21 February 2016

Paper and pen, into fabric and stitch?

You know how you kinda come across things on pinterest, even when you're not looking? This spirited creature caught my eye, and I started speculating how the drawing could be converted to fabric and stitch.

The horse seems to be torn from one kind of paper and collaged onto another, giving those nice edges. Not the sort of edges you get with torn, or even hacked-at, fabric. But another component is the negative space between the pieces - that could be manipulated. Best of all would be to have strang scraps arranged in an animal shape ... and supply the missing limbs, as William Kentridge has, with lines - perhaps stem stitch, or couching?

Kentridge uses published books as sketchbooks and as "canvasses" for his drawings. This tree is drawn on pages from the Universal Technological Dictionary, which adds a certain frisson (so, how technological is a tree, then? it might surprise us...)

It makes me think about layering up pages and then attaching cloth to them, and/or adding stitched marks.

It makes me think - why fabric, why stitch? why not keep it simpler...and perhaps less laborious? Maybe because with "just lines", there's nowhere to hide.

1 comment:

Kaja said...

Maybe nowhere to hide, but there's something about the touching...fabric and stitch give you that like nothing else.