Savage beauty: Alexander McQueen

 

This exhibition at the V&A Museum is breathtaking, both for the way it is displayed and the work it shows. You come out reeling from the amazing inventiveness of Alexander McQueen, not only the clothes he designed but also the headwear, shoes, jewellery and the sheer spectacle of the catwalk shows. It is a credit to the curators that they managed to convey all of this through brilliant room designs that immerse you in the themes of the collections. McQueen was also a man who knew how to use lace – it is everywhere – but always used to effect, sometimes a small piece attached to fabric, at others a huge ruffle, an entire dress, or a veil over the entire face. Veiling, or rather masking, is another key factor in many of these designs which adds to their gothic feeling of personal confinement. I was interested in the lace, but beautiful workmanship can also be seen in the embroidery, metalwork and garment construction. One of the great things about this exhibition is that the spectacle is amazing but so are the fine details. It is one of the best exhibitions I’ve seen for a long time – visit it if you can.

Photography

 

Thinking about photography yet again! This time I need some good photos of my most recent pieces - the hangings with the TB lace and silk paper. The trouble is there are three of them and they are 2 metres long and I haven’t got anywhere suitable to hang them for photography. My studio is a lovely cosy space, but not exactly a white cube environment! A friend recently told me that one of the reasons she’d held her latest exhibition was to hang all her work in a nice neutral space so that she could hire a photographer to take some good photos for her. Photos are so important when you’re trying to get selected for exhibitions that I can see her point. I will be able to take some full length photos when I exhibit these pieces in The Crypt Gallery in September, but I need some good photos before then. In the meantime I’ll just have to use close ups.  

Mounting lace

 

When I first started making traditional lace, great importance was put on how the lace was mounted onto fabric – usually a handkerchief or mat centre – with good reason, as bad mounting could ruin a lovely piece of lace. I remember the intricate steps required, including aligning the fabric and lace by removing a thread from the material, pinning, and tacking. Then the delicate stitching, using, for example, three-sided stitch, followed by the nerve wracking task of cutting away the excess fabric as close as possible to the stitching without cutting through it. Although I enjoy hand stitching I never found mounting lace very relaxing and was never entirely happy with the results. I was thinking about this mounting process as I was making my most recent piece of lace incorporating lace, fabric and silk paper. In this case I’m attaching the lace to the fabric using a simple oversewing stitch on the edge of the lace. When I’ve finished the sewing, I will remove the excess fabric by cutting it away about 1 cm from the stitching. For this hanging I am trying to represent the idea of the fabric becoming silted up with dust and turning into paper. Therefore I don’t want a formal join between the lace and the fabric, but to give the impression that they are all merging into one another. I also have the advantage that the lace will not be laundered so I’m not worried about the fabric fraying; it just has to look good on display. At the end of the day, I guess mounting is just about attaching the lace in the most appropriate way and if you do it well no one should notice it and instead just focus on the lace.

Sketchbooks

 

Some textile artists produce beautiful sketchbooks with samples of work, paintings, sketches and images of work in progress. Sadly I am not one of them! I love looking at other people’s sketchbooks, which are often works of art in themselves but I don’t produce such lovely things myself. I do keep sketchbooks, but mine are full of notes, references, ideas and analysis - they often contain more words than images. I do include photos, but mine are often pictures of the site for the work or quick images of things I’ve seen that have triggered an idea. They are working documents and are a good place to keep the records of a project, from the development of the ideas to their conclusion as well as receipts for materials and records of any press feedback after the exhibition. I frequently go back to them for information, especially to remind myself where I bought things, and also to reconsider ideas and inspiration. Reading a book on research methods the other day, the authors suggested that Leonardo da Vinci’s sketches represented his thoughts made visible by drawing and annotation, which I thought was a lovely description and represents how I use my sketchbook.

Exhibition advertising

 

I’m having a solo exhibition in September for the body of work I’ve produced during my PhD. It is called ‘The domestic veil’ and will be in The Crypt Gallery, St Pancras, Euston Road, London from 8 to 12 September 2015 – put it in the diary now! It seems a long way off and I’m still finishing off the thesis, but having just received a selection of magazines I subscribe to, I realise that I have to think about advertising now. Many of the magazines are quarterly or bimonthly and some of the deadlines are at the end of May. Both Crafts and Embroidery are published in July and September so I’m aiming for their September issues in the hope that people might see the listing and decided to visit. I’m worried that if I advertise in July people will have forgotten about it by September! However for the quarterly magazines, like Lace, I’ll have to go for the July issue. Nearer the time I’ll also have to start advertising on the internet but I think for now I just have to meet those magazine deadlines.  

Reusing titles

 

I’m putting in a proposal for an exhibition and have been trying to think of a good title for the work I’m proposing. The problem is I’m extending the idea of my ‘Thread of life’ piece (detail above), which is a silk paper dress with lace embedded in it, to a mini installation of three similar dresses linked by thread. The original was just one dress but I think the three new linked dresses will strengthen the idea of the continuity of life. My problem is that ‘Thread of life’ would be a great title for the new piece of work but I’ve already used it for the previous piece. Is it acceptable to reuse a title or should I call the new one ‘Thread of life 2’ or ‘Threads of life’ or try and think of something completely different? On reflection I think it would be too confusing to reuse the old title because I might still want to show the old work as well. I’ll have to think of something new!

Ghost lace

 

This ‘ghost lace’ made from dust and a paper doily took months to make – the difficult bit was remembering to leave the doily in place and not move it while I was doing other things in the studio. There seems to be an interest in ephemeral lace at the moment, mainly with all the work being done by NeSpoon and graffiti lace. That work and my dust lace are both based on the same principle of using a template and spraying paint or sifting dust through it. It’s not a new idea – I remember my mother dusting icing sugar through paper doilies to decorate sponge cakes. Interestingly, Cal Lane says that her interest in lace was based on that technique of cake decorating and it inspired her to make some of her first lace pieces.