A while ago, running a finger over my mother’s letter, I experienced text as a texture for the first time. The feel of the dents her pen had made on paper completely absorbed me. This encounter set off a series of experiments exploring textures evocative of handwritten text that have continued to shape my work.
Exploring the third dimension in textiles forms the core of my work. I develop textural, tactile and sculptural qualities in textiles using an array of traditional and modern techniques including embroidery, laser cutting, needle punching and silk screen printing.
I learnt yesterday that one of my works titled 'Poem', exhibited currently at Riverside Mill gallery, Bovey Tracey, has inspired a poet- Graham Burchell, to respond to it. Recently, he entered his poem into the Torriano Poetry Competition and has won third place. He will be reading the poem in
I was just thinking, isn’t it interesting is that my work which has been inspired by words has in turn inspired words.
Here is the poem.
POEM
She calls it Poem, yet writes of family letters,
of a running finger over the paper valleys made
by a mother’s pen. There she picks up the essence of her
as texture, as some spirit Braille perhaps.
I see silk the colour of meat, an open wound
with darker ghosting shadow, and ghost words in thread;
dead straight lines of script with shadow lines to draw one’s
eyes like 3D illusions that may swell from a flat page,
just as I hope for a message to rise from the loops
and springy flow of stitching. Is that a sorry, a soon,
sons, loose, flattened in tantalising proximity?
In places there are words over words; a mother’s scorn.
How many times must I tell you? Others are blurs
as if softened by tears, and some so small, so tight
as to be close-knuckled secrets, full stops or clicks
of voice; meeting points of silk-sound, text and texture.
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