I failed at sewing. It was the only time I had got a C- on my report card. I can distinctly remember bringing home the envelope that held my school report. Waiting for my mother to open it up. Watching her face as she registered that I had failed a subject. Unheard of!
Yet at 12 years old I thought I knew the score. Learn to cook and sew and they put you in with the dumb girls. The ones who get lowly paid jobs. The ones destined for the house and housework. Who wear a frilly apron EVERY DAY, (and sew it themselves).
That was my 12 year old's understanding of the school system hierarchy. Pass my domestic science subjects and be doomed to life as a “suburban housewife”. I wanted more, but I didn’t know exactly what.
The other day I was with a group of women discussing our mothers of the post war generation. We talked about the harsh truths behind the panacea of “a Bex and a good lie down”. This dreaded legacy of being a slave to the home and housework.
It’s no wonder we did everything we could to avoid the “domestic arts” and all it represented.
My mother despaired that I would ever be a sewer. I didn’t have the patience for tiresome unpicking, tacking and neatening up the seams. I didn’t finish any of the projects set for me by the dreaded sewing teacher.
Yet here I am today stitching. Letting my needle pierce the paper, forming one stitch at a time in a sewing meditation. I start a stitched art project and finish it. My patience is endless. Imperfect, freeform stitching with threads left dangling, a mirror of my thoughts.
I have talked to many women artists who incorporate sewing into their own art practice. Disrupting the narrative around its traditional use, pushing the boundaries of craft. Challenging perceptions of Craft Vs Art.
Craft is functional, something you can use or wear. Art is dysfunctional. It makes you think, sometimes makes you feel uncomfortable. In the world of art, craft is at the bottom of the pecking order.
When we challenge that construct around craft based skills we start to value hand-work. This work done by the hands that is rhythmic, soothing, a chain of stitches linking mothers and daughters through time. It values the work done by all our mothers within the confines of post-war society. Their unspoken resistance to the times that as artists we can transform into a new language of our own.
The World Tree (as above, so below) detail