This is my article in the July/August edition of Embroidery Magazine. Many thanks to editor Jo Hall for allowing me to republish this
2016/17 was a bad year for me; our house suffered a major flood and the subsequent refit was handled so badly that we had to get my MP and the financial ombudsman involved; family members were very seriously ill; there was a row that alienated me from my family for a year. When a professional disappointment happened after working on it for 18 months I crumpled; I buckled; I went under.
I was in a very dark place. In the past when I had been in rough spots, my practice had always been the safety valve. I had repeatedly used metaphor as a way to express my thoughts. Symbolic animals running for their lives; blocks of dark colours overpowering ambiguous shapes. This time it was different. I had ‘maker's block’. I couldn’t work and felt like I was looking into a void. Writer William Stryon, compared depression to being “imprisoned in a fiercely overheated room”[1], but for me it was a crushing sensation. I felt overwhelmed by the weight of failure; I couldn’t breathe. Not like a panic attack but as if all the oxygen was being squeezed out of me.
I had been doing some mentoring for the Crafts Council as part of their Parallel Practice residencies with thread based artist Angela Maddocks. As the project drew to an end we agreed to continue with a reciprocal agreement to mentor each other. It took a number of months to actually admit how ‘stuck’ I was. By now I was on anti-depressants and in a talking therapy programme but I still had nothing to work on. In a conversation with Angela I found myself ranting about all sorts of things ranging from the aftermath of the flood, politics, a perceived lack of success and homophobia I had suffered twenty years earlier and Angela said in a neighbourly way ‘Oooo. What are you going to do with all that anger?’ as if it was a tangible thing; something that could be picked up and carried and moulded into something else.
And I didn’t have an answer but those words buzzed around my head like a bluebottle in a jam jar. As it circled in my brain I repeatedly asked myself ‘What will you do with your anger?’
In the previous five years I had done commissions exploring leukaemia and blood disorders, cardiology and residencies looking at crippling bone diseases or working with prosthetic limbs. It was heavy going. My colour palette had gone from richly saturated hues to dark, dour monochrome. Whilst my work wasn’t making me ill it certainly hadn’t been helping.
So I decided I would work with colour again. Bright, vivid colour. It didn’t matter what I made, but it would be for me. It wasn’t for a client, or a community, or in response to someone else’s brief. There would be no serious story to tell; it would be for my own pleasure; it would be about the joy of just making. And then it became apparent that what I needed to do was to make a quilt that asked in joyful colours ‘What will you do with your anger?’
Two weeks later at sewing show I bought a pack of charms (5 inch squares) of Japanese Yuzen fabric. They were perfect; a confection of jewel like colours, cherry blossom and chrysanthemums, flying cranes and patterned fans, all laced with fine golden print. To start with I was hesitant. I hadn’t made for nearly a year. I collaged with photocopies of the fabric but I rapidly dived in.
There were only two rules. ‘Technically slick’ and ‘Choose the more joyful option’.
Letters were digitised from scratch, sometimes with puddles of metallic thread stitched in splatters alongside, then stitched onto blocks that were pieced and freemotion quilted. When faced with an aesthetic dilemma the solution was simple; go for the joyful option.
And it worked. The simple act of making for myself, not the audience, helped me rebuild myself. I wasn’t over thinking the process, just doing, trying to swim in the happiness of pinks, yellows and turquoise. Of course this wasn’t just the quilts that bought about my recovery but they were emblematic of the journey back.
Considering I was making them for me and no one else, they have been exceptionally well received. The first two are currently on a European tour and the third was commended on the shortlist for the Vlieseline Fine Art Textile Award in 2018. Another three sit in pieces in my studio and I have made three quilts as a personal response to Covid. I don’t know when I will get to show them but at the moment that doesn’t matter. When collectors wanted to buy the very first Recovery Quilt I realised I couldn’t let it go and made them another version. The irony is that quilt’s title is ‘Let go’. Its too precious to me because of the emotional significance in the blocks of bright blossoms, swirls and splatters of gold. I’ll never let that one go.