Bridget Harris

MA Work Journal    This week has been pretty slow in my studio, life gets in the way and important things need to be addressed. I try not to get frustrated and look at it as a time for reflection. I often take my old work out and see if it could fit or possibly elements of it could fit into me current work. Cyanotype is something I want to develop as I really liked the process during my BA and MA courses. Stitch investigation is something I touched upon when doing my MA, it was important for me to look at stitch as a narrative, expression and feeling. I feel much more investigating and work could be done on this as I only toughed on the usual type of stitch, so many more to investigate and develop. I would like to do this but need to have a different approach and methodology .     

                                                                                          Final Work  Stain of 71 Women. An archive is an accumulation of historical records , the archive that interested me contained no fabric or object's, only paper documentation spanning from one side of the world to another. I wondered if by investigating and researching specific embroidery stitches could they be used metaphorically. Could embroidery then be used to creative a story by piecing together fragments of data and would the stitch be enough to convey the meaning of the archives ? Or could the embroidery be used for much more complex expression's that hide within archives, one of time, complexity, identity, the stitching of rejected remnants of society?...

Worked in Flowers. All types of flowers were used as an interest for Eighteenth century young ladies, obviously for those of wealth and privilege. Embroidery gave them the opportunity to express an interest in botany working the flowers in silks in running stitch, in  The Subversive Stitch by Rozsika Parker  , Parker talks about the attitudes that shaped eighteenth century embroidery by looking at Mary Delany's work , Mary's sister described a piece of embroidery in a letter stating "the bottom of the petticoat was worked with twined nasturtiums,ivy,honey suckles,periwinkles,convolvuluses and all sorts of twining flowers". Above I have used my print image of a sleeve and started to embroider using very contemporary flower shapes, I shall continue inter-twining and working into the fabric to see what happens to the humble concept of the sleeve. 

F ragments. A morning in my studio is rare during the school holidays. I felt like a child in a sweet shop, not really knowing what to do or where to start. I took some of the work I had been doing at the Ropewalk  https://www.the-ropewalk.co.uk/  and used this as a starting block.This is a very different concept to working for me as I normally do at least two sketchbooks full of art work etc before I even start to think about anything else. However as I am continuing with the Foundlings I could say alot of the ground work has already been done, this is more about developing my practice and incorporating new ideas.

My Studio. Over the past months my husband with the help of a builder changed one of the out houses into a studio, this is the most amazing space, it is quiet, somewhere where I can reflect, leave work in progress out and hopefully do some work. I feel before long the dog and her basket will be living under my desk to keep me company. Its been a huge journey for all of us but I think the commitment from my husband to help me move forward deserves a medal. He knows how important this is to me and also knows it will heal me.

Whitework . Drawn Thread.