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Wall hanging
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Hand dyed and commercial printed cottons
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Machine pieced
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Hand quilted, stuffed and embellished
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Artist's Statement
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This piece is about the creative forces of the universe; the intertwining of light and dark, yin and yang that move along the spine; the swirling, spiraling of the tides of the breath of life that move within and around us bringing spirit into form. The wave or undulation is the basic movement of all things. Sound and light come to us in waves. The particles that make up the atom vibrate and oscillate. The code of life, DNA spirals within each cell of every living thing. The serpent represents this undulating and spiraling movement. The serpent is a very ancient symbol in world mythology and has many meanings. The biblical view of the serpent as the representative of evil is relatively new and represents a political movement to eradicate older religions. For indigenous people in Australia, North and South America, India, the Middle East and Europe, the serpent is a symbol of creation and eternal life. Her ability to shed her skin teaches us about the cycle of life, death and rebirth. Winged serpents appear in the mythology of ancient Mexico, Egypt, Sumer; the serpent representing the “reptile brain” or our instinctual nature, the winged serpent representing the enlightened consciousness.
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My sense of the biodynamic cranial work is that it is these very forces of creation we are working with. We are working with the forces that are continuously creating our human form rather than with the form itself. A fulcrum whether natural or inertial contains the full spectrum of experience, physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. There is no need to adjust the body or process the emotions when we begin working with these deeper forces of creation. In following their lead, we find health. The spiraling serpents are the forces of life that center and give meaning and life to experience. The serpents in this work represent the rising of the tide. What did not show up in the drawing is a defined mid-line. Rather we see the lines of force the movement of intertwining makes. The people of the Amazon believe that between the hemispheres of the brain live two giant serpents; one a rainbow boa, a brightly coloured land snake , and one an anaconda, a darkly coloured water snake. The waves in the bottom half of the piece are the mysterious ocean of the unconscious. The flames, the illuminative power of the conscious. The egg shape of the whole piece is a symbol of creation. It is also a vagina shape representing the portal through which we all come into life. It is the mysterious gateway into the deeper organizing forces of life.
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This piece is also a tribute to my own creative spirit and a prayer for my own healing.
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The Process
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I have been creating art quilts for several years including designing, hand and machine sewing and embellishing as well as hand dying my own colours. I have been wanting to do a piece with curves for a long time.
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The vision for this piece came on its own. Several times while getting cranial work, I have had the image of intertwined, winged serpents. The design fascinates me and I am eager to express it in fabric.
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I did several practice drawings. I worked with large tracing paper so I could keep elements of the design I liked and change others. I spent some time contemplating each curve and redrawing to make it more sewable ( Ha!). I had several drawings reduced and photocopied onto acetate. Then I projected each drawing onto the wall to choose the one I liked most and the size I wanted the piece to be.
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Next, I taped a large piece of white paper to the wall and traced the design onto it.
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| I numbered all the pieces on the large drawing and on a smaller copy. ( 108!) Then I cut the pieces of the large drawing apart to serve as templates for cutting fabric. The small numbered drawing was my guide for how to sew them all together. |
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 And now the really fun part, auditioning fabric on the design wall ( a fancy name for a big piece of felt tacked to the wall.) The fabric pieces stick to it without pinning. Remember felt boards in kindergarten? Very fun. I traced the templates on the back of the fabric and cut _ inch around each. I kept the image projected on the wall as I worked and filled it in with fabric. I love seeing all the fabric all spread out ( mostly on the floor) and testing the colours next to each other. This is about 12 hours of play which I do over two weeks time. |
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Major discovery ( Hooray for the internet!) ANGELINA FIBERS. These shiny and sometimes holographic fibers can be fused with an iron to create a gossamer fabric. I experiment with these for a while and adjust the wing design. I decide to use this over the gold lamé.
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O.K. now for the sewing. This proves to be much more difficult and time consuming than I had thought. In fact it is VERY FRUSTRATING ! I learn slowly and with much seam ripping to sew curves. AND I realize that some of the pieces are so small that the only way to sew them is appliqué, a technique I am not very good at and do not love to do. ARGH! Surprisingly, this goes rather well.
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Once all the pieces are sewn together it looks like a mess to me. I have no photos of this discouraging phase. It does not want to lie flat and is all lumpy and wrinkly. I hate it and am very angry and frustrated with it for a while. I don’t look at it for a few weeks.
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I decide to stuff the places that won’t lie flat. Again a time consuming process which involves stitching around each piece to be stuffed, ( a chance to use some beautiful silk embroidery thread someone gave me!) cutting the batting, stuffing and re-sewing the hole in the batting. I baste a backing and quilt the areas that DO lie flat. This gives the piece a lot of dimension. Something is needed to help the angelina fibers stay put. I try hand and machine stitching but this proves to be too difficult. I decide to sew on a few beads.
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Each piece I work on seems to have a mind of its own. It is as if I am following some hidden set of instructions from the idea itself; its inherent manifestation plan if you will. I finally surrender to this and decide that if the piece wants to be lumpy, so be it. My job seems to be to find a way to allow the design to be what it wants to be; just as my role in cranial work is to find a way to allow the health of the person to come forward in its own way in its own time.
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This piece was full of technical difficulties. I made several basic mistakes and the piece contains some really BAD sewing. I also mastered some previously difficult techniques and made some wonderful discoveries. What intrigues me is always the process. I learn to follow some unseen plan inherent in the work itself. The listening comes in the doing. As I go along, the nature of the colours or texture of the fabric; or the technical demands of the design lead me in a certain direction. Each decision leads to the next step until the design is manifest. The result is rarely what I expect. When I look at it with a technical eye I can find innumerable “imperfections”. And yet the finished piece ends up expressing its own nature and being more than I could have imagined. Creating in this way has taught me much about life itself and has many parallels to the way we work in biodynamic cranial work. The outcome will take care of itself if we listen deeply and follow the hidden instructions. The sensation of being swept into the process of creation and of healing is exhilarating and transforming in itself.
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