old friend came a-courtin'
uh-huh
Well— look who came to visit!
After all these years —you could have knocked me over with a feather.
It must be—what— a decade and a half since a frog has wanted to be part of my work. So why now?
Once upon a time, of course, frogs were everywhere. Rarely eight at once1— but one in nearly every tapestry from 1992 until 2007.2 And that is a fair few frogs, each providing support and continuity from one work to the next.
I never knew why they came—though I did my best to make them welcome.
And I don’t know why they left—though I was confused and a bit bereft when they were gone.
But go they did—slipping away almost without me noticing.3
This morning I came up with a new theory I rather like4 —but since frogs have been around far longer than humans, what chance have I to understand their amphibian motivations?
All I do know is that this one hopped in while I was thoroughly engaged in something completely different—
—and chose a medium and material that made no sense,
I don’t even like silk! The fabric is slippery and static and cold, and the yarn— well it took me ages (and a ridiculous number of hand spun yards), to understand that I don’t care for it. (Everyone likes silk, just as everyone likes chocolate, right)?
But other than weaving a few ounces into two little tapestries I’ve used almost none of that yardage and over the years have given all of it away (save one small skein of tussah I sometimes use for four-selvedge tapestry warp).
As for drawing with my sewing machine—while I totally adore the machine itself, this image making thing is wildly impractical without reverse.
Not, truth to tell, that I’m ever particularly practical in my choices of material and medium.
And the silk was a gift from a friend who herself ended up with someone else’s massive untouched stash—so there must have been some reason I tucked a few scraps into my backpack even as I shook my head and mumbled that I really really didn’t want any.
Ah well. The creative unconscious is an unfathomable place and what is a gal to do with silk and frogs and ideas but don her headlamp and reading glasses and get on with the task that presents itself.5
Wildly stitching round and round (actually laboriously what with the lifting and dropping of the presser foot with every turn of the fabric), the figures slowly emerged. I let the loose threads leap this way and that—for who wants to cut and re-start if she doesn’t have to—so the whole thing was a bit of a tangle for most of the process.
And the paint—slopping my watercolors over the whole thing was a mess— paint pooling in valleys, shapes re-forming themselves as the cloth relaxed, wrinkled and contorted. Would the colors bleed? Would they show through? Would they stay in the lines (as if that is ever a thing for me)?
It was nuts. And fun. And ridiculous.
And isn’t the back compelling? So loose and free and unexpected. I might even like it better than the front. Well the fang-like lip threads are a little arresting— almost looks like I’ve sewn the mouth shut (which in itself is weirdly interesting as I blather on here to you).6 And the hands and feet of the person might be missing the odd finger and toe.
But since pretty much everything about this stitched comic has been a little off there is no point in doing anything but enjoy its oddities—from how the pattern of the fabric shows through on the skin to the wondrous wrinkles.7 Awkward as they were to paint, I do love that wrinkles showed up physically and randomly (just like real life). Way more compelling than if I had tried to try to draw or stitch them in where I think they should be.
Certainly it’s been a learning and adaption lesson every step of the way — back-to-front or front-to-back— and honestly I’ve no idea what to make of the process or the product.
But perhaps (as ever, even though I keep forgetting), it is not mine to make of anything, but rather to make—when or if the spirit (or the frogs), decide.8 And if that is true I suppose I’ll just have to do what I’ve been practicing for the last four decades—
— accept that I have absolutely no idea who is in charge9
And maybe take a nap while I’m waiting to see what is up next. 10
This tapestry was a commission for a dear friend and her brother. Their mother adored frogs and built a HUGE collection so I had a grand time arranging this picnic for what— in her world—was just a few. .
It became a game at exhibits —adults and children alike playing an amphibian version of Where’s Waldo.
As the frogs began to disappear (I would forget to put them in —not even noticing the lack of a frog until well after the work was done— and sometimes not even then. Not noticing, that is, until the next exhibit when someone would ask “Where is the frog? I’ve looked and looked snd LOOKED and I swear it isn’t there.” And when I had to say “there isn’t one,” the look of betrayal was hard to bear — and a strong motivation to try to insist that the frogs come back. But alas, they were having none of it.
It occurred to me this morning as I was doing my old lady stretches that the “frog years” were also my “big colorful pictorial tapestry” years— and that both coincided with my years of fertility. Starting right after my son was born and counting full tilt into the beginning of peri-menopause, I spun, dyed and wove a LOT of tapestries. Then the images (and frogs) slipped away. The tapestries stayed largish for several years but the stories showed up as words rather than images. And by the time I stopped bleeding, big wool tapestries were a thing of the past. TMI for some of you perhaps, but I find it odd that this timeline has never occurred to me before—and wonder if any of you have noticed a similar pattern in the evolution of your fertility and work? I’m curious.
As you can see, I drew the images with a pencil and then (sort of), stitched over the lines. Freehand would have been fun, but I wasn’t up to that. Most of the lines were pretty easy to erase afterwards but clearly I wasn’t super thorough. And yes — I could/should have used a water soluble marker/pencil, but didn’t have one at hand. And honestly, I don’t really mind the pencil marks.
Indeed, I seem to have a lot to say today — most of it here in the footnotes. What’s with that?
Though it stayed nice and stiff while stitching (I sized it with rice flour glue),
Ecologically, frogs are an indicator species — super sensitive to climate changes, pollution and such—which makes me wonder what this reappearance is indicating about the state of my work/psyche/life? .(see footnote #4)
Yes — one of the tapestries without an obvious frog. I decided that the figure in the tapestry was in kind of a frog-like pose and call it good. Unless the frog is in the potted plant by the window?
And one last footnote (just because), to say that while it feels a little odd to include a bunch of older pictorial work in The Gusset which is otherwise so of-the-moment, it’s also fun to notice that my tendency toward imaginary autobiography has not changed. Indeed one could almost say that in the first 15 years of daily weaving I was making VERY slow comics—and finally found a way to speed things up a bit. Or put another way, that the images freed themselves from the grid of warp and weft by moving into my diary just as the non-objective woven borders gleefully expanded into the freshly available space.
I really like this one! Thank you!
Pure delight