We encourage you to watch the pre-session viewing before watching the recording of the live Study Day session.
Attendees shared comments and questions about this session on a padlet (a website that anyone can add to). The padlet has now been archived, and can be accessed via the main Study Day page.
Pre-session viewing
Stitching Together / FilmGeographies film screenings:
A Stitch in Time – Jo McIntosh (2018, 10 minutes)
10-minute video of a St Ives tapestry/embroidery group which created 42 textile panels showing the buildings and businesses in St Ives harbour from the lifeboat house to the end of Smeaton’s Pier. They are shown along with footage of the actual buildings of the time (2018).
La trato como reina. Trabajo de campo 2020 [I treat her like a queen. Fieldwork 2020] – Daniela Lara Espinoza (2020, 10 minutes)
This short film presents a summary of my practice-based PhD research, for which I made a series of bead-embroideries and explored forms of active communication with non-specialist audiences about the need to tackle the high levels of violence against women in Chile and Latin America. Although my participants were not involved in the physical making of my embroidered artworks, they actively collaborated in the creative process by watching a video presentation of my work and its aims and consequently suggesting sentences or words to be embroidered into one of my unfinished pieces.
Landscape with Two Women – Brenda Miller (2013, 5 minutes)
The film takes as its starting point a visit to view the painting Welsh Landscape with two women knitting (1852) by William Dyce on display in the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff. The painting is described as: a romanticised Victorian view of ‘wild Wales’ and its ‘unspoilt’ people. Knitting was an occupation for the home and the need for hand knitting was already beginning to die out by the 1860s. This starting point challenged me to create a contemporary response to William Dyce’s painting.
Pre-recorded presentations:
Heather Schulte: Stitching the Situation
Stitching the Situation is a community created textile work documenting US COVID-19 data through cross-stitch—one stitch per case and death, organized by date. Collective hand work centers lives that numbers leave abstract through stitched patterns of personal narratives and imagery. Spread across three panels, and more than 150 individual blocks, this project creates community in a time of isolation, whether through socially distanced in-person stitching sessions, or virtual meetings with participants across the country. Working together, we archive and memorialize our loss, holding space for grief and healing.
Preparation for the live session:
Study Day attendees were invited, just for fun, to stitch a textile representation of a building in their local area. We shared our creations in this final session of the day and via the padlet.
This activity is inspired by a wonderful St Ives-based project captured in the film, A Stitch in Time, which you can view above.
Here’s Jo McIntosh, who coordinated that project, to explain – or you can read a bit more in this blog post that launched the invitation.
Live session
Recording of the live session
- Heather Schulte, Dana Moses and Anne Spooner (Stitching the Situation) in conversation with Daniela Lara Espinoza (La trato como reina. Trabajo de campo 2020 [I treat her like a queen. Fieldwork 2020]), facilitated by Daniel Fountain
- Alicia Decker, Ellen Knutson, Susan Norris and Kaitlyn Krall: What Does It Mean to be an American? (see below)
- ‘Stitch a Building’ show and tell, led by Jo McIntosh
About the live presentation
Alicia Decker, Ellen Knutson, Susan Norris and Kaitlyn Krall: What Does It Mean to be an American?
“What Does It Mean to Be an American?” engages with communities across the United States during a very tumultuous time in American history. In recent years, the United States has been in a state of deep political and cultural division and we continue to struggle as a nation. We have invited written, spoken, and stitched responses through quilt square exchanges, exhibition, and zoom gatherings around this very question. This project provides an opportunity for meaningful expression and dialogue and aims to build community as we stitch together the various viewpoints on just what it is meant to be American.
Facilitators
Daniel Fountain is an artist, academic, and Senior Research Assistant at Manchester School of Art. They are currently finishing a practice-led PhD at Loughborough University that focuses on queer craft. Daniel has exhibited artwork internationally, most recently in Queer Contemporaries (AIR Gallery, Manchester) and Slippery and Subversive (Wellington B. Gray Gallery, North Carolina). They have published widely on themes of craft and practice-research and have chapters forthcoming in edited collections published by Routledge, SUNY Press, and University of Toronto Press.
Dr Emma Shercliff and Dr Amy Twigger Holroyd are the coordinators of the Stitching Together network.
Stitching Together 