Anna Torma - embroidery

Material Memory with Jane Adeney - 1999

Anna Torma is a fibre artist whose work has stayed with me for years. I feel a deep connection to it and often re-visit it.

The work I am so enamoured with is of course, her quilts. In this instance it's their embroidery/illustration and content that fascinates me rather than any technicalities of the craft. Their thinness, with warped sides remind me of early quilts that were perhaps made for hospital patients from newspaper or old shirt fabrics.

The works are huge in scale, intricate, complex, intimate, meaningful, playful, contradictory. Some of the images evoke for me the dynamism and movement of Cy Twombly. Each one is a place to visit, spend time, be lost, find things, learn and always be inspired. So many things happening in each piece, so many strands, stories and interpretations.. with a level of skill, care and detail that belies their playful appearance.

Playground III - 2002

A number of years ago I wanted to find out more about Anna Torma, so I contacted her and asked where I might find information. Her response was to very kindly post me an exhibition catalogue in return for copies of Selvedge. I was thrilled and impressed by her earthy nature and open manner. It felt like a favourite pop star had written to me - so exciting.

detail of Herbary - 2001

This warmth is blatant in her work. Her maternal experience is there for all to see but she is a weighty artist, an important influence on many fibre artists. Her originality, questioning of materials, technical expertise, wisdom and cultural heritage are cleverly and delicately woven into the complicated patterns and subtexts.

Playground I - 2002

Torma repeatedly uses the drawings and stories of her children. As I am primarily concerned with the use of textiles to communicate and perpetuate memory, I find this element of her work particularly powerful and moving. A simple rainy day stuck indoors, but the details of that are not just on film or in photos, instead expressed by the children and Anna through their markings and her stitch. The work involved feels like a natural representation of the patience and repetition of motherhood and the unconditional love therein.

Are the images we see portrayed here of stories she has shared with her children again and again, reminding them all of the nights she comforted them and rocked them to sleep? Do I see monstery teeth - so significant in early childhood - so painful yet such a bonding shared experience. The monsters and the landscapes.. I see an image of numerous breasts - is that of significance to Torma? Before I knew about Torma's work I used this image myself in a diary drawing many years ago when I was making a joking nod to feeling able to nurture the world (or something like that). Perhaps the many-breasted woman is one with love enough for all..? Was this Torma that was full of love or something significant to her children? The whole piece is a big, beautiful private code within which we can all find significant parts, beautiful hints and project our own hypotheses. All of it about emotion, about feeling and reacting, making us think and feel, to me it is what makes work powerful.

Rainy Day II, Tales - 2001

Torma completed her studies in Hungary in 1979, having witnessed the textile revolution of the 1970's. Textiles was at that time moving away from it's incarnation as folk art, or genteel past time. It slipped under the harsh spotlight of the authorities that shone intently over the shoulder of fine arts. Pieces were then being woven or stitched into abtract forms, installations, conceptual work in ways that had not previously been considered.

detail from Rainy Day II

Torma retained a feminine sensitivity about her work and was concerned with the motifs from her craft's heritage, with the stitches used and their significance and retaining the folk art references that other fibre artists were then rejecting.

detail from Playground I - 2002

Her work today seems to me to be entirely universal in it's communication of shared experiences, instincts and references. I'd really love to see it in person - to experience the scale, the texture, the little details, the motion of the stitch and the emotion of the piece. If any of you have experienced her work in person then please tell me - I'd love to hear about it.

Just My Imagination - 2006

anna torma

AIDS quilts

These amazing AIDS quilts were on display at a gay festival in Barcelona last Spring. I find them heart-breakingly sad, but nevertheless stunning. They're frequently quite vibrant and riotous and their creativity is often used as a celebration of people's lives.
I hear they're becoming less popular because they're perceived to be mournful and sad. Of course it's true, they're a reminder of something awful and are a part of the process of grief for many of the makers. Yet I can't help but find the colour, variety, and amazing imagery to be positive (naively, perhaps?). The memories, planning, time and love that's gone into making them is surely a beautiful and wonderful thing.
To me they're a valuable and important part of textile history and I'd like to try and create a small visual library of them to pop on here every now and again, so if anyone wants to send me any - please do.

remembrance of quilts past

This is a piece I made about 3-4 years ago. And for some reason... I miss it!

The work I make is normally commissioned privately, but this one went into a boutique... so I'll never know what happened to her. My clients are generally fashion designers, fashion stylists, art collectors and textile collectors. The pieces are commissioned to become heirlooms, for beautiful boudoirs, to be shown off 'gallery' floors of big houses or for numerous chaises in huge ballroom type spaces.
But this one... I really can't imagine where she ended up. I look at the photos and they're my little pieces of the madeleine cake. Memories of stitching her every little piece, pulling the threads through each different texture, collecting subtly hued beads, my tough old throbbing fingers blistered at the end. I actually used plyers to get through the very tough end layers.
I rather cornily think of her as a beautiful old lady (maybe French?) with pearls round her neck, enjoying the afternoon sun in the rocking chair. White hair pulled up into toppling layers of meringue-like bun, blue eyes watery with excitement, love, memories... gazing through a window onto a beautiful garden where she sees her family history playing in front of her like an old film.
I think this lady wears her doilies well and whilst they're fading from fashion now, they're appropriate for her, like lacy high-necked blouses, matching china and a smattering of carnations and lilies on her side tables. Maybe to counteract all this corny loveliness, she has wild, bohemian memories of illicit affairs... and incredible adventures that make her blue eyes twinkle and shine still. After all, she was so beautiful when she was young.
The great big woolly pom-poms that I lovingly soaked and baked, are bigger than my hands. She has a lacy, cobwebby feel, cut glass crystals like frosty grass, thousands of tiny beads that I sat and hand stitched thousands of times.

dib dib dib ... dob dob dob

This blanket isn’t about a person or a specific story, it’s about a certain kind of ‘attitude’ I like.

It's about loving the way people customise things and commemorate their experiences. Guide, Scout and Brownie blankets (for me) totally embody that. What a clever thing to get kids to do, to cut a hole out of a blanket and wear it round the campfire at night, fashioning a marvellous poncho… Then to go and make it their own wearable museum, prompting their memories of ‘camp’ and adventures. Fantastic.

Unfortunately, I was thrown out of brownies after a very short stint. Being a bit of a wriggler and rubbish at the 'obedience' bit of the prayer, I leap-frogged over the collection box and that was that. Thrown out with no if’s or but’s. Ha! I hope old vinegar-tits Brown Owl had her tolerance badge taken away that day.

This piece is my pretend brownie blanket. It’s the size of a double bed, so sadly, I can’t wear it as a poncho. I feel it’s going to get a lot more work on it, another one that’s growing. As a collector/hoarder/messy person, I love, love, LOVE the fact that all the badges I had actually did come in handy.

more, more, more

It’s covered in amazing badges from many different places and many different era’s. I’m gradually blanket stitching my way round them. Pennants, I also happen to love and will be cramming them in willy-nilly. I aim to put more, more, l-l-l-l-lovely more of those and everything else on. Chaos, I know, but who cares, I somehow think it wants to go that way.

As I use my throbbing, hard-as-nails, leathery old work-worn fingers to stitch my way round, it’s like meditation. Whatever’s on the radio or what might happen whilst I’m stitching, comes back to mind when we’re under it, or my cat’s purring his way across it, leaving ominous ginger hairs in his wake. Very Proustian. The more I put into it, the more I get out. Memories, details to look at, plays I listened to on the radio... it all comes wafting like a jostick, back through my cluttered mind – which is magic, isn’t it?

The prayer, I also love. This is actually a print with some embroidering over it. I’ve got the precious (to me) original in my textile collection and admire it enormously. If the blogging format works for me, then I’ll no doubt be making a future entry about the goodies in my humble personal textile collection.

big fat luscious woolly pom-poms

Big fat woolly corner pom-poms are yet another something that make me a bit trembly with excitement. They’re enormous and I love them. They feel like heaven. When I work with people with special needs, the pom-poms are coveted and stroked like pets. On some of my quilts, I added another step and felted them. Because of their size, they need to be baked on radiators for a week. As they dry out they get daily turning, fluffing, coiffing and trimming, which is another little labour of love. But I love all that stuff. These particular pom-poms aren’t felted, they’re all nice and compact and ‘as nature intended’. They still took a day or so (each) to make though… and a little bit extra to generally fuss over them.

It’s probably evident that my quilts take a long time to make. I don’t know why I do what I do, I just can’t seem to stop myself. One day I kind of hope someone will come across these few bits I’ve kept back, in a dusty old attic or something, and give them another lease of life.

happy camping

This is the brownie blanket - entry to follow any day now. In the meantime, you can click on the photo to see it in more detail.

mother-daughter

red betty is the story of a lady who started out as one person and ended up quite a different one.

In the film Amelie, there is a woman who mourned her ex-husband, a man who’d lied to her and left her. She lived in a kitsch little world of memories where reality and remembrance had merged a little. Blurred with time, after the tears came a little polish and shine, some embellishment, some doilies added, some sprinkles scattered. This lady, well, imagine if she was also mixed in a bit with…
Nurse Gladys Emanuelle - from ‘Open All Hours’. A strange combination? Well Nurse Gladys Emanuelle lived a small life and was the daughter that lived with and cared for her mother. She would have been surrounded by her mother's life and personality, her possessions, photos, tea cups, buttons.... every little funny bit and bob.

Throughout her daughter’s life she collected memento's and added them to a quilt. The special cherry red quilt represented a life of love, effort and memories. All manner of textile ephemera went on – doilies covered tears that had spilled, a sentimental silk poem ‘my daughter’, talked of her love, a silly one about kissing a frog – referenced a teenage talk about boys, bits from travels, brownie and guide badges, buttons, lace, ribbons, velvet trim…. anything she deemed precious, interesting or beautiful enough went on.

And then one day, this lady turned out to be me. I had a daughter, very miraculously and very wonderfully. I’ll work on this quilt as I work on being a mother, until the day my daughter wants to take it from me or hide it away where none of her friends can see it. I have no idea where it's going, if it'll get wrecked, become more beautiful or become crazily over-worked.

what i do...

I believe fabrics play a big part in our life story and the clients who have sought me out apparently have that instinct too, looking for something they feel will become more beautiful with age.

My business is all about working with treasured vintage pieces.
Perhaps bits of wedding dress will be worked into a bolster cushion for a couple's bed, a mother's collection of doilies is used, or a piece of childhood curtains. Some people cherish hand stitching, connecting it to the mystery of an item's story.

I encourage my clients to use the pieces well and continue to add to them as they are worn and aged, to carry the story into the future.

With this in mind, I’m going to spend the next few posts thinking and talking about the ‘red betty’ quilt that I’ve shown here in a couple of photo’s. It is deeply personal to me as it is for my daughter. I might also go on to think/write about the mother-daughter relationship, as it was my mum who I watched sewing and recycling as I was growing up.

I sometimes remember funny little details of fabrics I was surrounded by as a child. Bathroom curtains, an odd vinyl seat cover or shelf cover, amazing home-sewn dresses, a fabulously illustrated character on a window blind in our caravan... I'm sure we all do.

These are such beautiful little fragments as they're sometimes so hard to pin down, yet all these little bits add up to form a story of each of our lives. The quilts I make are, I hope, a bit like this. They're little journeys or stories. For the clients who commission them they might be deeply sentimental and meaningful, with the intention of being passed onto future generations.

Well, red betty started out as an imagined story... and turned into my own. It's so precious and still has a whole lifetime to go so who knows what it will end up looking like, where it will end up, and what it will see and hear.

red betty

Oh boy. Well the thing is I'm trying to upload more images to do a big old waffle about the red betty memory quilt. But I'm just not getting to grips with the technology very well and can't get the images on here. So this image looks a bit out of focus - perhaps it's too big or something? If you click on it, it seems better. Will come back to this posting in a day or so as am losing my patience...