not a lazy suzen

I remember a while back when I was still living in Calgary with my family, a copy of the alumni magazine from MUN came in the mail. The cover featured a retired professor receiving some sort of honour, everyone was wearing those big black gowns and had red sashes over their shoulders. With a little distaste, Mom said she had this guy as an English professor when she was in university in St. John’s. If I remember the story correctly, this guy gave her a terrible grade on a paper and, in referral to her outport accent, told her quite dismissively, “Not only can you not speak the Queen’s English, but you cannot write it either!”. What a douchebag.

When I was in junior high, we had to do a Newfoundland library centre (project). The class was divided up into groups of five or six, each at a table that had a specific assignment that needed to be completed and once done the groups had to switch tables like musical chairs. The assignments included history, geography, literature, social studies and language all relevant to our home province. The only part of this project that I remember was the table with the Newfoundland English Dictionary. We were given a list of words that we had find the definition of and then use in a sentence. Even then I remember feeling like the teachers were trying to get us townie kids to connect to our outport pasts through words that were so bizarre they didn’t even seem real.

A few years back, Twackwear created a series of t-shirts that featured Newfoundland words like “crooked” and “streel” with their definitions printed across the chest. Though, why anyone would want to wear a t-shirt that labels him/her as a “streel” (an untidy, greasy kind of person), I’ll never understand.

But all this is beside the point (sort of)! I guess what I’m trying to get at is how important language is in situating place.  It wasn’t until I left Newfoundland that I realized I spoke differently. My unconsciously tousled grammar and place-specific phrases didn’t make themselves known until I was around friends who looked at me in conversation with perplexed expressions. Though, with that said, I still don’t believe my Newfoundland accent to be strong at all. When I moved to Alberta, I constantly wished that my accent was stronger so I could physically embody my home more effectively. Even now I wish that people could know where I’m from by the way I speak rather than feeling like I have to state it all the time. My speech, a mixture of townie, bayman and now mostly mainland, is a hybrid that I’m constantly trying to dissect. I cling on to words and phrases that connect to place and allow me to identify/belong to somewhere. These words are specific to my upbringing, things  I remember my parents saying or things I say myself in daily conversation.

At the end of April, I started hooking a mat with one of these place-based a phrases on it (pictured above). I didn’t really think much about a concept, I just wanted something to keep my hands busy. Honestly, as I worked at it in the studio, I was actually a little embarrassed by it because it wasn’t serious art. It was just something crafty I was doing that I’d probably just give to someone for Christmas. It wasn’t art.

Isn’t that just terrible? It’s not until I’ve started writing this post that I’ve realized how much I unconsciously belittle myself and my work. I mean, why wasn’t I taking this seriously? Because it’s just a hooked mat? A traditional run-of-the-mill normal hooked mat that isn’t really subverting anything? Because it’s just another wall-based textile with words on it? Am I not the person that is constantly telling my students that it is okay for a textile to just be a textile? That there is no reason for it to masquerade as painting or be called “mixed media” to be taken seriously?

This is the very reason I should be taking this mat seriously, otherwise I’m giving in to the socially constructed voice of Prof. Douchebag that is constantly telling me that what I do isn’t worth shit. Queen’s English, my ass.

So, with that said, this mat is getting a title and is turning into a whole series. This is about my own place-based language and the preservation of it. It’s also about a craft practice that makes me feel connected to my cultural history. How can that not be important?

There is something so gratifying about finishing something after months of toiling away at a project that seemed to never ever end. It’s always good to take on something that can be done quickly so one can her restore self-confidence and be reassured that everything that is started can indeed be finished.

As I’ve mentioned before, this hooked mat is more a sample than anything else. It’s a test to see if the imagery I’m interested in will work in the hooked mat format. I think with a bit more tooling around in the initial drawing the mat can have a great deal of success. Here are the things I’m probably going to change the next time I tackle this project:

1. Complete a detailed drawing, roughly to scale. This will give me a better idea of how all the pieces should go together. Plus, it will give me a chance to play with colour in Photoshop instead of making all the decisions while I’m hooking which often results in pulling out hours worth of work because I’m frustrated with the outcome.
2. Exaggerate the scale. With this type of textile work it’s a little difficult to get the amount of detail I really want when it’s at a small scale. The entire mat will have to be larger in order to get more detailed.
3. Consider hanging solutions. I’ve loosely decided already that in the bigger mats to come I will probably mount them on brackets a few inches from the wall, not unlike curtain rod holsters. I’ll probably do some testing on the sample piece (pictured above) before settling completely on an idea.
4. Play with the front and back, reversing textures. The back of a hooked mat is so beautiful and it’s a bit of a shame to cover it up even if it’s all for the protection of the mat. I’ve been wanting to alternate between hooking the front and the back to play with texture but I’m still trying to figure out the best way to go about doing it. On my new gripper frame, flipping the mat over onto the gripper strips will probably be quite disastrous. It’s a good thing I haven’t disposed of my large embroidery hoops.

Anyway, I think as a sample this mat is pretty great. I’m pretty stoked to start working on some new designs but unfortunately I’m going to have to wait a little bit since some hardcore research is standing in my way. However, I’ll talk more about that tomorrow

So, rather than stressing myself out any further with things that clearly do not need stressing about, I’ve moved on to something completely different. I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately. Historical and scientific stuff about icebergs and tidal waves. It’s super fascinating stuff. Here are some iceberg facts that I can whip out at the top of my head:

• By the time an iceberg reaches the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, it has been travelling for over three years.
• Icebergs can founder unexpectedly making them pretty dangerous things to be around.
• Icebergs are made up of fresh water that is up to 15,000 years old which means that its the purest water around (and great for making vodka!)
• A growler, the smallest of the iceberg categories, is often the same size as a grand piano.
• Icebergs can travel 48km per day while a glacier travels about 7km per year.
• When an iceberg breaks from a glacier they call it “calving”.

I guess my interest in icebergs right now is linked to my general infatuation with loose foundations and home. Icebergs break off from large glaciers, spend years drifting into coves and harbours, sometimes getting grounded into place but most times they drift along with the current toward warmer water where they melt and shift and break apart. They visit but they never stay because it is geologically impossible for them to. It would be a little cheesy to say “I am like an iceberg” so I’m not going to make that my official statement. I will say that I am fascinated with the image of a house bolted onto an iceberg and wonder often what living on a berg would be like. It’d be a constant state of tension, I think, between the serenity of floating in the sea on your own private island and the anxiety of flipping over at any moment. My stomach is in knots just thinking about it.

This imagery is fairly new to me–a house on a berg. I have to do a bit more drawing to figure all the details out but the bare bones you see above is essentially what I’m envisioning. I have this inclination to translate this imagery into hooked mats, irregularly shaped and maybe even with other non-hooked elements. I am working on a test piece right now just to see if the imagery will work in this format. I have a pretty good feeling it will but want to be sure before I bite off way more than I can chew.

For this test piece I am working over an old piece of burlap left over from last semester when I was teaching myself how to hook. As a result, pretend the heart shape isn’t there. And also pretend that it is flipped to the left 90º and has a house latched onto it. Since this photo was taken a lot of things have been drawn and added to it. It’s like a big jumbly mess of Sharpie lines that will all make some kind of sense in the end.

Last week I ordered a new rug hooking frame. I’ve been dreaming of this frame for months now and I cannot wait to add it to my collection of studio equipment. No longer will I have to struggle with large wooden embroidery hoops that have the potential to destroy the rug as I am working on it. No longer will I have to keep screwing up my posture to balance the frame between my stomach and the edge of the table in order to work. Soon I will be free to make as irregular shape a rug as I want! Boo-ya!

In the meantime, however, I’m stuck with the hoop until I get that lovely box in the mail.