Embroideries

Kim McCormack

As a new member of Edge Textile Artists Scotland, I am very much looking forward to taking part in some of their wonderful projects and exhibitions taking place across Scotland. Recent exhibitions have included Quines: Poems and textiles in tribute to women of Scotland which is a beautiful exhibition of textiles art made as a response to and accompanying poems by Gerda Stevenson.

I moved house in September which has really interrupted my work. I do love the new house but it needed a lot of work. I am nowhere near there with the house yet but I’m happy with it for now and can put some much needed focus back into my work. The house has given me a lovely new sewing room which has perfect light and a much bigger workshop which gives me space to actually move around in! The previous owner had built a magnificent wall of shelving which is perfect for my mountain of ‘stuff’.

Collecting and hoarding years worth of fabrics of all kinds, porcelain, recycled leathers, fibres and felts, string; so much string, old brass weights and curios from junk shops, abandoned embroideries perhaps to be revisited one day, mountains of driftwood and beach detritus, stones which have distinct shapes and colours specific to the various beaches around this area, dried lichens, leaves and bark, all of which I could not bear to part with. All of which I need around me to feel able to work. My ‘stuff’ punctuates the phases of my life’s journey and of my sense of place.

I can finally really settle into my work with Spring and an abundance of gatherings only a few weeks away. Snowdrops herald the next great awakening.

I am a member of Prism Textiles which is an international group of exhibiting contemporary textiles based artists. The members’ work is incredibly diverse and inspiring. I will be taking part in the group exhibition ‘In Search of Possibilities’ planned for 19th October at The Art Pavilion, Mile End Park, London.

Meanwhile, I am enjoying a virtual collaboration with Prism members using technique prompts. The panels measure 30cm x 30cm and use couch stitch, layer and slash, stem stitch and darning.

       

With these panels, I have been looking at textures of different lichens, mosses on tree bark and leaves floating on pools of water following the thaw. I am also working with the near and the far; as I walk, my eyes move from the close-up inspection of surfaces, rotting wooden fences, wire and foliage to the sky, stretching fields and to the distant mountainous horizon lines.

I don’t usually work with the self portrait as a subject so this is very much out of my comfort zone. This work is a base of collaged botanical print work with grid lines and hand stitch. 

Self Portrait. Botanical Collage and Stitch, Framed work measures 39cm x 32cm.

 

‘Onto the Land’ Botanical Print Collage with Stitch. Framed work measures 39cm x 32cm 

‘Retracing Lovat’ 2020.  Framed work measures 46cm x 49cm. Collaged botanical print and Stitch.

With this panel, I am recording and contrasting the near and the far. The barley fields undulating in the winds, the various lichens on both natural and man made surfaces. The fences, the riverbanks, the fallen leaves, the changing path surfaces, my footsteps onto the changing surfaces, the sky and the distant horizon lines.

‘Lovat Terrains’   When I go on my walks, the textures of the ground under my feet change from soft, mossy land to overgrown to marshy to tangled roots. This area of land has some forest, some gentle woods, arable fields, marshland and riverside. I walk through the familiar sections, visiting my favourite trees and plants; the Dogwood whose leaves yield the most beautiful lime greens, the Oak which is most preferred by the oak gall wasps, the swathes of butterbur, the wild geraniums and the various wonderful lichens. Walking, looking, listening and gathering leaves to use later in the printed panels. This work is broken into grids which tell the story of my steps along this old friend which I walk most days and whose subtle changes I watch throughout the year.

This piece is a view which I see most days along the side of the Beauly Firth. This landscape is an imprint on my memory never to be lost. The mapwork includes the spots alongside the firth where I gather my foliage. I have used it in some way as a pinboard with little imprints from the land placed on the landscape. The foliage is worked in to the land and the hills fossilized forever imprinted into my wool. I like the notion that those colours were made with the very landscape that it depicts.

‘Hills beyond the Loch’ 2020 Landscape, Loch Laide, Abriachan

‘Cerebral Dreamings’1919  Using symmetrical forms from my own body to create internal bodyparts.

‘Dreamings’ Using my own body on repetition.

 

Smaller embroideries recording my steps.

This piece consists of botanically printed paper collaged with botanically printed fabric and then embroidered. 21cm x 32cm unframed.

 

This embroidery has been worked with fabric weather worn in the elements and pushed to the brink of erosion.

‘Crow Watching’ 2020

 

‘The Maclarens of Ardgay’ a pair of hangings with photo collage inclusions. Each panel measures 28cm wide x 76cm high. The panels depict a beautiful ‘long house’ and land in the area of Ardgay in the North of Scotland which was farmed by generations of the same family.

 

Details from the ‘Maclarens of Ardgay’ panels.