Showing posts with label Prayer Wall. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Prayer Wall. Show all posts
Friday, 13 March 2015
Sunday, 1 February 2015
It's been an interesting week, a bit of printing and dyeing, a fall down my stairs and a thanking my stars that I have a little paid work upcoming and excitement about a forthcoming showcase exhibition in York for the society of dyers and colourists http://www.sdc.org.uk/
The printing is a continuation and an amalgamation of a couple of projects I am working on. In 2013 I was given a bursary by the sdc to set up a dye kitchen in my work space. I was able to buy a set of scales, some dyes and some fabric with the money they gave me and it really made a difference to me. It allowed me to deepen my knowledge of how different dyes work on different fibres and as knowledge deepens it becomes know-how and that know-how opens up new pathways to explore.
From the sdc project, detailed on my website http://beccajiclfford.weebly.com/projects.html, sprang the work that I made for the Blue Jacket Textile fair in September 2014. I experimented using traditional shibori techniques, folding and tying to dye with rust and indigo and cyanotypes and had some interesting results which at some point, hopefully soon, I will post on my blog and document on my website.
But this week I have been using dye and print to take my prayer wall project a little further. My prayer wall project is very close to my heart. A creative journey that just seems to give and give and give. A journey that seems to have a way of it's own, a way that I am quietly following and trusting. Is that the nature of prayer ? Is that the nature of creative process ? Where does one start and anther finish ? I don't know. And starting and finishing are also mutable points. But for the record, for my record, amongst other things I have been working on this week I have now begun a new chapter in my prayer wall project that feels like it could be rewarding.
The printing is a continuation and an amalgamation of a couple of projects I am working on. In 2013 I was given a bursary by the sdc to set up a dye kitchen in my work space. I was able to buy a set of scales, some dyes and some fabric with the money they gave me and it really made a difference to me. It allowed me to deepen my knowledge of how different dyes work on different fibres and as knowledge deepens it becomes know-how and that know-how opens up new pathways to explore.
From the sdc project, detailed on my website http://beccajiclfford.weebly.com/projects.html, sprang the work that I made for the Blue Jacket Textile fair in September 2014. I experimented using traditional shibori techniques, folding and tying to dye with rust and indigo and cyanotypes and had some interesting results which at some point, hopefully soon, I will post on my blog and document on my website.
But this week I have been using dye and print to take my prayer wall project a little further. My prayer wall project is very close to my heart. A creative journey that just seems to give and give and give. A journey that seems to have a way of it's own, a way that I am quietly following and trusting. Is that the nature of prayer ? Is that the nature of creative process ? Where does one start and anther finish ? I don't know. And starting and finishing are also mutable points. But for the record, for my record, amongst other things I have been working on this week I have now begun a new chapter in my prayer wall project that feels like it could be rewarding.
Monday, 2 June 2014
I've been stitching into the pieces of cloth that came out of my prayer wall. For more information and to save repeating myself I'll refer anyone reading to the ongoing project write up on my website http://beccajiclfford.weebly.com/.
This is a project that is really close to my heart. I do not feel in control, it keeps drawing me on and I follow because I must tho' I do not know where it will lead. What started as a whisper, a quietly stated hope, intention, seems to have become something else, a journey, a passage, an odyssey, perhaps.
This is a project that is really close to my heart. I do not feel in control, it keeps drawing me on and I follow because I must tho' I do not know where it will lead. What started as a whisper, a quietly stated hope, intention, seems to have become something else, a journey, a passage, an odyssey, perhaps.
Tuesday, 1 April 2014
At the end of April last year the Rana Plaza factory building collapsed killing over a thousand workers, many more were injured or trapped http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22476774. This was shocking news and made more shocking by our own guilt. Many of the people inside the building were working for clothing manufacturers supported by huge companies who exploit the cheap cost of labour in countries like Bangladesh to offer the more comfortable customer inexpensive throwaway fashion. It keeps money moving around but does nothing for global equality, and is also a source of pressure on the environment.
I felt so impotent witnessing the suffering which, in the face of such a huge catastrophe, could no longer be pushed aside as inconsequential. I wanted to mark this horrible happening by making a piece of conscience work. So I began to make a prayer wall. With some old strips of cotton that I had previously dyed blue I began to fill the cracks in a garden wall with slips of cloth, 2-4" long and about 1'' wide. As I filled the spaces I put out prayers for the dead, for the trapped, for the dying, for the maimed, for the left behind, for all the broken bodies and lives in Dhaka. And all the other lives that are blighted by greed, misunderstanding and lack of compassion. Making this wall was a deep meditation for me, it had kinship to hand stitching or weaving with it's simple repetitive action that offered a gentle home, and was a small peaceful offering of hope, if nothing else.
Yesterday I looked at the wall. Many of the prayer pieces had fallen out, all of them had faded. It seemed appropriate. The prayers that came to nothing. The soft scrumpled cloth slowly responding to what the world threw at it. I decided to offer up new prayers with new pieces of cloth from some more of the same strips of blue cotton that I had used before. There is still great need for hope and prayer. People still slave in factories, disregarded, wars and famine still hold vast communities in pain, and the world seems to be cracking under the strain of the demands that we, as a species, make on it.
I see now that my prayer wall is an ongoing project. Prayer for me is a kind of sanctuary, a quiet place where I can hear my fear and try to transcend it.
I took photos of some of the pieces, on the floor and in the wall, because in their tenderness they feel like childish dreams that the best of us will come through. That the best of us, the spark of light that resides, surely, in all of us, will win out and light up the darkness of being.
I felt so impotent witnessing the suffering which, in the face of such a huge catastrophe, could no longer be pushed aside as inconsequential. I wanted to mark this horrible happening by making a piece of conscience work. So I began to make a prayer wall. With some old strips of cotton that I had previously dyed blue I began to fill the cracks in a garden wall with slips of cloth, 2-4" long and about 1'' wide. As I filled the spaces I put out prayers for the dead, for the trapped, for the dying, for the maimed, for the left behind, for all the broken bodies and lives in Dhaka. And all the other lives that are blighted by greed, misunderstanding and lack of compassion. Making this wall was a deep meditation for me, it had kinship to hand stitching or weaving with it's simple repetitive action that offered a gentle home, and was a small peaceful offering of hope, if nothing else.
Yesterday I looked at the wall. Many of the prayer pieces had fallen out, all of them had faded. It seemed appropriate. The prayers that came to nothing. The soft scrumpled cloth slowly responding to what the world threw at it. I decided to offer up new prayers with new pieces of cloth from some more of the same strips of blue cotton that I had used before. There is still great need for hope and prayer. People still slave in factories, disregarded, wars and famine still hold vast communities in pain, and the world seems to be cracking under the strain of the demands that we, as a species, make on it.
I see now that my prayer wall is an ongoing project. Prayer for me is a kind of sanctuary, a quiet place where I can hear my fear and try to transcend it.
I took photos of some of the pieces, on the floor and in the wall, because in their tenderness they feel like childish dreams that the best of us will come through. That the best of us, the spark of light that resides, surely, in all of us, will win out and light up the darkness of being.
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