Escaping the dark world of scrolling the socials
“Take it outside” was a standard parenting directive back in the 1900s, shouted at the kids when pro-wrestling or trying to extricate a running shoe from the dog’s lock-jaw or whining for no reason. Taking it outside is harder to do if you live in an apartment tower but there’s no alternative if you’re a teenager hoping for a social life.
My old high school was surrounded by condo towers and mid-rise apartment buildings that are now being razed for higher towers. Hanging out indoors was not an option for many of my friends who lived in one-bedrooms with a single parent. Instead, we migrated from one friend’s building to another, buzzing intercoms to meet them in their lobbies and then go harass some other friend on shift at the Shoppers Drug Mart or hover in front of the fish-and-chips place to try to get the cute server to notice us. We mingled outside at the mini parks and the beach until we were old enough to get inside the clubs.
The club life is a dim memory but I am still compelled to take it outside. When the pandemic lockdown hit, I switched from working in an art studio to hand-stitching a large project on my porch. As the weather improved, I brought any old small thing to stitch to the neighbourhood park, two metres apart from others. That evolved into an improvisational mobile, outdoorsy art practice that begins with a piece of found linen, usually an old stained tablecloth that nobody wants.
Before heading outside I set the linen in the hoop then do a little table work, diluting paint with water and dropping it on the linen to watch the pigments spread through the taut fibres. Sometimes I sprinkle on more water or more undiluted pigment to saturate the colour or increase the bleed, or throw on some salt or soil or a slop of my coffee and observe those effects. I let that dry. I repeat all this in different sections of the linen, maybe including some of the tablecloth design or stitching, then decide which section could use some embroidery embellishments. I cut out that one preferred area, then choose a palette of embroidery floss. My mobile art practice is ready to go wherever I go.
“Take it outside” was a standard parenting directive back in the 1900s, shouted at the kids when pro-wrestling or trying to extricate a running shoe from the dog’s lock-jaw or whining for no reason. Taking it outside is harder to do if you live in an apartment tower but there’s no alternative if you’re a teenager hoping for a social life.
My old high school was surrounded by condo towers and mid-rise apartment buildings that are now being razed for higher towers. Hanging out indoors was not an option for many of my friends who lived in one-bedrooms with a single parent. Instead, we migrated from one friend’s building to another, buzzing intercoms to meet them in their lobbies and then go harass some other friend on shift at the Shoppers Drug Mart or hover in front of the fish-and-chips place to try to get the cute server to notice us. We mingled outside at the mini parks and the beach until we were old enough to get inside the clubs.
The club life is a dim memory but I am still compelled to take it outside. When the pandemic lockdown hit, I switched from working in an art studio to hand-stitching a large project on my porch. As the weather improved, I brought any old small thing to stitch to the neighbourhood park, two metres apart from others. That evolved into an improvisational mobile, outdoorsy art practice that begins with a piece of found linen, usually an old stained tablecloth that nobody wants.
Before heading outside I set the linen in the hoop then do a little table work, diluting paint with water and dropping it on the linen to watch the pigments spread through the taut fibres. Sometimes I sprinkle on more water or more undiluted pigment to saturate the colour or increase the bleed, or throw on some salt or soil or a slop of my coffee and observe those effects. I let that dry. I repeat all this in different sections of the linen, maybe including some of the tablecloth design or stitching, then decide which section could use some embroidery embellishments. I cut out that one preferred area, then choose a palette of embroidery floss. My mobile art practice is ready to go wherever I go.
Embroidery-painting essentials: one 8-inch hoop with ongoing linen project, small primary-colour paint set of liquid acrylics, a mechanical pencil, one small paint brush, fold-up scissors, a bag of a embroidery floss and two embroidery needles. (This art go-bag has passed airport security many times.)
Taking it outside the studio has become my way of working when travelling or during these months of long daylight hours. It is my summer work: some are working, some are not (har-har). No matter; it’s all just practice — practice in learning embroidery stitches (heather and blanket, french knot, woven rose), traditional sashiko patterns, and the personal and social histories of found linens. It is in learning mindfulness, by breaking the habit of scrolling through the socials or fixating on iPhone games and engaging with the world.
Inside is for the wintery work of queen-sized quilts and hooked rugs. For the next six months the art studio is simply a storage facility for the large-scale stretched painting canvases, fibre-art hangings, and the clutter of tubes of paint, rags and brushes. This is the season for shedding all that bulk, reducing this art practice to fit into a toiletries bag that lives in the daypack that I take on bike rides all over the city. I pull it out in ferry-passenger lounges, on long bus rides, at park picnics.
Inside is for the wintery work of queen-sized quilts and hooked rugs. For the next six months the art studio is simply a storage facility for the large-scale stretched painting canvases, fibre-art hangings, and the clutter of tubes of paint, rags and brushes. This is the season for shedding all that bulk, reducing this art practice to fit into a toiletries bag that lives in the daypack that I take on bike rides all over the city. I pull it out in ferry-passenger lounges, on long bus rides, at park picnics.
An evolving mobile, outdoorsy art practice confined by materials and method.
Inside is where all the screens are, the source of the unfathomable, dark news of the dismantling of democracy and political extortion. Outside is where all the social and political action is. That includes the global Mend in Public Day last Saturday, April 26, a Fashion Revolution creative action to resist the cycle of excess, through repair and reuse. This year in Vancouver, that was at the Main Street and East 21st Avenue plaza and Granville Island.
