Simone Pheulpin's work consists of sculptures made from pieces of folded fabric. Using primary-colored canvas and countless large-headed pins, she folds and fixes the natural landscapes resembling mountains, rivers, lakes, and seas, as well as miniature landscapes of shell fossils.
It is uncertain whether she uses thread to secure the fabric, but what is known is that she employs countless pins hidden within the fabric, allowing the folds to appear natural without the constraint of thread, resulting in clean and pristine images. It is noteworthy that she supports the fabric manufacturers from one of the last Vosges manufactures, and utilizes pins from the last French sewing pin factory.
According to Deleuze (1993, p3): "a labyrinth is said, etymologically, to be multiple because it contains many folds. The multiple is not only what has many parts but also what is folded in many ways."
Fold upon fold, cave within cave, Simone Pheulpin's work resembles a maze made of pieces of fabric. Perhaps she is a person with obsessive cleanliness tendencies or enjoys organizing, but the overall image appears overly clean with vast expanses of white. It requires a contrast of black to balance it out, whether in the form of a black background or shadows. Certainly, fabrics change over time; oxidation may cause them to yellow, mold and insects may appear, and dust and fingerprints are all elements of black. Her work may indeed need the slow effects of time, air, human interaction, and biological processes.
Korean textile artist Lee So-ra
Showalter asserts that ‘the quilt has become the prime visual metaphor for women’s lives, for women’s culture’. Jogakbo is a traditional style of Korean patchwork, originally a random creation act using leftovers. This could be perceived as a display of skillfulness, as in the old times when women's stitching abilities held significant value. The greater the skill, the more esteemed the woman.
According to artist Lee So-ra's monologue, the resulting work could be seen as a mental pilgrimage or a form of psychotherapy. It could be imagined that the artist takes up this technique, wandering back and forth between the seams of fabrics, repeatedly organizing her thoughts. And "the seams here are taken as suture, as trace, and as passage, each act and action tracing needle and thread to and from between the fragments of cloth".
In this process, continuous crossing, connection, exchange, and boundary delineation are key ideas in terms of constructing the relationship between the interior and the surrounding environment.
Emily Jo Gibbs - Moss garden with orange stitching (left)
Hand stitched silk organza on linen
Emily Jo Gibbs - Unknown (right)
A very fresh and organized set of works indeed. On the left, one can perceive tangible depictions of trees and flowers, rendered in a somewhat poetic manner. On the right, there's an abstract expression portraying the untrimmed fabric edges, along with the untamed and lively tails of the stitches, resembling a daily diary practice.
Mitchell frames the activity of stitching as a way of knowing ‘that emphasizes textile as an activity of becoming rather than textile as technique or as a realm of objects’, something she calls ‘to textile’.
Some liken the practice of female needlework to women's writing exercises, where the continuous stitching and patching techniques create first a sentence, then a paragraph, and finally a novel. Women carve out a space for themselves within this practice, gradually building their own space.
