A Few Days in Scotland

I started with the Glasgow School of Art tour (4th time!).  It's different every time.  The first couple of times was before it burned down, so was inside the GSA school.  The 3rd time, it had just burned down (2015?) and the tour was mostly outside, around the local area.  And this time it was entirely inside the new design building opposite, but had a lot of scale models, which actually demonstrated some principles that Rennie Mackintosh used.

The scale model showed how the design was asymmetrical - four equal windows on each storey of the east wing, and on the west wing, two large windows and two small windows on each storey.  You could see the clear influence of Scottish castles with the tubular turrets, and the influence of baronial crests in the weathervane and ironwork.  The style of the time was influenced by classical Greek and Roman architecture, all straight lines and symmetry - and this was what he was reacting against.  I'd never realised this point before.

The following day I went to Edinburgh. I went to the Scottish National Gallery and looked at the Joshua Reynolds of The Ladies Waldegrave, 1780.  I liked it because it shows 3 women in classical powdered wigs, actually doing something!  They are sitting round a table; one is doing tambour lace, and the other two are holding or winding thread on a card, presumably prior to use. What was interesting was the descriptor - it said the 3 women were the daughters of Earl Waldegrave, commissioned by uncle Walpole, painted by Reynolds (ie names 3 men) then mentions Lady Anna Horatia is making tambour lace and her sisters don't even get named!

The website says "Reynolds was particularly skilled at choosing poses and actions which suggested a sitter's character and which also created a strong composition. Here, three sisters, the daughters of the 2nd Earl Waldegrave, are shown collaboratively working on a piece of needlework. The joint activity links the girls together. On the left, the eldest, Lady Charlotte, holds a skein of silk, which the middle sister, Lady Elizabeth, winds onto a card. On the right, the youngest, Lady Anna, works a tambour frame, using a hook to make lace on a taut net.
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Sir Joshua Reynolds, The Ladies Waldegrave, 1780 Courtesy of National Galleries Scotland

Then I went to look at Pauline Burbidge and Charlie Poulson Songs for Winter at The City Art Gallery in Edinburgh.  Pauline has been quilting all her life - lots of work about brilliant line drawings of hedgerows, interpreted in stitch.  Beautifully done, but I've seen it all before.  Fantastic interpretation of nature ... but it does not set me alight, other than recognising the accomplished technique.  Likewise Charlie Poulson's work is inspired by nature but he does not want people to realise that is the source - his work represents gesture and energy.  Once again, I can see the skill and accomplishment, but it does not enthuse me.

Pauline Burbidge quilt - mono prints on fabric

Complete quilt with mono print, rubbings, cyanotypes

More mark making on fabric

Then I went to an Audacious Women event (3rd year running in Scotland - events by/about women).  This was a walking tour of Edinburgh.  Run by a social enterprise, but tours operated by people who were formerly homeless/had addiction problems. There had been a tour yesterday, which was oversubscribed, so a short notice tour had been put on Eventbrite, which was how I had booked.  They expected 7 to turn up, and actually 12 were there.  As conversations went on, it became apparent most attenders were not typical tourists, but people with an interest in social welfare.  Biffy, a young girl (mid 20s?) ran the walking tour that took us around various sights associated with women.  She told us about former publican/witches, Elsie Inglis (nurse in France in WW1), prisons, the cafe where J K Rowling wrote part of Harry Potter, more animal statues (Greyfriars Bobby) than women statues in Edinburgh, the drug recovery centre that she attended as an alternative to prison, and ended up at a social venture cafe, run by/for people recovering from addiction.  Biffy was most impressed when I told her how London Underground deals with people who admit an addiction problem (6 months full sick pay, funded treatment at The Priory, integration back into the workplace).  Great, great tour.  

JK Rowling has tiny hands

Statue of Greyfriars Bobby - there are more statues of animals than women in Edinburgh

JK Rowling is top right, Ian Rankin is bottom right.  

Then today I went to Glasgow Women's Library.  Great venue with all sorts of women's literature. Exhibition space with textile and ceramic work by a New Zealand artist about her Scottish grandmother who was a social activist.  Great work.  

Embroidered banners with feminist quotes

Ceramics with various representations of Helen Crawford,  feminist activist 

More banners

Women on the Shelf wooden block - Esther Quinn.
Lifelong educator, trade union, women's campaigner, funny, feisty and my friend

There were a lot of these wooden blocks.  I think it was £100 to commission one with your choice of woman named and described.  I thought it was a great idea to identify and sum up known and unknown women.

Women on the Shelf, Muriel Robison
Solicitor and dedicated support of women's rights and gender equality.  From colleagues at the EHRC.

Starting to make progress again

I think I've come out of a spell of mild depression.  I hit a wall after New Year with my work.  Particularly with the thinking.  I managed to stave off panicking about the thinking, by finishing Aunt Joan's sampler, but the conceptual stuff just was like fumbling in cotton wool.

Then with a push from Jill, I started writing about the history of samplers, which made me feel a bit better, because I'm starting to get to grips with their historical significance to the makers and the historical changes, such as the advent of Protestantism, that impacted on sampler making.  Then I had a tutorial with Imogen and I'm starting to write about makers who inspire me, and investigating their work to identify why I like what they do, is illuminating.  Definitely starting to feel brighter about my thinking!

Last night I went to a talk about Suffrage, Women and Cycling.  Lots about the commencement of women's cycling clubs in London and Essex (Rosslyn) in Victorian times.  Lots of club minutes debating uniform (Rational dress or full dresses), colours, and social events.   Strong correlation of women cyclists and suffrage.

Then today, I went to London and dropped in to the pubic toilets at Liverpool St.  I spoke to the cleaning ladies about my idea for an artwork about them, and they called their supervisor.  When I explained my idea saying I wanted to make artwork about his team as I thought they were under-valued by the public, he was absolutely delighted,  shook my hand and hugged me!  He took me to the Duty Manager of Liverpool St Network Rail, and he liked the idea in principle.  I left my business card with the Cleaning Supervisor.

I need to get my Ethics Form back from Coventry Uni (next week?) and get on with chasing up Interserve Management.

Then I went to my Inspiring Women class at National Portrait Gallery, and had a great time there.  We looked at Queen Victoria, Mary Seacole, Elizabeth Barrett Anderson, Millicent Garrett Fawcett, the Pankhursts; Nancy Astor.  Interesting fact that one reason why in 1918 the vote was only given to women over 30 of property (which must have been a TINY proportion of women) was that if all women had been given the vote, there would have been more women voters than men, due to high WW1 fatalities.  Also noted was the Victorian campaign for suffrage with Suffragists (the lobbyists, non-violent) stating "dress like a woman, behave like a man".  So was the cycling debate about whether to wear skirts or trousers on a bike, actually about suffragists wanting to dress like a woman, whereas the suffragettes were more practical/safe wearing trousers and happy to dress like a man/behave like a man?

Now in Scotland, ready for a few days gallivanting around the Scottish museums.  Days are getting longer, and I'm feeling brighter.

Notes from The Subversive Stitch

All direct quotes.  P12

' The subject matter of a woman's embroidery during the 18th and 19th c was as important as its execution in affirming her femininity (and thus her worth and worthlessness in the world's eyes).  ... If the content conformed to the ideal, it supposedly won the needlewoman love, admiration and support.

' The iconography of women's work is rarely given the serious consideration it deserves.  Embroidery is all too often treated only in terms of technical developments.  On reason why the subject matter of embroidery is summarily dismissed is that embroiderers employ patterns.  ... Needlewomen chose particular patterns, selecting those images which had meaning for them.   The interpretation .... of the pattern is an integral aspect of the activity  ... and needlewomen ... select[ed]those images which had meaning for them.  ... They had specific importance and powerful resonance for the women who chose them ... (The modern viewer) can perceive what could not could not be stitched by women and how they were able to make meanings of their own.

'Sometimes embroiders reinforced the feminine ideal ... At other times they resisted or questioned the emerging ideology of feminine obedience and subjugation.  ...

P13
'Such overt recognition of the cash between individual ambition and the ideology of femininity is rare indeed.  ... Why [these embroiderers] selected such subjects, what secondary gains they accrued from conformity to the feminine ideal, and how they were able to make meanings of their own.

P14
'The stereotype of embroidery as a vain and frivolous occupation, like the stereotype of the silent, seductive needlewoman, ... undermines the power and pleasure women have found in embroidery.

Chapter 5 p83
'Embroidery... waste inculcate obedience and patience during long hours spent sitting still, head bowed over an increasingly technically complex, demanding art.

p85
'16th century samplers had been broad linen rectangles.  ... 17th century samplers were educational exercises in stitchery - individual tests of skill, rather than store houses of motifs.  ... The long band samplers were usually stitched in progressively harder exercises.  The first bands would be devoted to coloured border patterns - stylised flowers and alphabets in silks.  Often the colour would disappear in bands of whitework embroidery.  ... The alphabets too had a practical application.  The increasingly affluent households of the 17th century 'marked' their newly acquired household linens.

p86
'Signatures and dates appear on samplers in the late 16th century ... related to the rise of individualism to the Reformation and the ideology of Protestantism.

p88
'The father assumed a new importance in the hierarchy of authority.  ...  The importance of parental discipline increased with the advent of Protestantism.  ... The church was tending to lose ground to the domestic hearth.  ... The advent of samplers with embroidered pledges of obedience the mother or father ... signifies the changes.

p89
'The biblical scenes selected for pictorial embroidery depict parental power at its most absolute and violent. Jephta's taught and the sacrifice of Isaac were commonly depicted.

p90
'Embroidery as an education in femininity crossed religious and political boundaries.  ... An important aspect of aristocratic life - thus, for many puritans pious subject matter could not erase the art's association with vanity and decadence.  So, paradoxically white they promoted it as a defence against idleness it was also castigated as evidence of idleness. ... Embroidery was to prepare upper and middle class girls for their place as wives occupied with 'housewifery'.

p95
'In the 17th century ... Flowers and animals embroidered ... may be royalist symbols.  ... The lion, stag and leopard ... were supporters of the royal arms.  Floral motifs in Stuart embroidery ... content of mediaeval embroidery had revolved around reproduction and childbirth.

p96
'... Symbols of the Virgin's fertility lived on in women's work.  A spray ... with one full flower and a bud symbolised the mother and child, fruit in a basket and a lily in a pot were traditional associated with the Annunciation.  The flower pot of the Annunciation was worked in the crown of a baby's bonnet. ... The stitching of the symbol of the Annunciation on babies' clothes suggests that embroiderers knew what they were doing.

'OT subjects - David and Bathsheba; Susanna and the Elders.  Heroic act by women, triumphing over evil...

p98
'Amateur embroiders ignored the women who tempted and destroyed men in favour of Judith or Esther, whose acts of courage saved their people.  (This fits with my work - focus on the positives of women).  Stories about women's power within marriage were popular - Esther who successfully interceded with her husband Ahasuerus on behalf of her people the Jews.  Esther was often invoked to symbolise a persecuted minority.

P102
'Embroiders employed the needle, not the pen - they left no records of their attitudes towards their subject matter.  We cannot claim them as proto-feminists.   .... They embroidered those who reflected well on their sex... Embroiders throughout history were rarely in the vanguard of the fight for women's rights - but it is in their work that we can see reflected the constraints and contradictions that drove some women to speak out.

p103
'1659 Embroidery became the object to attack for the women who spoke out against the constraints fo femininity.  This was regrettable.  Embroidery was no more innately feminine than are women; it had simply become part of the construction of femininity.

p104
'1675 Teacher Wooley's inclusion of ... embroidery in her curriculum was pragmatic; both a tactic to make education for girls acceptable, and a tool for producing the characteristics she deemed necessary for women within marriage.

p107
'17th c - the advent of children's education in femininity through sampler making.  Charity schools spread and the education of working class girls, like that of upper and middle class girls, included the stitching of samplers.

p108
'The future pattern of professional work began to be established.  Working class women were employed as sweated labour in trades associated with embroidery and middle class women became embroiderers because the craft's aristocratic and feminine associations made it an acceptable occupation.


p136
'In the US, an embroidered mourning picture followed a sampler as the next stage in a girl's education. ... Embroidery was taught in emulation of European habits.

p139
Mary Wollstonecraft The Vindication of the Right of Women 'Identifying needlework as a prime agent in the construction of femininity, summarised "this employment contracts their faculties more than any other by confining their thoughts to their persons"..."moreover it renders the majority of own sickly ... and false notions of female excellence make them proud of this delicacy".

Art Class at the Granary.

I love my art classes.  I've done a couple of days now at the Granary where I've been working with objects from public toilets - toilet brushes, bottles of cleaning fluids, rubber gloves etc.  So although the class has been about mark making, I've ended up free styling and working with print and colour, and collage and shape.   I still find I stumble when we do a group review to question and analyse our work - Vanda threw a 'simple' question at me and it threw me completely - 'why do you use a concertina sketchbook?'.  I botched the answer - and this worries me for when I come to my Progress Review Panel in September.  So Vanda and I have decided to note down all the questions that might be posed about the sketchbook, and write the answers down on the back of the pages.

Why do I use a concertina sketchbook?  Because the format lends itself to narrative and I'm thinking about the narrative of what cleaners do and how we value them.  Because the format lends itself to repetition and the work cleaners do is repetitive.

Given Liverpool Street toilets are clean and brightly lit, why is your sketchbook quite dark and untidy?  Because if I was working in a public toilet, my mood would be quite low, and I would expect  to be cleaning all sort of horrible dark mess.

Why are you using these colours?  Red, gold green and black are the colours of the Ghanaian flag, which is the country of origin of the cleaners.  Turquoise and yellow is the colour of the ... flag.  Purple and yellow are the colours of the cleaning fluids and are opposing colours on the colour wheel.

Last night I worked up lots of my prints and drawings into my concertina sketchbook:

Hackney Museum

I went to Hackney Museum exhibition about Womens' Activism.  Very different to what gets displayed at the National Portrait Gallery about women!  All sorts of activists - women; lesbians; unionists; Greenham Common women; domestic violence campaigners; transgender campaigners.  Wonderful.  All strong women.  I'll have to go back to get images of artwork but here's the descriptors that give the context.