Do you have textile items, perhaps clothing, a blanket or a cushion, things which you have kept because it gives you comfort, reminds you of a happy time or someone you love? I'm not thinking so much of a wedding dress, souvenirs or things we put away for best, rather the things that become imbued with meaning through repeated daily use and familiarity.
I have many such things that I treasure for the memories they hold or the feelings they induce. In fact, when we moved house last year I realised the extent to which I have filled my life with them, as I packed and unpacked my home I was struck by the depths of emotion they evoke. Amidst the chaos of boxes I kept finding myself standing still, holding something, (such as this quilt which was made for me by a family friend before I was born), lost in feelings from the past.
We are familiar with art forms such as music, painting, poetry and theatre being considered vehicles of expression, means to touch the soul, but we don't so often hear people speak that way about fabrics. Yet I know some of the pieces I treasure, their emotional loading is so high that, if I take the time to "listen" to them, it's like listening to an exquisite poem or a powerful piece of music. Something chimes within me when I look at them and I value them for where they take me in my mind and what they conjure up and for their aesthetics. Of course they may lack the universal nature of other artistic formats, the memories and stories are so individual and personal, but for me that adds to their appeal and my fascination.
Also made before I was born, this patchwork hand stitched by my mother in the 1970's, contains many fabrics from clothing or furnishings from my childhood. It lay unfinished in my mother's fabric stash, not quite big enough to be a bedspread, until as a teenager I turned it into two large cushions to take to university which have come everywhere with me since. Now they sit on my son's bed.
I love them for their joyful riot of randomness and for the comfortable familiarity they provide. But more than that, they are a wonderful example of the power of textiles to carry emotion and to link us to our past. Each patch of fabric, whether I have a distinguishable memory of it being used elsewhere or not, is full of connotations, not all of them pleasant, in fact some of them make me feel uneasy and uncomfortable.
Our material memories touch aspects of the human experience that can be difficult to put into words. So many of my memories involve the look and feel of the fabrics of the time, a pattern on wall paper or curtains, the texture of a seat cover, the feel of the clothing. Seeing, touching or even just recalling them in my mind doesn't just remind me of a time and place it also brings back subtle and sometimes complex emotions and perceptions I experienced in those moments. The emotions I experienced in the past come back through the materiality of that time and sometimes throw light on the present.
These relationships between textiles and memory, the present and the past is what I have been exploring in my personal art practice. In my next post I shall explain how I started to do it.
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