Topics & found things: I choose a topic something I’m interested in. At the moment its slow stitch and found things that I’ve collected. I can have things knocking about for ages, sometimes years. I’ve got loads of those things and then I move onto the next thing and the other thing becomes kind of redundant, until I feel the burning need to go back to it and I’ll be like I really, really have to have a look at those things again.

I have collections of shells and sticks currently, found on the beach in Dungeness. My studio would have millions of specimens in, if I had the space. I would write the contents on personalised tea stained labels and place them in jars or boxes and bags. I wouldn’t go as far as to store brains, but it woud have that kind of vibe. Like a library type room that once you were in you would never want to leave for looking at all the lovely stuff.

On the second day in my artist practice I wanted to make something from the sticks and I had found on the beach at Dungeness. So enticing and sun bleached after days in the sun. I wanted to try and endevour in this piece to conjure up the day I spent with my dear friend last month. The walking, the visit to Derek Jarmans garden. The black of Prospect cottage and the hot pink of my hoodie against it, larking about making yoga shapes. The bleakness and the wind and the sun hitting our faces. And the conversation. Not forgetting the stopping off and talking to the woman who was weaving brightly coloured scarves in a railway carriage.

I took a tiny square scrap of a scarf that I had a home, the other bits- bigger pieces I had made into headbands at the beginning of the year. I began by doing a square shape slow stitch, looking a bit like a one way maze, in concentric square shapes from the middle to the edge. Im interested in the middle of shapes as in Shri yantras If you concentrate on the middle of a yantra or mandala it has the potential to aid meditation. I managed to make one last year- a feat in itself- measuring it out and correcting it.

I began by doing a square shape slow stitch, looking a bit like a one way maze……….

I the found the sticks that made a more or less a square shape and bound them together with embroidery thread. I added a tiny pink scrap to the square with black thread and stitched some other threads on the side, little touches for all the thoughts, memories I wanted to include. The hardest bit was attaching the square to the sticks & keeping it in the middle. I managed it in the end. The piece flutters in the wind and could get blown away if not hung securely, having the essence of the wind and the feeling of getting almost blown away on the beach during that day. i feel a little uncomfortable about it being so light and want towieght it down with something a bit. I might go back to it at some stage.

It got me thinking about a series of this work using found things looking at pranayama and the subtle breath. Maybe with feathers and other natural paraphenalia. Giving justification to collect more things from outside. Sometimes I feel I have to hide the things I collect. They’re like a secrets.

Notes from The Artist Practice Day 2: found things & slow stitch

CASSANDRA WHITFIELD