The Art of the Handwritten by Jeanne Raffer Beck

Illustration: Jeanne Raffer Beck. Pages 1.

Illustration: Jeanne Raffer Beck. Pages 1 (detail).

Ever since the creation of human writing there has been a fascination with the written word. At times it seems almost magical that abstract shapes can give us an understanding and knowledge not only of the world around us, but also of the individuals that inhabit it. When you take this analogy across time it becomes both astounding and poignant, with generations passing down glimpses of their personality, dreams and fears to those who follow after them.

American textile and mixed media artist Jeanne Raffer Beck has made the written word one of the central cores of her creative work. As a long term professional writer she has an innate understanding of subtle inflection and intonation, the boundaries of words and the complexity of language. Although the written word cannot give us nearly as much information as the spoken word, with its particular and individual inflections and tone, there is a difference that can be measured within the parameters of the written word itself.

Illustration: Jeanne Raffer Beck. Pages 2.

Illustration: Jeanne Raffer Beck. Pages 2 (detail).

Beck has come to the fascinating conclusion that the hand-written word, as opposed to that of the printed, can in fact give us, through personal calligraphy, an intimation of feeling, emotion and character of the individual. It is the hand-written nature of old diaries, letters and journals that the artist uses in her work that give us the beginning of an understanding of the personal nature of calligraphy itself. This becomes somewhat poignant in our own time as the skill of personal hand-writing retreats to ever more infrequent usage, producing the result of an increasing separation, or at least distancing from the intimacy and connectedness to those in our own era, and perhaps even more importantly, to those who follow us.

Beck has used the idea of hand-writing and personal calligraphy as a inspirational starting point and stepped further along the creative road by studying the results as a form of personal mark making. By breaking down and deconstructing the original lettering, and intuitively over imposing more marks and symbols of her own, she is able to take personal hand writing to a different level, in some ways reinventing the original to reflect a new and personal experience of her own.

Illustration: Jeanne Raffer Beck. Pages 3.

Illustration: Jeanne Raffer Beck. Pages 3 (detail).

This is a fascinating and fundamental examination of the use of written language that is utterly compelling. It begs questions as to what the reading and writing of language means to us on a personal, creative and community level. It also raises questions as to our own era and the death of hand-writing as an expression of our own identity and personal parameters.

That a writer has been able to open up another avenue of personal exploration and creativity within the field of art is inspirational. The cross-creative process whereby the experience accumulated in one discipline is used to expand the parameters of another is one that should be equally encouraged and applauded.

Illustration: Jeanne Raffer Beck. Pages 4.

Illustration: Jeanne Raffer Beck. Pages 4 (detail).

Jeanne Raffer Beck has exhibited her work across the USA as well as the UK. Her work has also been published widely and she has even been featured in TV. She has her own comprehensive website as well as a regular and fascinating blog. Both of these can be found below in the Reference links section.

Images were made available with the kind permission of the artist.

Reference links:
Jeanne Raffer Beck website
Jeanne Raffer Beck blog

Creative Dyeing from India Flint

Illustration: India Flint. Original textile work.

The Australian textile and dye artist India Flint has taken elements from her family history and turned it into a creative journey that gives the impression of becoming a lifelong one. Flint has always been intrigued and imbued with her family's make-do-and-mend attitude. An interest that has taken up her family's particular practical interest in textiles and natural dyeing, expanding the experience to produce work that is staggering in its range of complexity. Using a variety of raw materials and experimental processes, she has managed to deliver an ever-widening range of unique colours and textures.

Although this article could well concentrate purely on the textile artwork of Flint, it seems more pressing and relevant to focus on her groundbreaking work concerning the natural dyeing process. It is her belief in achieving a near-zero impact, within a textile dyeing capacity, that has become an inspiration to others not only in Australia, but also across the globe. It is a belief that could will impact on all those involved within textile art and crafts and seems well worth expanding within this article.

Illustration: India Flint. Dyed paper work.

One of the major concerns troubling the modern textile world, whether professional or amateur, mass or hand-production is the impact that textiles and particularly that of the dyeing process, has on the environment. Commercial dyes are both hazardous to the world around them, whether that be the natural world, workers who produce and are employed within the industry, or communities that depend on that industry. Flint herself has taken the stand of only using specifically naturally sourced dyes in her work. However, she has pushed her personal beliefs and judgements concerning natural dyeing much farther than most. She has in fact produced an ongoing dyeing project that aims to project and publicise the natural dyeing qualities to be found in many, if not all vegetable plant life. This is not a case of using onion skins to produce insipid tones of yellow. Flint has produced a startling spectrum of colour and tone variety from forms of plant life that most textile users would never dream of finding useful or relevant.

Illustration: India Flint. Dyed paper work.

The images portrayed in this article were all produced using various hand-dyeing techniques and processes, some on fabric, others on paper. It seemed important to emphasise the staggering range of colour variation that Flint has been able to achieve purely through the natural dying process, and this surely must be an inspiration and guide to us all. Her ongoing experimentation with raw materials for dyeing, using both the mundane and the obscure, must in time be seen as a unique and important record towards the vocabulary of the natural dyeing craft that will be used for generations to come.

It can only be imagined where this rich creative journey will take Flint next. So many of us either take the natural world for granted or use it as an observational tool for compositional or inspirational work only. However, few of us nowadays see the natural world as forming any part of a practical function, and if we do, it is usually extremely limited in scope as to its practical and personal relevance. Flint's seemingly universal inspirational use of raw materials within the dyeing process surely must make us think again about the natural world around us. Our world is much more versatile and useful than we have been led to believe. If Flint can achieve such inspirational colours and tones from personal experimentation and a belief in the ability of the natural world around her, you have to wonder what could really be achieved if all those inspired by the world of textiles were to use the same level of experimentation and unfettered enthusiasm.

Illustration: India Flint. Textile artwork.

Flint's journey of experimentation and exploration should be a revelatory inspiration to all those involved in textiles. It is an art and a craft that by its very nature embraces the inventive, the investigative and the exploratory. To be able to push the boundaries of any aspect of this world should be a natural reaction and any individual artist, craftsperson or designer who does so should be applauded.

Flint has exhibited across Australia and extensively within Europe. Her work can be found in a number of collections on both continents. She has produced stage costumes for contemporary dance, has been involved in a number of publications promoting natural dyeing and runs various workshops. All this information and more can be found on her comprehensive website. Anyone wishing to follow Flint and her creative journey should sign up to follow her regularly updated blog Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost. Links to Flint's website, blog and books that are available on Amazon, can all be found below within the Reference links section.

Illustration: India Flint. Dyed paper work.

All images were provided with the kind permission of the artist.

Reference links:

Eco Colour: Botanical Dyes for Beautiful Textiles
Felt (Handmade Style) (Handmade Style)
Island Life: Inspirational Interiors

Diane Savona and Closet Archaeology

Textiles have always been such a large part of domestic life, as it still is today. However, what has sadly faded away producing a rupture in the constant that was for generations such an intimate part of life, is that of the craft skills that supported all forms of domestic textiles. Centuries of creative and repairing skills have died out within a generation; many will probably never again be resurrected on the same scale as that of our ancestors.

In Closet Archaeology, the artist Diane Savona has created a form of vocabulary library of lost skills. However sad this may seem to one devoted to the textile crafts, perhaps more poignant still is the sense of lost lives and lost memories. Textiles, in many households, were literally often passed down over the generations. Therefore, woven, sewn, embroidered, crocheted, knitted and quilted forms often outlived their original owners. Many were offered as wedding or christening gifts from older to younger members of the same family. These could be offered and received in the form of an attractive gift, a keepsake, or as a memory parcel if you will. So many pieces of textile work have generational value and are imbued with the lifeblood of individuals that are no longer here. It is sad, as Savona herself reflects, how much of our individual family and community history and culture has been casually jettisoned by a couple of recent generations, including our own who seem ambivalent of the cares of any future generation that might have wished for these keepsakes and memory parcels to have continued.

It is with a sense of awe that this exhibition has been put together. The cavalier means by which we dismiss all previous generations apart from our own, holds no sway here. Many of the textiles featured in Closet Archaeology are actually not particularly ancient and not that far removed from our own. However, perhaps that is one of the points that Savona is trying to make. Domestic textile work that she features is sometimes only one or two generations removed from ourselves. However, they might as well be a hundred or more generations away. The emphasis on detail, patience and pride that can be seen quite evidently in so many examples of domestic work, seem a world away from our own lives. Many today have no sympathy, empathy or understanding towards the life of past generations. Their wide-ranging and significant skills base is often dismissed as irrelevant. Much of the history of domestic craft skilled work has already been lost and connections between generations of family have been irrevocably severed by car boot and garage sales.

Although this exhibition should be seen as a form of celebration of generational textile craft skills of countless and mostly nameless women, it is tinged with sadness. It cannot be coincidental that there is an element of the forgotten and the neglected in Savona's work. The exhibition at times seems to take on the mantle of a neglected corner of a museum, or perhaps more fittingly, a long forgotten domestic linen cupboard. Previously precious family items, steeped in memories, carefully packed away, but now forgotten and misplaced.

The history of our species is made up of so many variations of creative and destructive behaviour. All these elements of our group personality become layers set one over the other, building up a fossilized record of our species achievements along with its failures. Treating domestic textiles in the same way is an intriguing concept. Savona has literally unpicked various three-dimensional garments, often of a celebratory nature such as christening gowns, and rearranged them within two-dimensions. By flattening these garments, they have lost their original shape and purpose and have become, in some respects, fossilized memories, or partial impressions of previous generations. It is perhaps similar to us viewing a flat compressed fossilized creature and trying to imagine the reanimation of that specific life. How and where would the creature inhabit and fill the space in its forgotten world.

For me, one of the most intriguing aspects of Savona's exhibition, and there are so many elements that make up the whole, is that of the last illustration shown in this article. It is a rendition of a form of geological layering of clothing. It seems somehow humbling to view generations of humans as each being a thin layer of garment. It is also an important point for us all to remember, that although we may seem in our present generation, to be sitting proudly above all the previous layers of humanity, we are in fact only one transitional layer. To future generations we are one small coloured line in the continuing strata of humanity.

Diane Savona's excellent and intriguing exhibition can be viewed at the Hermitage Museum in Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey. Closet Archaeology continues until September 26 2010. I can only hope that by viewing this exhibition, some individuals may well change their views concerning the importance of generational textiles and perhaps treasure, in some small way, family pieces that store the life, ambitions and skills of our predecessors.

A link to Savona's official website, along with another link showing more fascinating and intriguing images of the Closet Archaeology exhibition can be seen below in the Reference links section.

All images of the exhibition were kindly provided by the artist.

Reference links:
Diane Savona website
Closet Archaeology

Felt Artwork of Nancy Clearwater Herman

Illustration: Nancy Clearwater Herman. In the Lady's Room.

Felt work can be achieved through a number of formats and craft disciplines. To many it may seem thick, woolly and uneasy to manipulate. However, there are various means of controlling the chance and often arbitrary results of standard felting. Needle felting is a particularly good format as it allows a larger element of both precision and definition within felting. Compositions can be manipulated and engineered into any amount of decorative pattern and artwork. The artistic parameters of needle felting are particularly rich as is shown in the textile artwork of Nancy Clearwater Herman.

Herman has produced a set of compositions that helps to lay to rest the idea that felt is a medium best suited to the practical and domestic aspects of textiles, rather than any form of fine art textiles. She has produced work that is extraordinarily exact, while at the same time being free from most forms of mechanised textile production.

Illustration: Nancy Clearwater Herman. Secrets.

Needle felting at its simplest level can be produced using one thin barbed needle. This simple but effective tool lends itself to be interpreted by any artist as would a pencil or paintbrush. Herman has used this process to produce work that although textile based has the look and feel of a more exacting discipline. However, the element of control over both the process and result are tempered by the intimate relationship between both tool and raw material. The artist is well aware that she is using a process that is countless generations old. Felt goes back in time to our earliest craft discoveries. It is both this sense of the endless continuation of tradition and the familiarity and the contained intimacy of the craft of needle felting that has produced the resulting work of Herman.

I have personally chosen only a few of Herman's felt pieces; she has many more compositions available to view on her website. What intrigued me most about the examples shown in this article are the contemporary but also ageless aspect of the compositions. It is intriguing to ponder that although the work of the artist has been produced in our own century, how much of the timelessness of the compositional material has been affected by the ageless process of both the felt making and the use of natural and naturally dyed wool. This begs the question how much of who we are now is us and how much is a memory of generations past.

Illustration: Nancy Clearwater Herman. Seeing Eye to Eye.

This of course does not take away from the achievement of Herman who has managed to both manipulate and personalise a tricky and not easily mastered technique. She has added enormously to the parameters of felt making and has helped to open the suggestion that there can be more to both felt making in general and needle felting in particular, than that of embellishment, decoration and pattern making.

The needle felt making aspect of Herman's work is only a partial one, she has a whole range of work in a number of mediums. Her work is in a number of private and public collections across the US and she has exhibited her work for the last thirty years. Her extensive and comprehensive website can be seen by following the link within the reference links section below. Herman also has a couple of regularly updated blogs, which can also be found in the reference links section.

Illustration: Nancy Clearwater Herman. Pass the Word.

Images of the artwork are used with the kind permission of the artist

Reference links:
Nancy Clearwater Herman website
Nancy Herman Paintings & Prints Blog
Postcards From Merion Blog

Dominie Nash and Haunting Studies of a Dying Leaf

Illustration: Dominie Nash. Big Leaf Impromptu #8, 2008.

The Big Leaf series of textile art pieces by the artist Dominie Nash allows us to see both the robustness of the natural world along with the delicate and transient character that we often associate with particular aspects of nature. Leaves seem especially poignant to us with their ability to haunt us with ideas about decay and death. However, leaves should also be seen as an aspect of the cycle of life, dropped leaves in autumn only showing us part of that cycle.

Illustration: Dominie Nash. Big Leaf Impromptu #9, 2008.

Nash may well have been initially inspired to produce a series of textile art pieces using the construction, both delicate and robust, of a leaf, however the sequence of compositions that she has produced go a long way past any mere observational interest or aspect. These pieces have taken the most important features of the leaf from its complex colour tones to the emulation of the skeletal structure of the leaf through the use of hand stitching. All are portrayed within compositions that cover two very different aspects of fine art. On the one hand, is the analytical, almost medical approach to the anatomy of the leaf. Through that detailed analysis, comes an understanding of the anatomy of nature itself. However, another important aspect that Nash includes in all her work is the creative and inspirational character that underlies all of her work. The artist has an intrinsic understanding of colour tone and texture, which she uses with the confidence of compositional arrangement.

Illustration: Dominie Nash. Big Leaf Series #15, 2008.

To bring together the analytical, observational, compositional and creative features of her work while using the often difficult format of textiles, is a feat that Nash has managed to pull off. With these fascinating and at the same time haunting contained studies of both the dying leaf and the larger cycle of nature, the artist has managed to create for us a multi-focused compiled survey of the ever changing environment around us. In some respects, it is similar to one person stopping a moment in life's busy schedule, stooping down and picking a dead leaf up from the ground. That is the job of the creative, to allow us to observe a moment in time that they themselves have captured.

Illustration: Dominie Nash. Big Leaf Series #16, 2008.

Dominie Nash has exhibited her work across the US, as well as in the UK. She has a comprehensive website where much more of her work can be found. The link to her site is as always, in the reference links section below.

Illustration: Dominie Nash. Big Leaf Series #17, 2008.

All images are used with the kind permission of the artist.

Reference links:

Dominie Nash website

Terrol Dew Johnson and Contemporary Basketry

Illustration: Terrol Dew Johnson. Form Over Function #1.

Terrol Dew Johnson started basketry weaving at the age of ten. He soon learned that he was a born natural and found that it was one of the few things in life that he found intrinsically effortless.

Johnson is a member of the Tohono O'odham nation of southern Arizona. The Tohono O'odham have a long history of basket weaving using a whole variety of techniques using natural materials and dyes. These are all used in order to tie the basketry in with the local landscape colours and flora, making the baskets part of the community and of the larger landscape.

Illustration: Terrol Dew Johnson.

The traditional basketry weaving techniques that Johnson learnt at such an early age, have allowed him to expand into the world of contemporary fine art basketry, while still keeping hold of his traditions, which he uses as a foundation or anchor point for his subsequent career as an artist.

Johnson has definitely turned the craft skill of basketry into an art form. His basket weaving techniques now see him producing work that is sculptural in form, with the pieces quietly but confidently filling their internal and external space. His basketry creations have extended one of the earliest human learned skills, much beyond its original practical remit, and although his creations do still maintain some of the traits of a traditional basket, as much of his work still has the appearance of the functional containers that were woven by early humans, he has been able to play with that notion and that traditional form, producing pieces that although serving no practical purpose, are still able to pay homage to the rich local and wider planetary history of basket weaving.

Illustration: Terrol Dew Johnson. Basket.

Terrol Johnson is now one of the most popular basketry weavers in the United States. His work has won major awards and has been seen in various exhibitions across the country. A number of prestigious museums and galleries are now eagerly procuring examples of his work for their collections.

Johnson is now a respected artist who has been able to expand his interests into other creative areas including architecture and photography, but it is his commitment to basketry weaving and more particularly how that can be used to help his Tohon O'dham community, that will perhaps be his greatest legacy.

Illustration: Terrol Dew Johnson. Basket.

Terrol Johnson has his own website, which can be found here. There is also an interesting article by Loretts Gallery of Tulsa, Oklahoma, which can be found here.

Johnson is involved in a number of pressing issues and enterprises concerning his Tohono O'odham community, all of which can be found at the TOCA (Tohona O'odham Community Action) website, which can be found here.

Reference links:
Terrol Dew Johnson
Lovetts Gallery
TOCA (Tohono O'odham Community Action)