The wall of wonder is a totally intuitively hand stitched wall made from piecing textiles and artefacts together from all parts of the world. I was actually inspired by a visit to an exhibition of Kaffe Fassett in London several years ago. He had made a quilt with vases and as I collect vases of all shapes and sizes this appealed to me.
I started with an old 1940s vintage patchwork of flowery chintz materials that was fading and had holes that had been patched or embroidered that I had kept for many years always with an idea of doing something with it. Because I work intuitively and let it grow it went through many stages.
First I put the vases on made in all different shapes and from all kinds of materials. Then decided they would look good sitting on shelves, so it grew and evolved. The grandkids posed for me and I used old clothing of theirs to express the excitement of discovering things on the shelves.
As this grew slowly over the last few years I gathered things from drawers and boxes, friends gave me things. Like the protest buttons from Ginni, the lace bobbins with Ban the Bomb from womens protest in UK from Helen, Siobhan gave me lots of lovely bits of material from Africa, I found things the kids had made………it all found a place on the Wall of Wonder.
I would love to invite the viewer to investigate and wonder, to find the humour and the activism on each shelf. This has been a deliberate and slow process and will be an heirloom for the kids to add to over the years.
This has become a living slow art installation, textiles age, disintegrate, fade. You can find parts that have been mended or embroidered over this is on purpose to show their age, all the things we save that mean something to us, the traces we leave behind on the textiles. Bits can be added to, stories can be told……
This work became a reflection of my life experience, all the influences was made to reflect all the influences and cultures I have come across and the friends I made along the way. How all these connections reveal themselves in what we value and keep and pass on to the next generation. It is how my family is, we are a combination of many different cultures and we love to mix it all up and play on this.
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- Left side
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- Right side
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- Lower right
Women have always sat together and talked while sewing, embroidering, knitting or making, this is still a part of many women’s lives. While stitching this I have had conversations about life, politics and loss with other women and my studio buddy. We have exchanged bits of material, trinkets and threads and shared our knowledge of techniques. These things are now incorporated into the story of this piece and that is exactly what I wanted to express, the joy and reflection found in creating this way and telling my stories through this piece.
Thankfully this tradition is still very much alive and one we should treasure, using textiles to tell our stories. There is a whole new generation that is turning to making again, putting down their phones and creating art (and crafts) by hand and discovering the benefits to their wellbeing.
