We are a family of tea drinkers! We do drink other beverages, but tea....is what we most like to imbibe!
When my husband & I were first married we had approximately 20 different kinds of leaf tea gracing the top of our fridge! We now have 3 & a cannister of tea bags for friends & family who cannot tolerate the brewing of decent tea!!!!!!!!! (I confees to tea snobbery & bias!)
When the idea for a tea-dyed body of work started brewing, I grabbed all the out-of-date & seldom drunk teas & started saving used tea bags! My dye stock was supplemented with cheap tea bags, which proved to be rather rich in colour!!!
I started making samples & experimenting.
At the same time I took particular interest in how the stains at the bottom of my tea cup looked! To me they were beautiful!I wanted to produce a piece of work that highlighted the simple beauty of these stained circles. Out came the camera again!
The circle is a powerful symbol, it represents the unity between heaven & earth, harmony, time, the cycle of the planets....the cycle of the moon. When I think of cycles, I naturally think of a woman's menstruation cycle & the way our day to day life is affected by which part of that cycle we are in! In our western culture, tea drinking has become a ritual of calming down, of taking the sting out of a situation, it is an antedote to stress. It has become a ritual with in the cycle of each day.
Once again, I started recording...this time teastains.
From photos, I drew a tonal sketch of what I'd captured on film. Identifying the lines between one shade & another.
These became maps!
I worked up a sample in tea-dyed cotton, but felt that it was too dull & lacked OOMPH!
Silk dyed more vibrantly, so I kept the cotton back. At this stage I was planning to make a large wall hanging of 28 pieces, seperated by tea dyed panels. I tried this out on my pinboard with the pieces I had produced, and wasnt happy! The panels detracted from & competed with the circles.
I then asked the question...what if I had them completely seperate pieces? Perhaps they could each be framed in white & hung in rows of 7.
Framing is a bit of an interesting subject with textile artists! Aside from the cost, there is always the risk that a potential purchaser may not like your choice in frame! There is also the question of glass...or no glass! Glass in frames protects the piece, but it also seperates the viewer from the intimacy of the work. There are a few cheap framing options available on the market now, and for some that cheap price reflects their quality. Galleries are starting to take note & refuse to hang work framed in cheap frames. In the end, I settled on an old favourite....I would attach them to white table cloth damask & then staple them to small canvas frames! They would look uniform, simple, tranquil & beautiful. AND...any potential purchasers could then take them to a framer if they so wished!!
Destination all sorted out....I continued making pieces & intuitively embellishing them with embroidery & beads.
At last all my cycles were complete. It was time to place them in their 'Cycle Of Tranquilitea' order & write something to accompany them in the exhibition.
Tides, cycles...
the changing from man to beast
all linked
to the tranquil moon.
However emotional
physical
hormonal
the rollercoaster be
There is always
thankfully
a cup of tea!
*Please respect that the images & words above are my own & not to be copied without permission. Thank you.
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