Monica Vitti's existential crisis and my grandfather's long johns - it's hot and cold in "The Red Desert".

The Girl on the Beach clip from "The Red Desert"

film

Monica Vitti in a still from Michelangelo Antonioni's film The Red Desert (Il Deserto Rosso), 1964.
The blocks of color, lines, and fabrics in this photo inspired the pillow design.

materials

           Fabrics used include my grandfather's woolen long johns-- ca. 1960 or earlier-- with his last name, Hermes, handwritten on waistband; 1970's corduroy Levis;  red cotton batik remnants from the lapel of   the poppy robe I designed and made . Other scraps include digital print silk I made into a scarf, an orange cotton print sample brought from India years ago by the husband of a friend of mine, 1980's curtain fabric from my sister, and red plaid silk upholstery sample.





process

The random sizes and shapes of the scraps form the basis of the composition.

A few weeks ago I stitched together pieces of the Levis to make a pigment sheet with no idea how I would use it;  the irregular piecing and layers reminded me of Serge Poliakoff  's paintings, which I love:

in progress 

The first mock-up was a series of mostly vertical lines, much like the film photo.

The texture and color of Monica Vitti's sweater made me think to add in my grandfather's woolen long johns-- the triangular shape of the waistband shifted the composition, broke up the grid.
The manufacturer's label and my grandmother's handwriting inside were a surprise that begged to be exposed.

Hans Hofmann

I was thinking of Hans Hoffman 's early to mid-1960's color block paintings, which he was doing at the same time Antonioni was making this film.  In the photo below, you can see how art of the period was influencing film set design, in the use of blocks of color, and even the attention to the paint-- the unevenness of the layers, and the texture of it peeling away from the surfaces.

Here's Tillycat doing her best Monica Vitti impersonation.



details

New, old, ancient

 New pillow made from vintage fabrics (1920's- 2013) which include a 1930's blue cotton flour sack,  1950-60's gray floral-print cotton (my grandmother's curtains),   green woven 1960's cotton (our den curtains growing up),  1980's plaid wool (my sister's pants), and newly bought yellow burlap and digital print silk from my scarf .

Color

 
                                                I think the oldest fabric in the group is this red woven wool which was in a box with some other upholstery scraps and a receipt dated September 1926. The color and weave brought to mind ancient South American textiles....

                                                                                                 ......like the one I sketched when I visited the "Wari: Lords of the Andes" exhibition at the Kimbell Art Museum in Aug 2013.

Referencing the photo in the exhibition catalog, I pulled together the other fabrics to complete the color palette.

Composition

the main idea was to showcase the pattern and weave of the red wool. 

thinking of a color-blocked composition like  Hans Hofmann 's painting "Elysium" 

Texture

The blue wool plaid reminded me of  Japanese boro textiles  , like this jacket

and since I wanted to use up some scraps that were already in strips, I sewed them, along with other darker cotton scraps onto an old bed sheet.   

 Then I cut that textile into strips...

and sewed those strips in layers to make a textile.  The white sheet pops through in places and accentuates lines and texture.

the scrap of digital print silk was added just before I sewed the pillow together.

Pattern

Here, the right and wrong side of the curtain fabric are sewn together to make a new pattern. The matrix of raised, stitched lines is the result of sewing with a double needle.  The curtain fabric is old and tears easily in places; sewing it onto a lining not only reinforces it, but creates another texture, a map-like effect, which I really like.




Label

The handwritten label sewn onto the pillow back is made of the cotton lining of our 1960's den curtains.

Rotations

Leftovers

This is a textile I'm working on made of the edge strips  trimmed from the fronts of these two pillows and the tragopan bird pillow

The strips are sewn onto cotton muslin from this old curtain.
I'm using leftovers of textiles made of leftovers and even using up the old thread left in my mother's and grandmother's sewing stash.

There's an abundance of old fabric around here, and my sister, a Tasmanian devil of cleaning and organization,  has been excavating things from family storage which, fortunately (and sometimes overwhelmingly) for me,  includes an ever-increasing amount of vintage fabrics.

There are vintage velvets, 1920's-40's -- some silk?-- stashed in some pretty cool boxes.

A Japanese-inspired cotton print of peonies-- 1950's?, which, if  I'm ever in the mood for sewing clothes again, I'd like make to into a garment.

the "Mrs. Blume" collection of 1960's-70's fabric samples courtesy of my grandmother's decorator friend, Mrs. Blume.

-lots of Japanese and African influence in the designs.

a scrap from an old apron with a print that could be a great idea for an applique design

yards of large-scale cotton prints my grandmother used for curtains:

tiny prints that, when you look closely, contain some big ideas...

scraps of upholstery from a 1950's aluminum chaise-- alas, long gone.

and a strange peasant-people print which kind of creeps me out.

Definitely time for a break so I step outside to see what's happening.
My favorite tree top is leafing out....

...and a squirrel is on the roof ridge

....which brings to mind a letter we found that my grandmother wrote to my sister when we were little in which she talks about making a dress for my sister from scraps, what kinds of birds are out and about, and squirrels playing on the roof. She also calls my sister a "good house cleaner"...one of those traits that manifested itself at an early age, I guess...

Even good house cleaners need a break ... nothing a little magical realism won't cure.

When we found this hand-pieced pillow sham made of upholstery samples-- which I haven't seen since I was probably ten or so--  it went a long way in explaining my love for color-block paintings-- like "Elysium", by Hans Hofmann

or these by Sean Scully

I was looking through a book on Sean Scully recently and found this beautiful photo of the stone end-wall of a shack

It brought me back to thinking about humans looking about them and constructing something with whatever is lying around.

...physically lying around-- like a pile of scrap fabric, or like the burlap fibers and gauze I used to make the "light jackets"  a few years ago--

... conceptually lying around, like this Serge Poliakoff image I've been looking at for a few weeks now--I wonder about the connection between the stone wall and Poliakoff's big shapes....

...or even subconsciously lying around, like a dream I had this past week in which Otto Sander's angel character in Wim Wenders' film "Wings of Desire" says to me-- "Stop worrying. I have something else in mind for you."

Wools?