long periods over the centuries.

The tapestry is actually not a “true” tapestry in which the design is woven into the cloth in tapestry weave; it is technically an embroidery. It was embroidered on tabby-woven linen in crewel. It uses two main types of stiches: backstitching for the lettering and outlines and coaching for filling in the figures. Nine linen panels were sewn together to make the full 70m piece.

At least two panels of the tapestry are missing, perhaps even another 6.4 m . This missing area may have included William’s coronation.

Bayeux Tapestry - Medieval Histories

The tapestry is now exhibited at the Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux in Bayeux, Normandy, France. https://www.bayeuxmuseum.com/en/the-bayeux-tapestry/

Lisa Reihana

Lisa Reihana is a New Zealand artist of Maori descent.

 is a moving image interpretation of the French scenic wallpaper Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique.

In Neoclassical France, entrepreneur Joseph Dufour used the latest printing innovations to produce Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique (1804), a sophisticated twenty panel scenic wallpaper. Mirroring a widespread fascination with the Pacific voyages undertaken by Captain Cook, de Bougainville and de la Perouse, the wallpaper’s exotic themes referenced popular illustrations of that time. Two hundred years later, Maori artist Lisa Reihana employs twenty-first century digital technologies to animate Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique. Enlivened with the sights and sounds of dance and cultural ceremonies, a vast video panorama is populated by a myriad of people drawn from across New Zealand and the Pacific. 

Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique (The native peoples of the Pacific Ocean), 1804-5, Mâcon, by Mr Jean-Gabriel Charvet, Mr Joseph Dufour. Purchased 2015 with Charles Disney Art Trust funds. Te Papa (2015-0048-1) – Drops 1 – 10

Separated by two centuries, both the wallpaper and video are set against an utopian Tahitian landscape. While Dufour’s work models Enlightenment beliefs and ideas of harmony amongst mankind, Reihana’s reading of the past is darker and more nuanced. The artist foregrounds the complexities of cultural identity and colonisation by including scenes of encounter between Europeans and Polynesians. 

in Pursuit of Venus is a major video project that has been in development for several years. It reflects the wallpapers utopian ideals, is eight minutes long and presented on two-screens. in Pursuit of Venus has been exhibited in historic homes, art galleries and museums – repurposing each presentation offers new insights and unique presentation opportunities. 

This epic piece of living, moving, animated wallpaper eventually led to her representing New Zealand at last year’s Venice Biennale, where it was described as the best exhibit by critics including those from the Spectator and the Sunday Times.

Read article HERE in the Guardian and watch Lisa discuss the making of her film.

Embroidery

I learnt a lot from my experience with embroidery. Initially some inspiration based stimulus, to gain inspiration into a more tangible world of art, was given to us. I studied the work of El Anatsui who is a Ghanaian sculptor who’s work focuses on reusing materials in an in orthodox way to give it new meaning. Such as this piece below where he uses bottle caps to create a piece that looks flexible and embodies themes of consumption, transformation and the environment.

El Anatsui, Bleeding Takari II, aluminum bottle caps and copper wire,... | Download Scientific Diagram

We then learnt about the different types of stiches we could attempt to use in our work.

How difficult is embroidery? | Paraffle Embroidery

I made use of the back and the satin stich the most. The back stitch is a good method to create a continuous line. It involves, as the name suggests, stitching cloth in a line and then stitching back onto that line to make it more continuous. Satin stitching is an effective way of filling/colouring in a section of your work and it involves a consistent long portion of string being stitched parallel to fill in a space. Below is an example of where I used these methods in the same piece of tapestry.

My embroidery experience involved a lot of experimenting and compiling of many different elements.

Because there was free reign of creativity I almost allowed my hand to guide the string where I wanted it to go to create visual elements that popped into my head. I decided to create a piece with a central focus with other elements and materials sewed to it.

My focal image was that of influential figure in the occupation and art scene of Jersey, Claude Cahun. I additionally decided to use various stitching methods to create an intriguing design around her face to mask her eyes representing the oppression she faced during the occupation.

To further showcase my workflow around my embroidery I created a GIF by taking continuous photos of my piece every few minutes. I created it in photoshop by following these steps:

1. Create layer for each image
2. Window > timeline
3. Select > Create Frame Animation
4. Drop Menu > Make frames from Layers
5. Timeline > select Forever
6. File > Export > Save for Web Legacy > reduce image size to 720 x 720 pixels

I believe making this gif inspired thoughts of how tangible art can be infused with digital art. I believe using inspiration from the work of Lisa Reihana this GIF can be developed into a more in depth digital movie with the addition of a narrative. The GIF could be improved by taking images more frequently to create a smoother animation and keeping the embroidery in the same location of the table – not move it around as much.

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Tapestry editing

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Using edited images from our photoshoot, Bethany created a single embroidery job that combines all of these photos. Here we are using images of different colours to create an image that represents the pride flag.

To try and do this, Bethany 1st sorted these photos into a variety of formats and orders, finding the arrangement worked the best. After choosing a composition, she proceeds to embroider in pictures which form her own patterns and styles on each picture, for example by crossing out negative words in the Bible passages shown and creating dotted lines on the word board and in the middle. . Additionally, Bethany also did this by harnessing colour-matched filaments to the colours in each image, enhancing the colours depicting the LGBTQ flag when some of the colours light up slightly as a result of writing the images onto more paper. thick. , allowing embroidery without tearing. In addition, she also uses black for paints in their original colour. She then sewed the images onto a piece of size A2 fabric, which served as the backdrop for the collage. besides for that, she also pasted some photos on the document, so that there is no need for tinkering on the image that the photos can overlay. With all the photos in place, Bethany ensured that all the items lay flat and then framed them in a very sturdy window holder, so that the item’s slightly worn edges were not visible, and then the image has a stable background.

This is our final image for our identity and community project, highlighting both religious and LGBTQ communities, combining them by presenting their differences and how they are still there to be able to get along with each other despite this.

Independent, Task

Community NFT – Embroidery Workshop

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Yulia Makeyeva

On Wednesday the 29th of September we took part in an embroidery workshop with Yulia Makeyeva, an emerging multi-disciplinary artist who grew up in Russia and is now based in Jersey. Yulia has a background in art history, silversmithing and jewellery making, however turned her full attention to art in 2019. She likes to use photography to help her observe textures, patterns and shapes in everyday objects – she uses these observations to create artwork that is unique and unexpected. Yulia experiments with different mediums in her artwork, using sewing, painting, drawing and photography to create dynamic pieces with storylines and meanings. She has an interest in concepts of memory, responsibility, stereotypes, borders, boundaries and multiculturalism, and is also working on a range of projects involving historical research.

A statement from Yulia reads ‘I like to push the boundaries of the ordinary. Exploring the capabilities of materials, I learn through making. I draw inspiration from my home, family and surroundings – any texture, object, light movement, story, music, etc. can become a starting point. At a research stage, before making a decision, I play with the idea in my head and with the material in my hands, tactility is very important. Actual making process comes further, usually in the form of labour-intensive contemplative repetition. What do I want to say with my art? I want to reveal a different angle and engage the viewer into an active dialogue with the world around.’

Her Work;

Inspiration

During our embroidery workshop, we did some further research into our project by looking through various collections of embroidered work in books around the class. In one of these books we discovered this piece by Ghada Amer and Reza Farkhondeh called ‘The Bugs and the Lovers’, created from a series of drawings they made together in 2005. Two pink roses are the main focus of their piece, with various insects dotted around the watercolour flowers which symbolize the stereotypes of romanticism, women being delicate and frail. It is difficult to see from the image, however sewn into the painting is an outline of a couple making love, with emphasis on the woman’s face and body – there is obvious irony in Amer’s subject matter choice. The pink colour of the flowers and the symbolic metaphors for a woman’s innocence and fragility are juxtaposed by the explicit embroidery that overlaps, it creates the impression of women being comfortable within themselves in a society that still views them as weak and naive. This piece links to our idea on showing the representation of women as it evolves through the different waves of feminism, when deciding what to sew for my embroidered piece I took inspiration from the flowers and pink tones.

Ghada Amer & Reza Farkhondeh | The bugs and the lovers | 2008 

Experimenting with text

During this workshop, we were given the task to create a piece of embroidery inspired by our NFT Community project – taking inspiration also from ‘The Bugs and the Lovers’, I wanted to create a piece with a soft colour palette of pink and white to represent innocence and purity, some stereotypical qualities of women. We had a range of materials to work with, the main being some large fabric panels from the People Make Jersey exhibition which were placed on tables around the room for us to use in our pieces. I had the idea to cut out different words and phrases that linked with the idea of women’s rights and feminism, such as ‘who risked her life’ and ‘house workers’. I wanted to sew these phrases onto a piece of fabric that linked to Ghada Amer and Reza Farkhondeh’s work, using the motif of flowers for fragility. After gathering all of my words, fabrics and threads I decided to lay them all out in an order that created a story – I came up with the verse ‘woman; forced hope. her sacrifice, gratitude.’ The meaning I wish to be interpreted from these words is one of justice and fighting – the forced hope of generations of women fighting for the same thing year after year, the sacrifices made by suffragettes and other freedom fighters, the gratitude we feel for those who have fought for us in the past; women.

The words I cut out from the exhibition panels and the fabric I planned on using.
Image.jpeg
My verse set out on the fabric I planned to use for my piece.

Final Embroidery Piece

The aim of our workshop was to combine traditional methods of making art (analogue), such as embroidery and stitching with digital media like photography to create a short stop animation movie as a GIF. My GIF above was created on Adobe Photoshop using these steps –

1. Create layer for each image
2. Window > timeline
3. Select > Create Frame Animation
4. Drop Menu > Make frames from Layers
5. Timeline > select Forever
6. File > Export > Save for Web Legacy > reduce image size to 720 x 720 pixels

My GIF shows the process of my embroidery, however it also tells a story of repetition – hinting at the years of constant fighting for equality through the 19th and 20th century. The overlapping images the come together one by one create a dynamic animation conveying ideas of the same thing happening (or not happening) over and over again. Furthermore, as each new word or phrase is sewn on it gives the impression of time moving forwards, more and more women standing up for what they believe in and fighting for the rights they deserve. I wanted to convey a sense of irony also in my piece, using colours like pink to juxtapose the hard hitting message within my text. The motif of flowers that also features hints towards the stereotypes of women, the metaphor of a flower is often used to describe a women to make her seem feeble and weak – the opposite to the women described in my verse. Additionally, I wanted to use different coloured cotton and thread to sew the words on to the fabric -I began by using a thick red wool to sew in the word ‘forced’, again irony as I had to force the needle through the two fabrics to sew them together, but also symbolic of the struggles and pain that past and present activists have to go through, representing passion/blood//danger. Other materials I used to sew into my piece were thin threads of cotton in different shades of pink, showing repetition and symbolism of women throughout. The flimsiness of the cotton also adds to the idea of a stereotypical woman’s place, doing jobs around the house that do not require strength or muscle – all creating a pun towards the representation of women throughout history.

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embroidery workshop

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Recently we had a workshop setup for us having to do with embroidering due to potentially using this craft for our films in our groups. What is Embroidery? We learnt that embroidery is the art of being able to decorate any fabric or other material using a needle to apply thread or a yarn. Moreover, with embroideries you can include other materials into your work such as beads, pearls or even leafs depending on what the focus of your piece is. Embroidery in terms of photography could be a great addition to add to your work due to it adding texture and more depth into your work making it look more appealing.

Colorful Embroidery on Vintage Photographs by Victoria Villasana
Victoria Villasana

The lesson was started of by us students being given a piece of paper, teaching us four different techniques being: running stitch, back stitch, couching stitch and finally the satin stitch. During this lesson we got given a small piece of material and we drew a simple shape to go over with these four different techniques for practice. In my opinion my favourite technique was the satin technique. This was because I thought it looked more appealing to be able to fill a shape out all the way, it also gave the shape that i filled in a texture which also caught my attention.

Once we got the techniques down, as a class we where told to go around the studio and cut out different materials around the room which was the People Make Jersey tapestries from the Jersey Museum. After getting our cut outs we had to bring them back to our tables and make something out fo the cut outs we attained with the embroidery skills we got taught. Also, we got told to take pictures every 5 minutes in order to make a short film of the progress made in creating our embroidery pieces.

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Embroidery & Narrative

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Embroidery & Narrative

Embroidery is an art that works with a needle and thread. It works by stitching thread, yarn or other materials through a piece of fabric to create shapes and patterns.

“Photography is art with light, embroidery is art with a needle and thread.” – Julia

Embroidery adds colour, texture, richness and dimensions to express one’s wealth, ethnic, social identity and more.

It may also be used to mend clothing.

Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois was a French-born sculptor best known for her monumental abstract and frequently biomorphic sculptures that deal with men and women’s interactions. She was born December 25, 1911, in Paris, France, and died May 31, 2010, in New York, New York, United States.

Bourgeois’ early sketches were created to aid her parents in the restoration of antique tapestries. She received her education at the Sorbonne, where she majored in mathematics. She switched her concentration to art at the age of 25, studying at the École des Beaux-Arts, the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and Fernand Léger’s studio, and in 1938 she married and returned to New York City with her American husband, art historian Robert Goldwater. She started displaying her surrealist paintings and engravings there. She began experimenting with sculptural forms in the late 1940s, making a series of long, slim wooden figures that she displayed single and in groups.

Those were the first of her autobiographical pieces, which were characteristically abstract but emotionally strong. In the decades that followed, she created a number of frequently unnerving settings out of latex and found materials, as well as constructions out of marble, plaster, and glass. Betrayal, anxiety, revenge, obsession, anger, unbalance, and loneliness are among the most common. She frequently revisited subjects, techniques, and forms that had previously piqued her interest. Because she refused to confine her creative output to a single style or medium, she became more difficult to label and remained on the periphery of the art world. She was given a retrospective show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1982, an honor rarely bestowed on a living artist, and she represented the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1993. She was awarded the Praemium Imperiale medal for sculpture by the Japan Art Association in 1999.

Long into her 90s, the sculptor maintained her vibrancy and originality. She constructed a massive steel-and-marble spider (Maman, 1999) from which six monumental bronze counterparts were cast in 2003, and the bronzes were shown at various locations across the world. Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, The Mistress, and the Tangerine, a documentary, was released in 2008. Her house and studio, as well as a neighboring town house in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood, were opened to the public in 2016 as a museum commemorating her life and work.

Art analysis

Louise Bourgeois is an artist that implements her own life struggles and thoughts into physical art.

Substance:

This project was clearly created using physical works like wood, linen, thread, metal and more

This artefact is stored in a museum for the public to see.

This is called “Cell of Hysteria” and Louise states that in this exhibition

Composition:

The key focus of the project is obviously the sculpture sort of hovering over the bed which has “Je t’aime” stitched through ought.

The artist has also added an antique sewing machine in this exhibition.

The dominant colours here are grey and red, successfully suggesting dark and gloomy times that have come upon Louise.

Lighting:

In this exhibition, the lighting is set towards the sculpture; powerfully drawing the viewers attention to the dis-membered sculpture.

There are a variety of lighter tones across the model, which provides better illumination for the sculpt to concentrate on, resulting in a precisely exposed cut

Techniques:

Embroidery has evidently been used to stitch the word s “Je t’aime” repeatedly

Atmosphere:

This form makes me feel empathetic because of the following:

the sculpture is dis-membered. This suggests that Louise is slowly getting rid of a memory of someone, considering the bump on the carve we can powerfully see that she’s attempting to “kill” the memory of a man. I know this because she repeatedly has called herself the murderer for this exhibition.

Also, “Je t’aime” is repeatedly stitched throughout the bed in which the sculpture is lying powerfully suggesting that the memory of this man (her husband who passed away) is killing slowly killing/ hurting her, nonetheless she still loves her husband. This is suggested by the fact the sculpture is only missing bits of its body like head, arms, and feet successfully showing the slow “murderous” process of getting rid of a memory.

Response:

For my own experimentation

Additional Inspiration

Carolle Benitah

Own experimentation

For my own embroidery creation, I have been inspired by Louise in terms of; using my own struggles and life experiences and implementing them in to a physical art work.

For example:

The words “Je t’ai aim” suggests that an event happened in a love story and all you want to say is “I loved you” but you can’t get yourself to finish the phrase because there are lots of people around, a lot of opinions, thoughts and worries.