Last night Bill and I went to the National Theatre and in the Olivier foyer is a delightful exhibition called Stranded by a women called Lalla Ward. I haven’t heard of her, but other members may know of her. Her work is free machine embroidery and I found it quite impressive.
She is married to a zoologist and with him has visited the Galapagos, Madagascar, Mauritius and New Zealand studying stranded animals and plants and finding that, after reading Darwin, she was inspired in this creative activity. Quoting from her blurb: “I draw. I paint ceramics. I make mosaics. I make pictures. The medium might change, but they are all just pictures. My subject matter is always animals and plants. When I learnt that you could draw with the needle of a sewing machine – paint with thread – I knew I had to try. I’d never owned a sewing machine before, but it’s easier when you don’t know anything about the usual stuff; I’m hopeless at seams and straight lines, but I don’t know, either, to be afraid of ignoring the norm and hurtling into experiment. I’m pretty much self-taught, with the help of a few books, and it’s been and continues to be a process of fascination, infuriation when things go wrong, and thrill when they go right. Thread-painting is painstakingly slow, but an exciting medium that I have found enthrallingly interesting. I’m learning as I go, about fabrics and yarns, tension and technique, rules and breaking them, strands and stranded wildlife.”
The pictures are beautifully executed, the animals and birds in machine embroidery in their authentic colours, which are then cut out and mounted on abstract patchwork backgrounds in muted colours, blacks, beiges, browns, greys, patterned and plain, simple or exotic fabrics, with a good sense of design. She says that her machine is quite ordinary, not a singing and dancing appliance and that she sources her materials from such as Mulberry Silks, The Silk Route and others that we see regularly advertising in Embroidery magazine. They are all professionally mounted in matching frames, which greatly added to the appearance of the exhibits.
Well worth a visit, but you will have to hurry as the exhibition ends on 14th February.