Dear Members
Apart from working for the exhibition, another project has been exercising the minds of several of us, namely the Culture-Clash project initiated by David Littler, Director of the London Printworks, Brixton. After I gave a brief resumé at our AGM in March, about 9 members signed up to an initial meeting on 2nd May. This took place at the Constance Howard Study and Research centre at Goldsmiths’ College when David, a textile designer and DJ, introduced the project with a visual presentation. His aim:- To bring the two different worlds of textiles and music together under the general heading of ‘sampling’, a technique common to both embroiderers and musicians; the outcome to be open-ended with an emphasis on research.
Our first series of workshops took place over a five day period starting at the V&A when Clare Browne, curator of textiles (and co-author with Jennifer Weardon of Samplers in the V&A Museum) and Lyn Szygenda, curator and deputy director of the Embroiderers’Guild, showed examples of historic band, spot and text samplers from their collections. Our NEG members, joined by two from the Embroiderers’ Guild then had the opportunity to talk briefly about their own work. This was followed by Jason Singh, musician and DJ, who demonstrated beatbox techniques and talked about his interest in sound and graffiti. Complementing him, Yusra Warsama, a poet and actress, gave an unusual performance of words set to a rap rhythm. Other participants included Jan Gilbert, artist and administrator from the Constance Howard Study and Research Centre, Janson Hews, V&A schools officer, and Srdjana Sarceric who filmed the proceedings.
For the next two days the embroiderers met at the London Printworks with David, Jason, Yusra and Srdjana. Participants were asked to write down any words or phrases which related to the previous day’s meeting. For example, diligence, discipline, contemplative, subversive etc. After a series of short warm up exercises using sound Yusra asked us to imagine a girl who had made a sampler coming towards us and giving us a gift of some description. We then wrote down words to describe our imagined scene and combined the sentences to form a poem. After the poetry readings, Yusra asked us three important questions: Who taught you to sew? Why do you sew? What do you love the most? This was followed by a game of consequences, based on our writings, which was used to create four line verses. When read aloud, these triggered memory and generated a surprising amount of emotion. The ‘consequence-style’ poems were then collected by Jason to use in a computer programme called Life to make sound loops from words. He explained that ‘sampling’ in music means any kind of work which can be copied or imitated. For example, taking a sound and changing it into something else or using sound as paint would be applied on canvas with technology as an integral part of the performance. At this point, we discussed ways in which sampling is used in embroidery and it was decided to use canvas as a suitable ground fabric for our first experiment.
On the Wednesday we started embroidering our samplers with a variety of threads, strips of fabric and ribbon, simple shapes and patterns. Jason then transposed them on to the computer and produced a range of sounds from percussion to flute. We listened intently and found the results quite fascinating.
Thursday and Friday were spent at ‘Raw Material’, a nearby recording studio. Here with the aid of Ben, a sound specialist, we recorded our poems and prose, some verses from old samplers and the letters of the alphabet, the latter being a recurring feature in many band samplers. Then a musical note was introduced and Pat Cove entertained us with a particularly relevant song ‘The sewing machine, the sewing machine, a girl’s best friend….’ This was recorded. Later Jason presented some of the music he had made from the sound loops and Yusra performed another extraordinary rap poem. Meanwhile, we sat, stitched and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves in a very relaxed atmosphere! The week concluded on a very positive note and it was decided to take the sound into the visual by using the alphabet as a standard to create further patterns in stitch. It was emphasised by David that there were no boundaries to this piece of research. Depending on funding, further workshops will take place to develop this fascinating project which is helping to change our perceptions and unite the worlds of stitch and sound.
Here is a wise verse from a sampler:
‘Look well to what you take in hand
For larning is better than house or land
When land is gone and money spent
Then larning is most excellent.’
Mary Groome 1704
See www.londonprintworks.com
*participants: Liz Ashurst, Pat Cove, Kate Davis, Moyra McNeill, Janice Lawrence, Jackie Martin, Kathie Small, Suzanne Newton plus Embroiderers’ Guild members, Gillian Davies and Jackie Rayer