2020
This is a series of tall and narrow ‘notities’ (the size is twice my quilting ruler). The inspiration for these notes came to me when I was doodling in the notes app on my iPhone and discovered it had a scroll function with which I could make infinitely long notes. But of course in my printing work I’m limited to the size of my press.
Although in the Western world we are used to reading from left to right, I like working with a tall and narrow vertical format, a format often seen in textile art. For me there’s a practical reason for this. The ‘fabric’ I’m stitching on isn’t very pliable, so it has to be narrow to fit underneath the sewing machine and I find it more convenient to stitch in a vertical rather than horizontal direction. But I also find this format aesthetically pleasing, either individually or hung in a series.
My visual language consists of a combination of both intuitively and considerately cut positive and negative shapes and line, which are unified by layers of inking and printing into unique and pleasing compositions. I play with colour and texture by means of the fabrics that I choose from my stash of handdyed and printed materials, accumulated over the years of making textile art. When inking the collages, I aim to manipulate the amount of colour left visible in the end result.
Working in my usual free and intuitive way, I’ve begun making collithos with expressive faces, which I stitch directly on the machine in one single line.
This series of faces was inspired by the pandemic and people’s reaction to social distancing. I chose to use bright colours for contrast with the grim situation.
This series depicts the sudden and unsettling onset of an epileptic insult.
All my printmaking work is meant to be framed and hung on the wall. My earlier work, however, has mostly been sculptural, and it was for practical reasons that I’d decided to only make flat work, which can easily be stacked and stored.
But I’m a crafter at heart and after having made many collithos in a similar format, I wanted to do something different. I made several long collitho strips, which consist of different parts that I inked and printed individually in the usual way and which I then connected with machine stitch.
This way of displaying them, however, is only temporarily. The different parts are all meant to be framed and hung on the wall.