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!

Epiploic Cube part six

  Describing a complex surface is daunting. Do you begin with colour or form? How do you separate and prioritise visual signals into words that have meaning for another, perhaps for a student learning a complex technique or for an interested but inexperienced viewer?

  You may make assumptions about what you are seeing, some of them correct but not all. It may be that ignorance of one detail can undermine your knowledge and send you in the wrong direction.

 What do you see? This cube constantly rotates your vision and perspective, some planes sit as complete or framed squares and then rotate to juxtapose with another. Between each individual cube other spaces reveal themselves briefly, flashes of ribbon from another side poking through and then retreating.

The Cube explains without words how a surgeon has to think, see and navigate.

Epiploic Cube part five

 
  This is about the details of the model. I often see or am told about problems or anatomical details that I can immediately see in my mind as fabrics or technical challenges that I have in my work. Peritoneal spaces is one, fragile tissue another. Sometimes it is simply how to avoid that annoying but important thing that is getting in your way.

 
How I translate one to the other is part of what this project is revealing.The world of textiles is broad enough to be able to provide ample examples of material parallels that anyone can understand. My career has incorporated much of the field of textiles to one degree or another, each experience linking and building with its related areas to give me insights into areas that I don't always need to be expert at in order to understand.

 

 I don't need to have made a 17th century dress in Spitalfields silk to know that the underarm is fragile, my knowledge of wearing 1920s clothing is sufficient! I also know about piecing patterned fabric together and that it can take as long to make a repair in pattern look good as it can to make a whole new garment. The details shown here reveal my knowledge of all these things and more translated through a medical understanding.

 Image 1. shows a detail inspired by the hip inserts on an 18thC. corset to which I added folded organza. This was what came to mind when I was told about peritoneal spaces.
 Image 2. shows embroidered ribbon, rouleaux loops and couronnes all in similar tones, a complex surface often seen in vascular surgery.
Image 3. shows raised embroidery on silk where the pattern is disappearing into pleats, this problem is found in early printed silks and brings up questions of frugality and the skill of piecing pattern. It also shows how complex work gets hidden away.
Image 4. shows wear and tear that is perhaps beyond repair yet some parts are still sound. How far can you take the repair of antique materials is a challenge I have often witnessed in surgery.

Epiploic cube part four

One of the things I wanted to do with this piece was to hamper it's movement in some way. I had an idea of what was possible and in conversation with a friend and colleague Will Houstoun I realised that he could point me in the right direction! We spent a day with the mock-up model working out how each side related to the next and then applying ideas to it. Here we are looking at two methods of restricting its movement with straps and ribbons. I also wanted to add more surfaces that reveal themselves during the rotation and it was Will's knowledge of origami and kirigami that gave me the solution. The pale lavender side has folds and pockets usually found in pop-up books which can be seen in the images above and below.

  All of this then had then to be applied to the silk which has a different way of behaving than paper. I also had to incorporate other details to illustrate fragility and technical parallels to surgery! The result is a model that seems to have it's own life. You have to understand to what it wants to do through touch and let it tell you what it will do , rather like the old book I handled at the V&A.

Epiploic Cube part three

  Inside the cube you can see and experience the complexity of navigating a space that is both awkward and movable. I have made an secret passage between two of the sides where a tube, known as a rouleaux loop, can pass. One side shown below has pale lavender organza embroidered folds with a central pocket. Inside the pocket itself there are little surprises but also the fabric tube. This is stitched to another tube in scarlet silk like an anastomosis.

 The tubes can be gently pulled from one side of the cube to the other, this time a rectangle of scarlet taffeta. There is no flat plane to work on and the adjoining surface has tensioned straps which pull the inner surface closed again.

 The tube is then revealed again through a pocket and folds on this last plane.

  

 This is one idea I worked out by working with  magician Will Houstoun  with whom I spent a fascinating day and will talk more about in the next post, part four.

Epiploic Cube Part Two

I will  begin this tour of the cube by talking about historical costume detail. The side facing you in the first image has a woven ribbon detail done in a style reflecting the woven detail on a type of button called the 'death's head' button. It is not known how it got this name but it is a visually simple but technically complex woven thread method found on (expensive) buttons around the 18th C.
  The outer sides of the cube although square are formed of groups of squares and rectangles according to the engineering of the folding mechanism This gave me the opportunity to design each themed surface around the folds or openings.One particular side has just two rectangles which seemed far too easy so I added a pocket flap to one half. I now had an inside and an outside or anterior and posterior to play with. Using a shift in colour from grey lilacs to rose reds and greens  illustrated the change. Inside the pocket I placed a mini passementerie trimming such as would have been made to match buttons and silks of the era. In a parallel to surgery (one of many) this has to be removed before you proceed.

  Turn the cube a little and you see a blaze of golden orange.Silk ribbons are threaded through hand embroidered eyelets, tiny pinked edged panels are stitched with French knots and slashed through to reveal golden silk. If this sounds like a fashion article that's because I have recreated the high fashion detail of the 17th C. ,the slashed doublet. The silk ribbons have real silver aguillettes to finish off the ends which then tuck into the eyelets. These move about as you turn the cube giving an uneven weight shift as you feel the ribbons slide and stretch.

 There are nine surfaces to this cube and the other details are;
3. a patched embroidered shift, (tabby)
4. the gussets and reed boning channel stitching of a corset,(shell pink)
5. a quilted petticoat,(merlot)
6. the deaths head pattern on chiffon, (space dyed blackcurrant over magenta orange)
7. the folds on the hip of a 18th C dress, (scarlet)
8. the underarm of a 17th C dress,(liver)
9. a pocket in a 18th C dress. (lavender and sky blue).

 All these details were found in the V&A's 'Historical Fashion in Detail, the 17th and 18th Century, which is one of my favourite books!