Shifting focus slightly...

Off to Cornwall for a couple of weeks to explore our new project around worklessness, which will build on 'I Packed This Myself' which looked at the experience of migration, and interaction between migrant workers and local communities in Cornwall.
So posts on this blog may be few and far between for a day or two - but lots of news on the I Packed This Myself blog.

meetup.com

Our volunteer Katrina Williams has told me about something that I've only peripherally been aware of - www.meetup.com.
It's a site where you sign up and register your areas of interest. Then you get to know about relevant groups meeting locally. Katrina has been to a few needlework and sewing gatherings and says they've been brilliant.
Her theory is that meetup.com is soaring in popularity because Adult Education classes are so expensive now.
Meet-up gatherings are usually free or have a nominal fee. Katrina has met some very interesting people, exploring all sorts of different stitch related work, in the needlework groups. I will have to ask her to send me some photos.

Young woman in a boa

Love this watercolour by Henry Somm (Jeune Femme au Boa)...

The prophet Joel

"And rend your hearts, not your garments." Joel 2:13
Know little of the prophet Joel, but this is an interesting thought for the start of Lent. Have been thinking about clothes and self image - and the way style choices are linked to levels of inner confidence.

Paint and embroidery

A good tip from What's She Like?  - Michael Raedecker exhibition at Hauser and Wirth on Piccadilly features huge canvases sewn together and thick white paint...

"Best known for his subtle and unsettling, enigmatic works combining muted tones of paint and embroidery, Raedecker’s paintings explore and push the boundaries of his medium. He goes beyond conventional methods of representing formal elements such as texture and perspective. Through his layering of thread, paint and small, yet aggressive punctures to his canvas, Raedecker imparts an unexpected physicality to his two-dimensional works." Hauser and Wirth press release

Hauser and Wirth is such a strange place  (once a bank - in the basement you can still see the safe) and has interesting exhibitions. And the last one I saw, too, in the summer had a fabric theme. It backs on to Jermyn Street with its many gentlemen's outfitters and tailors....

I like white paintings. Something about photos of the Raedecker work reminds me of Cy Twombley (above - though of course no embroidery involved there..).  But need to go and see them to be sure. Open until 5 April 2012.

So many tiny stitches

Somehow they have a resonance with the tiny leaves and fronds of the ferns.....

Maidenhair fern

And on the windowsills

The frame

Sunday lunch

Roast pork at my parents. On the way upstairs notice some framed embroidery - finished by my mum last year.