Stitch Like an Egyptian

The exhibition At Durham University was wonderful - and a sellout. I am so excited that we even sold two really stunning pieces to major locations - one to the Library at Durham University, and one to the Oriental Museum.

It is the second piece that I want to talk about.

While I was in Egypt and selecting the work to come with us to Durham I was chatting to my dear friend and tentmaker, Hany Abd El Khader. I was apologising for the fact that the cases were so full of the selected work, and our luggage allowances so limited, that there was very little room for his clothes or work of his own to sell for a little extra money for himself.

The men who come as stitchers do not get paid on these trips. Because I take work from many different people in the street I do not like to favour some shops above others and like to be sure that every shop has work in the show. Some shops have better work than others, but this actually means we have some price variations that help people who do not have a lot to spend but want to buy something. Allowing the stitcher coming with me to put his own work in means that he has a chance to make some money of his own as I do not like the men to charge a commission to the shops who have supplied the work - and this is what would happen in the street.

I was explaining to Hany that we could not take much work of his. He looked quickly around the room we were in and leaned in close. "I have a new piece," he said. "I think I will just take that because it is a big piece."

I started to ask about it but he hushed me and pulled me out into the street. As we walked he explained that he had made a piece of Khayamiya work about the revolution.

I was poleaxed. As far as I know there have not been tentmaker pieces on political subjects, or used as a voice for personal statements. Subjects of Khayamiya work vary a lot - I have seen folkloric work, stories of Goha, Pharaonic pieces, tree of life work like work in the tombs, and almost an infinite variety of islamic, Rumy, and Lotus patterns.

Hany started to explain. He had been distressed at many of the things happening in Tahrir Square in January and excited at the same time. He did not really know what to think. He and his wife talked about it one night and he decided to make a piece of work about the revolution. He took a large piece of fabric - 2.5 metres by 2.5 metres. He drew a circle in the middle to represent Tahrir Square and stitched it in the colours of the Egyptian flag and started to draw in things that were happening there.

He told no-one what he was doing. It the prevalent atmosphere of suspicion in the Tentmaker's Street a design is valuable, and Hany wanted to be sure that no-one else would copy his idea. He stitched in the privacy of his house at night, and even his friend and next door neighbour, also a tentmaker and his brother in law, had no idea.

The work started to drive him. He arrived later and later in the morning for work, muttering about not sleeping well. There were no foreign residents around, and no tourists to buy work - so it did not matter much.

As there was more news on the Television he added other images. I apologise for occasional blurring - the lighting was poor but the colour was better if I did not use flash.

He put in police with riot shields, tightly wedged together and utterly menacing.

 

He put in the water cannon that no-one knew how to use, that spat out small dribbles of water to the amusement of the crowd.

 He put in women chanting, men praying, and police aiming their guns.

He put in the huge and boring building that looms over one corner of the Square -  the Mogamma - where almost any registration - houses, cars, marriages, deaths - has to be done in Egypt. In another corner you can glimpse the Nile.

He added cars on fire with clouds of grey smoke.

He added banners in English like "Gemeover" (spelling used at the time) and "Go Out" and added more chants and slogans used in Arabic which meant things like "Mubarak out", and "Down with the Regime."

 At the top he put a scarlet banner with "The Revolution of the 25th January is for the Egyptian People."

 It is done simply and in a naive style, but it is a powerful piece of commentary and curiously spine-chilling  when you stand in front of it.

He is still thrilled and excited to have sold it to an important Museum.

Stitch Like an Egyptian

We are coming to Durham, England

For those who saw the stunning exhibition of bright and beautiful needle turned appliqué made by Egyptian men in Birmingham at the Festival of Quilts - and for those who didn't - please note!

I am bringing an exhibition of Egyptian Tentmaker work to Durham in the north of England.

The address of the Egyptian Tentmakers' Exhibition is: Kenworthy Hall, St Mary's College, is: St Mary's College, Elvet Hill Road, DURHAM, DH1 3EQ
Reception: 0191-334-5719

The Exhibition in Kenworthy Hall would be open to the Public:

Friday November 11th from 10 am to 4 pm
Saturday 12 November from 10 am to 6 pm
Sunday 13 November from 10 am to 6 pm
Monday 14th November from 10 am to 6 pm

I am giving a talk - I think on Monday night if you want to come to that.

We have so many enquiries that I suspect we might sell out quickly - so come early if you can.

And please - tell your friends or networks!

I have a brand new shiny website

I am so thrilled with it.

I have been asked to put a calendar of my teaching year on it - but I am sorry - I am not going to do that. I found last time I did it that many people tried to book what they saw as 'free time' which was time allocated for family functions, or just for making quilts. Because they were often annoyed when I refused I have decided that I simply will not do a calendar - but I am very good about answering contacts if you want to ask me when I am in your area, or when I am teaching a particular class.

Let me know if you like it please.

Thank you Kate Andrews.

Talisman - off to Houston

I have just finished a new piece of work. 

The making process has had to squeeze into a ridiculously limited number of days at home since early April. My good friend Lisa Walton won the Jewel Pearce Patterson Scholarship at Houston last year. She had contacted a group of us when the news was released and set up class times for us to learn some of the new skills she acquired and to make a quilt for her to take back to Houston for an exhibition this year.

I have really been remiss in my blogging. I tried some time back and simply could not work out how to put a photo exactly where I wanted it in the text - and my Flickr site had changed the way the 'share' system worked. I have just worked it out.

These photos are tiny. I am posting 'as-I-did-it' images from my mobile phone - done before I went to Europe. 

I have been fascinated for a long time by small objects carried as protections or for good luck. Superstition is such a strong part of most people - especially when things are going wrong or when someone you love is ill. Growing up in New Guinea we often saw an image of a hand printed onto a wall or sign or rock. It meant Tabu - do not pass. There it was not a protection but in the Middle East - and I have lived a lot in the Middle East - it is the hand of Fatima, a powerful ward against the jealous eye. It tends to be most used there when things are going well. If you are newly married and happy, get a wonderful job, and then find out that your wife is having a baby and it is a boy - then you start to wear a hamza. A lot of Arab jewellery is based on amulets and talismen.




Prints from a great silkscreen Lisa made for me from my drawings!







Some attempts at free motion embroidery.



This was serious fun - emulating handprints on a wall without the actual blood.



Putting it together











Simple quilting.



I was not happy with the large light area on the right side with the stitched hands on it. Even though I wanted it to look rather haphazardly put together I felt that it seemed to be falling off the edge. I was also worried that the 'grubby wall' part with the large handprints (mine) was too pristine. I liked the quote from Sheila Payne's book, and had used it like a reference and in rough handwriting like a scribbled note, but I felt it was too dominant so I wanted to grey it down a bit. I brought out acrylics and a square sponge wedge brush and wiped paint over parts that bothered me. It looks charcoal but has ultramarine and silver mixed in for glint and an edge of colour. 



I am happy with it now. I added the strong text at the bottom in my own writing, and painted it over, then spent the last two days facing and finishing it and adding a label.

A Trip to the Desert

I have new work that I can put up since it has been well and truly launched.

The group I work with - tACTile - makes a new exhibition every two years. This year it is called Elements and was devised by Beth Miller and Helen Gray.

Each artist was to take one or more of the elements - earth, air, fire and water, and make a body of work to fill a four metre wall in any way we chose. Our collaborative this time was intended to be a sketchbook entry. A perspex piece at the top was to sandwich images we had used as inspiration, and below it we would hang sample pieces in fabrics as we played with ideas.

Frankly - the collaborative did not work. The 'jigsaws' were intended to slot together as a single piece with separate parts hanging below. Not only was the jigsaw reluctant to fit now that the perspex had sandwiched boards and images between them, but the images really did not work together. Strong ones killed the others and dominated and we could not change the order of the pieces because that had been decided from the beginning with the allocation of a unique jigsaw headpiece. We decided to hang each beside the main body of that artist's work. In retrospect it was a good decision and most people at our ANCA Gallery exhibition spent more time looking at the small ones than they did at the big ones.

Mine is based on an extraordinary trip that I have now done twice a drive to Gilf Kebir and Jebel Uweinat in the far south west of Egypt, just nudging into Sudan and Libya.



This is the blurb I wrote for the exhibition press releases, somewhat expanded.

Earth, Air and a Memory of Water

For the theme of Elements I decided to work with a recent trip across the Great Western Desert – the Sahara. We drove from the oasis of Bahariya in the Western Desert of Egypt to the Gilf Kebir – a plateau the size of Belgium at the junction of Libya, Sudan and Egypt. The trip took sixteen days, five 4 wheel drive vehicles, and we had to carry all petrol, water, and food on the cars. We saw no other car driving in the desert in that time, and the only people were desert police in one distant post. The desert almost became a living thing, the main player on the trip and the element of earth seemed to dominate.

I thought of this body of work as a series on earth – with the changing landscape and colours as we drove across it. Then I realised that the sky was a continual backdrop, so I thought of the series as Earth and Sky. Then I realised each item I used in the lowest panel has a memory of water.

I roughed out a plan for each piece on a scrap of fabric and used that as my first scrapbook piece.



Each piece has:

1. The sky as the top panel.

2. A charcoal drawing of the desert below, showing the colours on the day that we drove across it. I wanted this and the sky to have a sense of a Victorian-style heroic vista.

3. A grid of crosses to relate to the maps we followed and the way that we continually compared what we saw to what we knew – contextualising what we saw to fit a western construct. Also - I like to include an element of traditional patchwork in my work.

4. A low section which represents the earth we walked on and the things we found on it. The marks of previous peoples were on rock walls or on the ground. I wanted viewers to have to bend to see what was there – as we did.



I. The Water Mountain. The codes used by ancient Egyptians for water caches the horizontal zigzag is carved into rock walls with pharaonic symbols. The ground is littered with pieces of ochre - the reason that the ancient Egyptians ventured so far into a hostile environment. There are also pieces of ostrich eggs for the making of egg tempura. 76.5 cm x 163.5 cm



II. Ammonite Fields - fossil ammonites, sponges and coral – remnants of a great sea, long retreated. We drove over ammonites for a whole day while clouds changed the light continually and there were even a few drops of rain. 77 cm x 160 cm



III. Abu Bellas - two water vessels, part of another water cache left by Pharaonic Egypt to enable them push further into the desert in search of ochres for painting. Beautiful fine carvings on rock walls nearby looked almost African with their big-skirted bottoms and breasts. We were the first to find these - they have not been recorded by other expeditions.



IV. Acheulean Hand Axes - an Achulean hand axe from a site where there were many in a concentrated tool scatter – proof that in the days when they were abandoned thousands of years before the coming of the pharaohs - there was enough water to sustain life. 77 cm x 161.5

I have recently returned from Birmingham with the fabulous Egyptian Tentmakers - and I am writing up a report of that. Watch this space.