Food and Embroidery

I just came across this on www.feelingstitchy.com and its made me think about a different way to use food in my project instead of just trying to knit with it.

Knitting with Food

I have spent the past several hours trying to master the "art" of knitting with spaghetti, filming my attempts. On the fifteenth take I finally managed to cast on three stitches and actually knit with two of them before the spaghetti broke, that was as good as it got.

I'm going to leave the spaghetti over night and see if this improves the strength and try again.

I also think its a good idea to stop before it drives me mad.

Food Project

To start with I chose to research into the social aspects of food, mainly dinner parties and how these have varied over the years. I came across an artist Judy Chicago who produced a large scale instillation of a dinner table. Its a feminist piece celebrating important women throughout history. Each place setting is individually designed for the person it is made for, hand embroidery on the napkin and on the runner. I loved this piece not only for the beautiful embroidery but for the amount of thought and detail that went into it. There are thirty nine place settings on the triangular table and 999 women's names carved into the tiled floor.

From this piece I was inspired to look at other feminist art and think about ways of using it in my work and linking this with the food brief, thinking about gender associations, stereotypes and roles. This then lead on to knitting and how its mainly done by women and is seen by some as traditional domestic work. Combining this with food is the next step.

Role Reverse Project

The combination of visiting Angels of Anarchy exhibition and last weeks lecture on Surrealist and Dada films I have gained an interest in the world of surrealist films. Focusing on the work of female artists and the idea of role reversal i have decided to work on a project about this. Looking at the way many of the female artists work at the Angels of Anarchy is trying to avoid the stereotypical women's role made me thinking about women's work and what is a man's work? And what it would mean to change these roles and make women's work men's work. How successful would this be?

I intend to research into these stereotypical roles and how different era's of time have effected these, including the present day in which there has been a rivival of old fashioned crafts typically done by women rather than men e.g knitting, embroidery and crochet.

Another embroidery project, done.

Using a mix of back stitch, running stitch and french knots to create a textured textile poster.

Angels of Anarchy Exhibition

An exhibition consisting of surrealist art by women, exploring the way female artists created work that challenged peoples views of convention. Twisting the traditional way of representing typical art themes such as landscapes, portraits and still life. Work varies from drawings to sculptures and photographs to collages. Along side famous artists such as Frida Kahlo there were more unusual artists like Dorothea Tanning.

Some of my favorite work was that of Francesca Woodman's with a mixture of fantasy style black and white photographs and a short film showing the ways in which some of her work was produced as well as being a a representation of her work.

Another artist that interested me was Edith Rimmington with only one piece of her work in the exhibition it made a great effect on me, it was more the style of her work that interested me more than the meaning behind it. The way she uses ink and pens and the built up effect made from the simple lines made by them and the selective use of colour.