Slow Art

I have spent these last few weeks engaged with needle and thread creating designs on textiles that carry colours and marks from my eco-dyeing explorations. The appeal of slow art for me is rooted in the way it disrupts our culture of hurried, busy, full lives and invites a contemplative, restful approach to creative practice. While the term ‘slow-stitching’ is relatively new - from what I’ve found on the internet it’s just ten years old - the action it describes is centuries old employed in the mending of clothes, the darning of socks, the patching of holes in garments where the balance of the garment has many years of life left.

I found my way to this practice after signing up as an adult student in the fine arts program of North Island College in the Comox Valley. I was exposed to many ways of making art, in the process of which I found myself wanting a practice that directly connected to the natural environment, in a way that would deepen my relationship with the place where I lived. This led me to eco printing and dyeing a practice that still forms the base of my work.

The first collection ‘Threads of an Estuary’ was created in response to my research into the harvesting practices on the K’ómoks estuary, and the many opportunities I was gifted by the local Indigenous community, to learn about the culture and ceremonial practices of the K’ómoks nation. My desire to directly employ nature was satisfied by the use of ocean water in my dyeing and grasses, reeds, tree needles and small rocks as embellishment on the work.

The stitching came next, a rediscovery of a childhood hobby of embroidery the difference being that with slow stitching I don’t have to stay on the lines!! The joy of freely following my sense of what the fabric wants, which colours are calling to be part of the palette, which forms and designs are needed, had me completely hooked on this as an art practice. I love that my hands are the tactile sensors directly engaged with the materials in sending me the information I need for the work.

The next flurry of dyeing and stitching was during my time in Victoria where the fabrics were dyed with local garden plants, and the stitching influenced by the tendency to perfection and control in urban living, resulting in pieces perhaps more evocative of Victorian linens.

My current work has been with dyes from forest growth and found metals in my current environment on Salt Spring island. In this series ‘Contemplative Threads’ the stitching style has again shifted to more closely represent the shapes formed by the ways trees, ferns, grasses, fungi grow in their environments.

I find it deeply satisfying to be reclaiming an age-old practice in an application that allows me to directly challenge the goal oriented productivity focused culture of our times. In January I signed up for a three month program with Jill Margo through which I have enjoyed enormous transitions in attitudes and beliefs about my work, along with transformative habit changes that have helped me with this current textile project. The first insight was when I saw clearly how my reluctance to set ‘goals’ for my creative practice was directly linked to my experiences in the organizations of my career years. Success and failure depended on goals set to high achievement levels, and my memories of those years are of a young woman trying so hard to meet expectations. I saw this program as an opportunity to overprint those memories with a new experience of myself working within a framework I establish and adjust. I am free to respond to my changing energy levels and needs, the shifts of seasonal influences, all with the support of a group of creatives.

The current project is to create a series of pieces for display in my local library here on Salt Spring Island. When I began I thought all the work must be newly made for this display, my typical high bar setting practice. It soon came clear that bar was too high. Jill encouraged me to pivot with no shame or regret and with that support I decided to include ‘Threads of an Estuary’ the series of textile works I had completed at North Island College, as a way to show the development arc of my textile practice. Very quickly I saw this as a better solution than the original plan - no failure here. The pace of my work varies from day to day and week to week, here again instead of feeling some weeks are good and some bad - I’m learning to respect my own rhythms and if necessary bring the bar down on small goals as well as big ones. All this is so liberating, another aspect Jill emphasizes, liberatory practices. I’m particularly fond of her clarity on this:

“…liberation is part of the ethos… particularly in terms of ‘liberatory practices’. A liberatory practice is anything that resists oppression…..Choosing less hustle and more flow is a liberatory practice, so is rest.”

I am getting very good at noticing when old patriarchy driven habits are pushing into my day. It’s been interesting to watch myself as my stitching focus moved me into the old habit of doing only that and nothing else - losing the balance that is so necessary in my life and my practice. Part of my new learning is to pay attention to the ways my daily home based habits contribute to supporting my creative work. I live in a tiny home on wheels where I have a very well organized 280sq ft of space containing all I need. One of the key elements of successful small space living is keeping organized. New habits have formed with a commitment to consistency in such things as washing and putting away the dishes at the end of the day, filling the tea kettle for the morning, and putting my laptop and other electronics away with their cords. I have one table for everything, so it is critical to clear off my stitching work from there and other horizontal surfaces that may have become cluttered during the day. The old habit which might have seen me stitching into the wee hours and leaving all the rest for the next day, doesn’t serve my creative practice. Instead these new habits are all critical to my being able to start my day with a clear mind ready to look ahead to how I want to spend the next twelve or so hours.

I have gained enormous pleasure in how Jill’s program has supported me to curate my creative work into manageable weekly portions, regularly review my progress and adjust if needed, track my time and keep note of the many small details that contribute to my practice. I am a process person and I love how I have been learning ways to fit my life around my creative practice rather than the other way round. I had no idea when I started in January that this would be the outcome. I also had no idea just how much time my slow stitching takes on each piece I create. The library exhibit is the first time I’ve shown this work publicly. I’m excited about it, and so grateful to have learned so much about me, my ways of creating. I am deeply nourished by the joy and satisfaction I derive from the simple act of putting a needle loaded with lovely colours of pure cotton or silk through fabric, and leaning into the rhythm of repetitive stitching.

I’m getting close to completion with this collection, the last step will be to set each piece up to hang. I do not frame my work. I’m planning to attach a narrow fabric binding to the top of each piece that allows for the insertion of a 5/16” dowel to which a cord will be attached to hang the piece.

For those of you nearby, installation day is April 30 and the work will hang for the month of May. My next edition of this newsletter will offer an opportunity to see some of the finished work, meanwhile I’m including a few images of works in progress as they are now.

I didn’t intend this edition of Medwyn’s Meanderings to sound like a promotion for Jill Margo and I’m glad the words came out as they did, working with her has been transformative for me you can find her website here she’s also on substack. And if you love flowers as I do you will be delighted by her herbarium collection.

Medwyn McConachy (she/they)
I am grateful to be living as an uninvited settler on the traditional and unceded lands of the Hul'q'umi'num and SENĆOŦEN speaking people known as Salt Spring Island.