Process 1
Waiting is Over
Materials
Whole piece cotton fabric and 50m linen tape, hand stitched Approx 5’ 2” long.
Context and Influences
Marlene Dumas Dead eyed figures, corpse enclosed in claustrophobic frame
Christ……..sacrifice? futile?
Medieval tombs – wives who can no longer speak but endure in stone
Damian Hurst The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, 1991…. [Cold Fish]
Ron Mueck something about the stillness and uncompromising
Waiting poem by Faith Wilding faithwilding.refugia.net/waitingpoem.pdf
Hand stitched text in capitals in various threads, chosen to reflect phrases. Wilding describes the stages of a woman’s life, waiting to get through supporting others, with the implication that she never has time to support herself.
Making
Figure sketched freehand on folded fabric, released from cloth and stitched together. Working on floor to accommodate length which emphasised the feeling of lying flat. Stuffed with wadding.
Questions
Should the figure be entire with no insets. Other figures see above enabled +sheer joy of making let me add chin, and feet and released figure from total prison of inert fabric.
Hands, eventually decided these should be trapped by her side…she can run but she can’t do anything creative…..
Tape, decided to add walnut ink dye, to age it? Contrast? Slow hand stitching took some months…relate to other text stitchers [Lorina Bulwer, Elizabeth Parker Agnes Richter} whose creativity was part of their endurance,
Wrapping some of tape round figure enclosed her and leaving circle of remainder revealed length of repetitious life ………….mostly hidden in both cases.
