creative process - carlyn yandle

A beautiful craftivism in a flowery part of the world

11/8/2017

MORE THAN DECORATION: Flower images carry deep cultural significance for the Maya. Left: A figure dating from 600-900bc nestled in a lily. Centre: Needlepoint detail from a huipil (top), part of a traditional everyday dress. Right: Jesus emerging from a lily in an oil painting of the Immaculate Conception. Carlyn Yandle photos

I've made it my mission to shake things up by injecting the handmade domestic — doilies, quilts, sweaters and rugs — into austere, authoritative spaces and places, from pristine galleries to sketchy undersides of my city, pushing back on everyday misogynistic descriptors like 'girly' or 'old-lady' or the slightly derogatory 'frou-frou' and 'flowery.'

Then I landed in Merida, Mexico, last week where there is no fight against things flowery and archetypical feminine. Here in the capital of the Yucatan state and the ancient Maya culture (not dead but flourishing against all odds, by the way, like Canada's indigenous people) the streets are a flowery visual field of richly needleworked garments and handmade decorative traditions woven throughout the city, from tiled floors to architectural details and murals.

Above and far right: Carpet-like ceramic tile floor artworks are more than decorative. At left, a four-petal flower signifies universal realms; Centre: Merida's impressive El Gran Museo Del Mundo Maya pays tribute to the importance of the handmade floral motif in one of its exhibit salons. Carlyn Yandle photos

Flowers are so sacred and symbolic in the highly complex Maya culture that the Franciscan missionaries, in service of the Catholic Church, appropriated specific flower designs in their battle for their souls, in a cultural war of the roses (and lilies and other healing, spiritually-weighty blooms).

Left: This rare depiction in oil of Fray Francisco de Santa Ana appeals to the Mayan sense of the sacred. At right, typical religious imagry is embellished with rich floral motifs in a visual appropriation of Mayan culture. Carlyn Yandle photos

Coming from the land of yoga pants, I'm fascinated by this idea that an acceptable form of everyday dress is one's own hand-stitched art piece in the form of brightly-coloured cultural patterns of flowers on white cotton or linen tops and tunics, over an underskirt edged in a thick band of white lace.

No made-in-China. No apologies, no fading away.

Am I blue? Yes, and grey and silver too

3/29/2017

“Your hair seems blue,” a friend noted over dinner.
It really is. I’ve joined the blue-rinse gang — emphasis on the blue. Denim blue is an unnatural hair hue that seems only natural now that I'm surrounded by heaps of old jeans and altering all those tones of denim. As usual, I’m not questioning why, but how: how to add some pleasing form to a traditional working fabric; how to infuse some lacy aspect into that utilitarian cloth.

What I do see is that after four months exposed to the bright colours of urban Mexico and the glare of the garish new Trump era, I am thirsty for cool, serene tones and patterns of rain-soaked skies and coastal stones rolled smooth by the sea. I returned to discover that I am, in fact, attached to the world of hot-water bottles, mugs of tea and toasty quilts, the coziness against the cold.

Blue is my touchstone: something real and eternal to cling to in these uncertain, unfathomable times. I may be seduced by sun-baked yellow, spicy red, lethal lime green and sunset pink but my deep, serene dreams are all denim blue.

(For a sample of my blue-jean fabrications, check out my other site, Workwraps.weebly.com)

Below: Recent experiments with denim include dousing doilies in bleach and imprinting them on on jeans before cutting for quilts.

Impression of two overlapping doilies on a pair of jeans.

Detail of the lacy traces through the bleaching process.

Samples of experiments with different dilutions of bleach, duration and fabrics.

A roll of quilt binding made from three denim shirts.

Time is ripe for Occupy Neighbourhood movement

4/24/2015

One of a handful of Vancouver's 'country lanes' from a 2002 pilot projects. (Photo: Ben Nelms for National Post)

And yet.

And yet there is nothing like an untenable situation to spark a creative response. There is evidence of it in the spaces between, beyond, behind, or otherwise outside the scope of authority. You see it in neighbourhood back alleys and in the gaps between buildings all over the world: small, bold, personal gestures. It may start with a graffiti tag (I was here, The Man can stuff it) and evolve into jaw-dropping unauthorized artworks. It may start with that one condo-dweller with no outdoor space who drags a chair down to the street to do some sketching or practise guitar. Last year some folks down the block put out a table at the corner park and had a sit-down neighbours’ potluck dinner. Down another block is a Country Lane, one of just a handful of alleys transformed into a garden-like thoroughfare in a pilot project with the City back in 2002.

Day after destruction: Giant doily on the bulldozed community gardens in Kitsilano (Carlyn Yandle photo)

And so it has come to pass. Where bloom-perfumed weeknight evenings in spring normally draw out elderly food-growers, young adults on after-class dog walks, tots trying out their new walking legs and commuter-runners with backpacks now there is barely a soul. “It’s so futile,” a neighbour said, hands on hips and gazing around at the remnant plant-bits fighting for traction in the bulldozer tracks. “This is just big male egos at work.”

My community, like all Vancouver communities increasingly hemmed in by one glassy, luxury edifice after another, is under threat of becoming no place in particular.

Living directly across the street from a swath of rubble, I think about the Field of Dreams line, “If you build it they will come.” Except in the case of the formerly thriving community gardens obliterated by CP Rail last month, it’s more, “If you destroy it, they will vamoose.”

Vancouver's downtown alleys are typically sketchy, soulless spaces. (Photo: Jonathan Hayward , Canadian Press)

These small acts are claims on our community. There’s nothing like an obliterated cherished social space to make us rethink this expectation that city planners or developers or Translink or the provincial government will make our corners of the world livable. That’s up to us. It requires a little courage and some questioning of authority. It may involve a little risk and the understanding that it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission.

Livable Laneways has taken on the west alley on Main Street north of Broadway, with various temporary installations and community events.

This is how I came to move a couple of wrought iron chairs from my deck to the acres of dead dirt across the street. I wanted to see if they would be confiscated or destroyed. Instead, they’re being used, to rest for a spell, to soak up the rays, to down a beer. It’s a small act but even two empty chairs are an invitation, a potential conversation.

I’ve been researching creative ways to carve out social spaces in the face of the residential-investment spree that’s taken over Vancouver. Even in the tightest spaces -- or especially in the tightest spaces – humanity can grow and thrive. From the thinnest walkway container gardens in Kyoto to a laneway festival in one of our city’s dumpster-blighted back alley, there is potential in occupying a lost space.

Don’t just say something; sit there.

A laneway in Melbourne, Australia (Photo by Corbis via traveller.com.au)

Laying doilies on devastated gardens: a bit of sublime madness?

3/6/2015

When the white RCMP SUV was spotted cruising around the Maple Street section of the community gardens early Monday morning, it was clear that the chainsaws and earth-movers were next.

Placeholders for levelled gardens: Wrap I and Wrap II, 10' diameter each, crocheted Tyvek (Photo by Carlyn Yandle)

For the next three days all the gardeners of those little plots along the Arbutus rail corridor could do was ask that some of the uprooted shrubs be saved. But mostly those who had the stomach to watch the carnage were shaking their heads, hugging one another, trying not to cry.

The train used to come by here when there were gardens. Now there is no need for trains yet all but a fringe of the gardens must go.

It's the futility of the destruction of people's source of food, pleasure and community that hurts the most. CP has every right to their right of way, but it's a crying shame all the same.

Backhoe tracks and Wrap I, 10' diameter, crocheted Tyvek (Photo by Carlyn Yandle)

When all was left was the tracks of the backhoe, I thought that laying down some giant doilies seemed appropriate. Or at least it didn't seem any more ridiculous than levelling the gardens along a useless spur where the rails have long disappeared under the tarmac of some streets it used to cross.

There was no one around when I unfurled the two 10-foot-wide doilies on the bare dirt after the land-clearers left for the day - eerie for a time and place where there's usually all sorts of people tending their vegetables, walking dogs, riding bikes, pushing strollers or just surveying the spring coming on. But soon a few curious souls ventured in to ask what I was doing or snap some Instagram-destined pics. Conversations started up, mostly about Those Assholes but also about the grandmothers who loved their doilies, or the other things that these things reminded them of. A bit of absurdity in the face of absurdity, but it kick-started something.

When one's world seems unbearable "it is the sublime madness that makes one sing," Pulitzer-prize-winning war correspondent/author/minister Chris Hedges told the crowd at a packed downtown church two weeks ago. Acts of creative expression in the face of devastation are signs of a belief in a "divine justice." They are small acts of hope that say, 'We exist.'

Hedges rocks your world view here (talk begins at 16-minute mark):

Defending the doily in 20 images, 20 seconds each

1/23/2015

This just uploaded... Six and a half minutes devoted to that question I get a lot:
"What's up with the doilies?"

(Video courtesy of Terry Fox Theatre's PechaKucha program. More info on the entertaining, informative and globally-popular PechaKucha format here.)

flying that doily flag at upcoming PechaKucha

11/7/2014

In the next month you're likely going to end up stuck at some fatuous seasonal gathering, wondering how soon you can bolt without appearing rude so you can go home and change into your antisocial cozy pants.

This is why I like PechaKuchas, lectures delivered in 20 slides that each flash by in 20 seconds. (Next!)

Data map by Attila Bujdoso, past organizer of a Pecha Kucha night in Budapest. (bujatt.com)

They're fast-paced, a little risky, guaranteed to vibrate the ol' grey matter and bring on some laughs (vital during these dank days). You don't feel like a knob if you go by yourself or arrive in your day uniform — whatever that is. In short, except for the alcohol and snacks, PechaKuchas are basically the opposite of most social events.

The participatory part isn't for everyone, but when I saw the call to artists to participate at the Terry Fox Theatre in Port Coquitlam on Nov. 21, I decided to take up the challenge.

I'm bent on facing my fears these days and besides, I had a topic in mind that might answer one frequently asked question I get about my work: What's the deal with the doilies? (Or the more polite: Are you still working with doilies?)

This isn't my first PechaKucha — the onomatopoetic name for Japanese chit-chat — but I'm a serious neophyte, and that's okay.

The beauty of PKNs (PechaKucha nights) is that it's all okay, which likely explains why they've taken off around the world, in coffee houses and auditoriums, plazas and living rooms, with wide-ranging topics from biology to political movements, delivered by everyone from little kids to known political dissidents.

My little drop in the PKN bucket addresses a crafty little topic with some tangles but it forces me to do a little more than just shrug and mumble something apologetic.

It could be of particular interest to no one else but me, but my approach is: fly this freak flag; it will all be over in six and a half minutes.

Screen shot of the browse window at pechakucha.org

Innovation can be a risky business

1/16/2014

Coming up with new ideas is not without its hazards. The world-renowned Noma restaurant is a case in point. Chef-patron Rene Redzepi uses what grows in the area, innovating astounding food creations famously foraged from the local land and sea. Sometimes the magic works; sometimes it doesn't. He's even admitted to his own spontaneous bowel reactions to his experiments.

Mountains of Christmas lights headed for the grinder in Shijiao, China (Atlantic Magazine)

One outfit in the southern Chinese town of Shijiao has innovated a low-tech method for squeezing a livelihood out of the great bulk of broken Christmas lights. Making use of the empty shipping containers returning to the global export hub and North Americans' addiction to buying cheap throwaways, the strings are thrown into a grinder, then shovelled into a water bath that separates the heavier metal wire fragments from the plastic insulator bits. The metals are eventually separated into reusable copper and other metals, and the plastic is used in slipper soles. (Check out the fascinating video.)

Granted, there are problems, like the possibility of lead in the plastic that ends up cozying up to the soles of feet and the spewing pollution from copper processing.

That necessity to make a living is one mother of invention, a prime example of the hard birth of a global leader in innovation.

Baled copper. Carlyn Yandle photo

Considering the glut of stuff and our continued rampant consumerism, it's becoming unconscionable to me to use materials that are not either post-market or readily re-usable. That's easy to face down in the making of sculptural objects. I find inspiration through foraging in my own environment, where culturally-weighty artifacts from spider-webby doilies to crushed copper play with concept.

But I'm stymied when it comes to painting. I love the exploration but can't stand the materials. I rely on petroleum-based paints and resins, first-use softwood stretchers, brushes and canvasses. Acrylic paints allow me to do the layering I can't achieve in oils, creating that fine line between the handmade and digital.

Untitled, 2013, Distract series, acrylic on canvas, 24" x 30" on panel.

I feel it all coming to a head: Am I willing to lay down the paintbrush to reduce my own carbon footprint? Not quite.

But I am taking a few baby steps. I've been experimenting with composing larger paintings out of my painting studies, to incorporate the patterns of both the painted surface and the piecing, not unlike a quilt made up of well-chosen materials that have outlived their original purpose.

It may just be that necessity to reduce my consumption that pushes me into innovating in painting. Like other innovations, there will be failures and disasters. Somewhere in there is a new way to approach painting.

Discarded doilies demand attention

8/9/2013

Wrap (I), polyethylene fibre, 96" diameter

In my fourth-year sculpture class venerable artist and (now newly-retired) Emily Carr instructor Liz Magor took one look at my first installation of a kazillion doilies stretched across the cavernous classroom and said, "You seem to be in love with doilies. Maybe it's time to break up and find something else to love."

It was just the kind of motivation I needed to embark on a three-year challenge to bring the thrift-shop throwaways into the gallery fore.

Wrap (II), polyethylene fibre, 96" diameter

I admit I am in love with spidery, handmade doilies. My hands barely know the work that goes into their tiny filigree patterns. Following a complex pattern is a highly meditative exercise in concentration, patience and commitment. Their circular designs reflect the mathematical patterns of coral, brain, bibb lettuce.

But the real power of those little doilies for me is their symbolism. Each one represents its maker, invariably an older woman who has clearly worked this way with her hands for many, many years, who probably learned from her mother, who learned from her mother. When I spot them in heaps in a plastic basket on a thrift store shelf, 50 cents each, I am quietly horrified. How can all these humble labours of love, these overlooked objects of household protection, be reduced to almost no value? And am I still talking about the handmade items or their makers? I've been tangling up the two for a long time — for too long, some might say.

Flo (I), acrylic on canvas, 60" x 60"

For three years I've been pushing the doily into new dimensions, trying to make the invisible visible. Mixing them up with industrial materials like mortar and Tyvek. Using patterns from the back of 1950s Ladies Home Journals to turn eight-inch-wide doilies into eight-foot-wide doilies. Messing with the macho painting conventions of Abstract Expressionism from the same era.

The show went up at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre lobby last week. I don't know what the concert-ticket-holders will think of giant doilies hanging from railings, the small sculptures of unfathomable petrified doilies or painted fields of doily patterns, with names like Flo (after my grandmother with skilled hands and a bold spirit) and Persistent Grey.

Ravages (I), found cotton doilies, mortar, dimensions variable

I'm sort of resigned to the idea that many will find it all weirdly decorative. Maybe Magor would say that now I really need to find another object to love. But for me it's a mission accomplished. I've somehow managed to fool everyone with the promise of Art and filled the pristine, privileged gallery space with doilies.

Is my love affair over? I'm trying not to think about it too much. Over-thinking has never helped me.

Unlaced continues at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre until Sept. 23, 2013. Gallery Hours: during QET performances or by appointment. Contact: Connie Sabo, gallery curator, 604-505-4297

Sanitary Doily gets its 15 minutes

5/31/2013

Sanitary Doily, a finalist in the City's sewer-cover competition.

I'm deluded enough to believe I can survive on an art practice in Vancouver but I am under no illusion that my Sanitary Doily will be selected to grace the city's sanitary sewer covers for the next century.

But I couldn't resist designing my tribute to a traditional handmade use-object's chief function: to conceal and pretty-up unsightly evidence of everyday life. Sanitary Doily is a stink bid but damn if it didn't make it as a finalist among the more than 1,000 entries in the City's open competition.

The design borrows from actual patterns, with the swirling core used here to convey a flushing toilet action. (In retrospect, the swirl should be reversed. This is not Australia.) The surrounding negative spaces are reshaped as random water droplets while just managing to maintain pattern integrity. It is intended to be whimsically informative, enhanced by the prominent inclusion of the City of Vancouver into the lacework. It is conceived as an imperfect, pleasing intervention in a manufactured landscape.

Just what two designs will be selected for the storm sewer and sanitary sewer covers will be announced this Saturday afternoon, June 1, at the Ironclad Art Manhole Design Challenge exhibit at the Interurban Gallery, 1 East Hastings at Carrall Street. (The exhibit of all design entries is now on display through June 8, 1-5 p.m. where you can vote for your favourite, or do that here.)

I did a little fisty air punch when I was notified that Sanitary Doily was not rejected out of hand, mainly because I see it as a small victory in our culture where exquisitely handmade lacework can be found heaped in plastic bins at local thrift shops, at 50 cents each. I know how much dedication is required to make a doily because after decades of practice I can just manage to crochet a crude one. To me, the way we treat those little spiderwebby lace fragments of yore is symbolic of the level of honour and value attributed to that last generation of women who mastered that domestic art form. Not so much.

Image from junk-culture.com

Doilies are just another kind of mark-making, albeit traditionally in the home, so naturally I adore New York City crochet artist Nathan Vincent's crocheted manhole-cover, which makes its mark in the streets. (See more of his manly crocheted objects here.)

Meanwhile, I'm left thinking about what's next for Sanitary Doily. It won't be cast in iron any time soon, but I'm kind of loving the idea of re-injecting it with a little of the original use-object value, like Brooklyn artist Ronda Smith's NYC sewer cover throw pillows. (Or maybe it's just her pitch I love: "Who wants to snuggle up to a SMALL NYC SEWER manhole cover??? I DO!!"

Her series of domestic artworks are photo transfers of actual sewers but thanks to the wonders of Photoshop — and my Photoshop wiz of a brother — I could fudge the whole thing (see below).

Admittedly, a Sanitary Doily pillow wouldn't have the power of her iconic, beat-up photographed objects. And anyway, I would be more inclined to turn the image into a toilet seat cover.

Image from Etsy.com

In the end, its actual use is more likely to be another sample of work for this website.

Good enough!

Ask not why the giant doily

5/2/2013

After a long and often painful labour, I’m happy to introduce…the twins!

I’m not sure why I plumped up the two eight-foot-wide doilies, freshly completed today, for their first picture. It might have something to do with this morning’s mammogram.

‘Why’ is always a scary question wherever conception is concerned. ‘What’ and ‘how’ are a little more manageable.

What they are are two crocheted doilies on a scale of 1 inch = 1 foot, using a material that mimics the relative volume, appearance and weight of the cotton floss called for in the original patterns for the two table-top doilies I found in my stack of 1950s homemaker magazines.

What material was a tough enough question without the Why lurking behind. I’d been searching for the right stuff for ages until I realized it was all around me. In fact, I’d been hammering cedar shingles into it for weeks at a time last summer: Tyvek exterior building wrap. I pushed the Why away as I special-ordered a 100-yard bolt of the wrap.

The size of the doilies was determined by the biggest crochet hook I could get my hands on (and could handle). After making several swatches I finally decided two-inch strips were sufficiently doilyish.

Scraping up any residual knowledge of basic math that has clung to my grey matter, I have conjured up this probably-incorrect calculation of length of materials used, in answer to the What:

36 inches (1 yard width) ÷ 2-inch strips = 18 strips x 60 inches (length) = 1080 linear inches per yard x 95 yards (100-yard bolt minus remaining five yards) = 102,600 linear inches ÷ 12 inches = 8,550 feet ÷ 2 doilies = 4,275 linear feet per doily. (I love how stats can be simultaneously unfathomable and banal.)
How did I know how to make doilies? Let me count the ways in all those crappy/crafty afghans, potholders, slippers, placemats, doll clothes, stuffed animals, toques, nerdy vests and that abortion of a bikini.

Why the giant doily, you/I insist? Because it was there, in my head. I conceived two to enjoy their similarities and their differences.

Go forth, twins! Find your purpose! Write if you get a show! And don’t let the why-ers get you down!