Strange cousins

  If we were to include surgery in the textile arts they would be considered very strange. Not because they are surgeons but because they, on the whole, don't practise other textile skills or use them in surgery. Generally people that can sew also embroider a bit or knit or quilt or make curtains or some of these or all. Most textile artists will combine techniques as standard. In short, when did we lose touch with our strange cousins?
  I find that when I explain techniques to a surgeon they understand them and can even see a parallel with their own sewing. Alternate names are offered for stitches and thread dilemmas  with some considerable understanding and empathy which they initially find surprising.
   It becomes harder when you offer up a different textile skill, knitting for example. Knitters use intuitive maths to build 3d sculptures from a single yarn. They are human 3d printers with infinitely more flexibility of thought than a machine.
  Then look at tailors, the use of geometry must be acknowledged and again this is often used intuitively. Someone who moulds cloth around the human body has a grasp of 4d maths, of the Mobius band and of the effect of time on their work.
  These are just two areas of understanding which can involve great material skill and which I feel the world of surgery either generally or in specialist fields could benefit from.
 Come back! we need a family reunion!

(image of a crocheted glove cuff repaired and augmented with needlelace.)

Wart Carpet

 

 To find an image to go with that title was a bit of a stretch! It's not a phrase I would ever have come up with but I find myself in that situation on a regular basis now. Every time I speak with a surgeon they describe situations  that they have encountered with remarkable eloquence. If I put an interesting textile into their hands the knowledge gets plumbed to a deeper level. I recently has a studio visit from a surgeon who I had invited to discuss scar tissue with me.In preparation I had selected some very odd materials to talk about and what results! In fact it will lead to another form of textile metaphor, more to come. It also shone a light down the path of 'What's Wrong', the discussion I will lead in November.

  On this recent visit though we discussed degenerating fibroids, fat filled spaces and making a map .Scouring pads have a whole new meaning to me now.

Dance like you know how

...if you know one dance the next one is not so difficult to learn. You understand footwork and rhythm, eventually you can make up your own dance. Then you see a dance from another country, is it the same in any way? Do you use your feet still? Which part of you do you move next? Rhythm is the key. The underlying rhythm of intuition.
  If you sit and refuse to dance because you don't think that another cultures' dancing isn't relevant to you then you won't get far.
 Come join the strange dance of interdisciplinary craftsmanship.

Images are of a button that asks why earwigs have wings and of a pair of scissors in lace.

Acceptable damage

-On being acceptably anti social,
-On doing damage as an exchange,
-On flying the plane

  In a couple of months I will be leading a discussion into what experts mean when they say something is wrong. When I say leading I mean as an explorer into a world of language that is usually tactile, assumed or missing. It is a wild land and there will be refreshments for the explorers.
  I have included some images of buttons that I use to make, finished or in progress. They each required a leap of understanding as to button-ness as they had pins in them or were made from something unlikely or were just fiddly and full of construction jeopardy. I knew how far I could push things and this is what we will discuss and maybe much more.

What I know about armpits, plugging gaps and David Bowie

This could be a winding path.
   Above is an image of one side of the Epiploic Cube. It is based on the armhole of a 17thC. dress. The construction of clothes during the 17thC. was such that armholes were high and tight. The next idea to add is that silk rots, the worst thing that can happen to silk is a human.A I have said in a previous post I am not an expert in antique clothing nor a conservator but I do have experience of wearing and mending antique clothing. I collect antique textiles and am very fond of the well loved ones with thinning sections and exposed layers. In brief I can use all of this to plug a gap in knowledge when I handle materials which are old or delicate. I can guess very well how a tight high armhole will age if made in silk and I know how it will need to be mended; all this kind of knowledge sits at the front of my thoughts when I watch surgery.
    So, David Bowie collaborated a long time ago with Bing Crosby on 'Little Drummer Boy'. The world of tradition met the world of the avant garde and who knows how many unlikely collaborations it germinated. At the time, perhaps, followers of each side were uncomfortable with their sound, as a child I was one of them. Now I listen to it and hear how their harmonies wrap around each other in a painfully honest way. I see Bing's jumper and David's dual eye colour and I hear two musicians just being musicians and not superstars.
    What has this got to do with me doing the work that I do, with me cutting up poached eggs and handling ancient books in order to understand it? Some people will be uncomfortable with it and some will understand why. Some will shout about it in the staff room (yes I was listening but you didn't know it was me) and some will see me as part of the furniture. This is the strangest time of my life and I am living every moment of it.

Expert thoughts and metaphor

 Over the past three years I have been in conversation with many experts in different fields but being expert is the base line. Alongside my work with Imperial College I have also worked on a project for the V&A museum with magician Will Houstoun where we looked at expertise itself by studying some of the fruits of it, the objects in the museum. In discussion Will and I looked at what it takes to be an expert. The starting point with all those that I have met was the same with Will and I, not an exchange of the nuts and bolts of our understanding as many people imagine but the discernment that has evolved with our experience. Will and I talked of the quality in expertise that requires you to be better than you need to be which leads to a level of discernment which is the fruit of our expertise.

 It seems to me that after speaking with so many leaders in their field, be they surgeon, craftsperson or  performer that this discernment is often best expressed through metaphor. So far I have produced two metaphors for the residency, the Textile Body and the Epiploic Cube.

 The image above is of a small piece of lace that I made in order to understand the mind and practice of the lacemakers of the 16th and 17th C. and is part of that research done as an interdisciplinary project with the V&A, Imperial College and the Art Worker's Guild.

They of course didn't wear sparkly nail varnish

Old Clothes

  

  During the many operations I have seen over the past three years I often see old and damaged tissue. The surgeon has to deal with it's fragility and it's unpredictable behaviour and has to know what can be salvaged.

  When I get home I start to think of where in my life that I have to do something similar and naturally I think of clothes. I mend all my clothes, mostly linen dresses that wear thin across the hips and under the arms. I darn them, darn them again and then patch behind the darns as the fabric thins in wider and wider areas. Sometimes I have to piece in a whole new section because I know that there is nothing more to be done with the disintegrating cloth. During the medieval and early modern periods we know that linen clothing was cut down to children's clothes when the main areas wore out. Eventually the rags would be used for char cloth and then fertiliser for the next flax crop.

 Most people now do not wear linen clothes all day but they do wear jersey t-shirts and there is a similar comparison. Here is a general timeline for a t-shirt wearing out and it is similar to a human!

1.fading and sagging

2.frays around the neck

3.thins under the arms and down the front

4.small holes appear and when held up to the light you see that there are many pin point holes,

5.you put your finger through it one morning

 What can be mended is down to experience and the discernment of the mender. Are you fixing a seam that has broken or are you dealing with systemic damage?

 The image above is from the Epiploic Cube and was inspired by the patched and darned areas of the Bayeux tapestry and a 17th C. embroidered nightgown. The colour was chosen because the blueish brown is often used in medical illustrations from the 18th C. 

  It turns out that this side provokes the strongest reactions of revulsion from surgeons when handling the cube!