HIERARCHAEOLOGY.
The word textile is from Latin texere which means "to weave", "to braid" or "to construct". It is important for me to reconsider the fact that Strands or Yarns were the predecessor of sheet's or bolts of fabricated textile. A good example of sheet textile art is felting, in which animal fibers are matted together using heat and moisture, but wether Felting preceded yarns is unlikely to be either defined or established here, in my order of things the strand came first, and binding must have been the earliest form of conjoining two separate elements with a third. Our forefathers were not averse to the use of leather strands: thongs, which require more basic processing than the vegetable originating fibres. Textile Art occupies a very undervalued position in the fine art equation, requiring a Name to add value rather than the intrinsic value of its artful spin off, something in the order of a Warhol multiple or a Hirst Spot Rug. Although this value system is chronically flawed, I think it works in my favour regarding the range of idea's I'm most interested in.
Conceptualizing one of the social phenomena that I keep returning to, the process and action of Work/Shared industrial cooperative activity, certainly we see it modulating in the real world and more rapidly fluctuating now than in previous centuries, the idea of "Doing Together", organized or spontaniously making things in a distinct group of contributing individuals, there are many ideas as to why this general action is changing, the usual stereotypical propositions are plainly obvious chief among which the rise of the individual, particularly in Art.
Textile Art is made lesser simply by the substitution of the second word by the first. Primarily there is Art (fine art) and then there is Textile Art (craft work).The consensus being that Art is for mens dreams and Craft is for women's work.Art is refined as closely to an idea as possible, craft is simply getting the right material and forming it.....a bit.
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| Mengwytha Pendeen |
Stereotypically artists as we know/knew them are commonly male individuals. Art as we knew/know it is a physical manifestation of paint (oil) and canvas, that is the pinnacle in material terms. Artists were established in the Renaissence through sponsorship, often through religion or monarchy, they were paid for their extraordinary powerful figurations: visions which developed sleight of eye through Composition, Scale, Proportion and Perspective, standards of measuring physical logic. The Subversive Stitch They became superlative craftsmen but they called themselves Artists and their techniques or their craft was far outweighed by the phenomena of their artful visionary manifestations.
Crafts arise from desirable proximities, amplified senses, climatic variations, geomorphic consequences, stuff found hanging around by people wanting to transcend their existence: presaging Art. These new superlative craftsmen: Artists considered themselves apart because everyday they were contemplating Life, The Universe and Death and everything, the more financially secure ones had assistants to do the craft leaving them to do the conceptualizing and any signature "dishes" in their repertoire. The Masses were all crafts people, they made stuff together, this is not to evoke some hovis platitudes I'm simply comparing the activity undertaken by an autonomous or autocratic group of persons all present in the same vicinity without the tyranny of a plethora of emails, relentless phone communication ordering stuff online, delivered by angry white van man out of cyber lorry park wilderness and into your collective life-style montage.
Like art, craft can have lowly beginnings in food chains and floral, faunal husbandry it is a direct consequence of the aspirations of the inhabitants of a particular habitat, craft is deployed in order to turn trees into baskets, rocks into car components. It was never intended to develop beyond the sacred psychotic visions of the lofty overlords, the hermits, the anchorites and kings but the part played by ornament and textiles to help establish rank, order and hierarchy was too seductive.
Sometimes you just know you have to walk on real grass, I recently looked around St.Ives attempting to locate the site of the Fishing Net Looms from the old industry that my great, great grandfather (on my fathers side) would have known, the nets used to be made there but not because the net fibre materials were grown nearby, Other factors came into play, the primary reason was the close proximity to the sea and the abundance of fish, with the mining industry attracting the railway being extended further southwest. Earlier this preceding century fishing nets were no longer locally manufactured in St.Ives, in fact local industrial textiles practically everywhere were priced out by the beginnings of globalism, they came from Spain and currently they for the most part come from China.
Like art, craft can have lowly beginnings in food chains and floral, faunal husbandry it is a direct consequence of the aspirations of the inhabitants of a particular habitat, craft is deployed in order to turn trees into baskets, rocks into car components. It was never intended to develop beyond the sacred psychotic visions of the lofty overlords, the hermits, the anchorites and kings but the part played by ornament and textiles to help establish rank, order and hierarchy was too seductive.
Sometimes you just know you have to walk on real grass, I recently looked around St.Ives attempting to locate the site of the Fishing Net Looms from the old industry that my great, great grandfather (on my fathers side) would have known, the nets used to be made there but not because the net fibre materials were grown nearby, Other factors came into play, the primary reason was the close proximity to the sea and the abundance of fish, with the mining industry attracting the railway being extended further southwest. Earlier this preceding century fishing nets were no longer locally manufactured in St.Ives, in fact local industrial textiles practically everywhere were priced out by the beginnings of globalism, they came from Spain and currently they for the most part come from China.
My grandmothers father was a naval officer on board H.M.S. Isis during the Boxer Rebellion, when foreigners to China were openly distrusted for their acquisitive actions and tendencies. The Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, known by foreigners as the Boxers, or "Yihe Magic Boxing", was a secret society founded in the northern coastal province of Shandong consisting largely of people who had lost their livelihoods due to imperialism and natural disasters. The group originate from the Lí sect of the Ba gua religion group. Foreigners came to call the well-trained, athletic young men "Boxers" due to the martial arts and calisthenics they practiced. The Boxers' primary feature was spirit possession, which involved "the whirling of swords, violent prostrations, and chanting incantations to Taoist and Buddhist spirits. I was really touched that my grandmother left me two lacquer trays that her father had acquired in his time in China, she had noticed my adolescent interest in them. My grandmothers father left the royal navy and became the Revenue Man on the Isles of Scilly, (coastguard) not a desperately popular job among the Scillonian inhabitants although my grandmother was considered quite a catch for her Scillonian husband: my grandfather. Both of my Great grandfathers were separately active participants in attending the rescue of an Italian ship called the Isabo which wrecked one early evening on October 28th 1927. My grandmothers father received a signed (by Benito Mussolini) vellum and bronze medal now hanging in the Isles of Scilly Museum for his part, my grandfathers father was a hard hat diver as well as a fisherman who brought up the perished souls in their seized expressions of agony or begging forgiveness. As far as I know he was not recognised and his diving gear that was kept in a small banked shed that has recently become the Porthcressa Regenerated Tourist Centre wasted away in the dark. This is a true story, there are few resonant links and there are scant archetypes the story is a text-isle.
With twisting or spinning and plying fibers to make yarn (called thread when it is very fine and rope when it is very heavy). The yarn is then knotted, looped, braided, or woven to make flexible fabric or cloth, and cloth can be used to make clothing and soft furnishings. All of these items – felt, yarn, fabric, and finished objects – are collectively referred to as textiles. Yarns are stories too, embroideries and strands of narrative that link and crossover, weave and bind, suture and marlin caulk are such an obvious connection with our common history of sea travel, domestic life, mythology and language.
The textile arts also include those techniques which are used to embellish or decorate textiles – dyeing and printing to add color and pattern; embroidery and other types of needlework; tablet weaving; and lace-making. Construction methods such as sewing, knitting,crochet, and tailoring, as well as the tools employed (looms and sewing needles), techniques employed (quilting and pleating) and the objects made (carpets, hooked rugs, and coverlets) all fall under the category of textile arts.
http://www.thebeetroottree.com/exhibitions.php
The exemplary fine artist, the maker of masterpieces even in his current guise can be traced back to cosmopolitan Florence, Venice or Rome - such a legacy informs the spawning ground of the salons, colleges or "schools" wether they embrace, subvert or react to the history of art as defined by the collectors, their vision of approved art is compiled by the success or failure of the markets upon which they depend.
As a model of a fiscal pyramid Fine Art is the pinnacle and totally dependent upon the second layer, the commodities, manufacturing, processing, refining and making. Arrogantly sitting above the very source of its funding, every so often a craft will materialize in the artist category, an artist in clay, an artist in wood, an artist in paper. Sculpture is the eternal truant since it is made by artists using excessive amounts of crafting. Anyway, this is all pretty boring were it not for the fact that I need to address the cultural oddities of a place like St.Ives which has had a long heritage of industrialised crafts which transgressed from stone cutting, medievil theatre, shipbuilding, farming, fishing, manufacturing fishing gear etc etc into Artists Colony.
The exemplary fine artist, the maker of masterpieces even in his current guise can be traced back to cosmopolitan Florence, Venice or Rome - such a legacy informs the spawning ground of the salons, colleges or "schools" wether they embrace, subvert or react to the history of art as defined by the collectors, their vision of approved art is compiled by the success or failure of the markets upon which they depend.
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| Odysseus Adventures: The image of the Mounts Bay Lugger Mystery which sailed all the way from Newlyn Cornwall to Melbourne Australia 1854. stitched through a hard back of Odysseus with whipping twine crafting two stories together using physical actions and affordances to create a perspective by Jonathan Polkest. |
As a model of a fiscal pyramid Fine Art is the pinnacle and totally dependent upon the second layer, the commodities, manufacturing, processing, refining and making. Arrogantly sitting above the very source of its funding, every so often a craft will materialize in the artist category, an artist in clay, an artist in wood, an artist in paper. Sculpture is the eternal truant since it is made by artists using excessive amounts of crafting. Anyway, this is all pretty boring were it not for the fact that I need to address the cultural oddities of a place like St.Ives which has had a long heritage of industrialised crafts which transgressed from stone cutting, medievil theatre, shipbuilding, farming, fishing, manufacturing fishing gear etc etc into Artists Colony.
All those crafts were undertaken by men and women who avoided the mantle of Artist building the most artful ships, the envy of all including their Breton cousins who called the Cornish Lugger "The swallow of the seas". At an earlier point the community staged Cornish Miracle Plays - written and performed, ship building on the beaches. The simple act of pushing Marlin (tarred cotton twine) between carvel planks with a wood chisel is a contributory act towards waterproofing a wooden structure, a sculptural attribute. Tying ropes, sewing sails, rigging tackle and fishing gear by picking up these techniques and materials of the crafters legacy and allowing the unfinished, "artless' material to express influences, communicate the exposure endured in its creation.
The Invention of Needles.
