Stash busting
Stash, work in progress, Tresaith, West Wales, 9 August 2023
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Last year a kind friend gave me a very large stash of yarn which had belonged to her mother. What a fabulous gift! I’ve written about stashes and sustainability in my last blog, Busting someone else's stash, where I describe some of the thoughts and feelings behind a new series of sculptures, my Transitional objects, made with a substantial stash of my late mother’s, predominantly pink, bedding and towels (Baker, 2024a). Here, I will discuss how different it felt to use a stranger’s stash, but I also want to talk about colour and meaning and briefly explore something that delights me – the way cloth can shapeshift.
Sorting the stash
seam collectives’s touring exhibition, A Visible THREAD, is quite unusual, I think. Instead of touring the same selection of work to every venue, some of the artists have continued their research into ‘making thread visible’ and have developed new work as the tour has progressed. This means that each exhibition has been different, which makes it rather exciting! It’s definitely worth visiting in different venues, if you can!
Having a series of opening dates as deadlines has certainly motivated me to make new work. My second new piece for A Visible THREAD is knitted, not stitched. I’ve called it Stash and, of course, it’s made with yarn from this interesting stash of mixed fibres, textures and colours I've been given… all chosen and selected by a complete stranger. It's someone else’s mother’s stash. Exhibiting as part of a touring exhibition has been wonderful in many ways, including giving me the opportunity to install Stash in two very different ways so far. It’s a shapeshifter.
Someone else’s mother’s stash
I normally only knit with pure wool, and, in fact, have almost exclusively used one particular brand for the past 10 years or so. Sometimes I experiment, of course, knitting with more unusual materials, like plastic bags, wire, t-shirts, hair, plastic tubing or monofilament. I’ve even knitted fairy lights! However, I normally quickly return to the comfort of wool. Maybe there’s something in this again about textiles and attachment? I’m not sure, but it was certainly an enlightening experience to work with such a range of different yarns – polyester, cotton, novelty yarns, silk, mohair, some other wool – and, of course, it has involved many different colours, weights, fibres and, consequently, textures. The randomness and limitations of using a stranger’s stash to make a sculpture has interested me. It has definitely involved a significant change in control, as I have chosen to limit my decisions about all these variables to someone else’s taste and choices. There’s also, obviously, been a limit to the amount of each colour available.
Appreciating the variety and subtlety of surface, drape and tone
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I’m very pleased with the aesthetics and feel of the finished sculpture but my ambivalence about actually working with this range of fibres has been curious. The texture of the yarn I knit with has always been extremely important to me. It’s definitely confirmed that I’m a purist and made me realise that I love working with natural fibres best. I have really enjoyed the luxury yarns, like silk, angora and mohair, but I’m not so keen on the feel of polyester and novelty yarns. However, the variety and subtlety that such a wide range of fibres has brought to my work is fascinating, in terms of surface, drape and tone, and I have to say, I’ve really appreciated that. It is a relief when I can return to my own more familiar stash of wool again, but I’m determined to persevere with my mission to bust other people’s unwanted stashes!
Rather poignantly, within the stranger’s stash I found many large, unopened packs of yarn, complete with my benefactor’s chosen pattern. I was constantly aware that she had selected these particular colours and textures to make very specific items of clothing, some possibly for herself, some for her family, including her daughter, my friend. I couldn’t help wondering what she would have made of the rather troubling, deliberately sloppy, abstract, wearable sculpture I was knitting?
Why blue?
Colour affects me greatly and I see meaning in it (Gage, 1999). Last summer, I realised that I had been working almost exclusively with muted bodily colours since my Masters in 2021 and that I had been finding it quite challenging. Probably not surprisingly, I find these fleshy tones disquieting, especially when I’m knitting body parts! Consequently, last summer I was rather desperate to explore a different subject with a more uplifting palette, so I was delighted to unearth an exciting spectrum of blues from my friend’s mother’s stash. And oh the joy of starting to knit a new sculpture!
An exciting spectrum of blues!
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One of my favourite artists, Louise Bourgeois, says, ‘Colour is stronger than language, it’s a subliminal communication.’ She then discusses the colour blue, saying, ‘Blue represents peace, meditation and escape’ (in Celant 2010, p111). She goes on to say, ‘The colour blue…means you have left the drabness of day-to-day reality to be transported into – not a world of fantasy – … but a world of freedom where you can say what you like and what you don’t like. This has been expressed forever by the colour blue, which is really sky blue’ (Bourgeois and Rinder, 1995). I love the way Bourgeois articulates her ideas, and these words about the colour blue resonate strongly with me.
Stash, work-in-progress, performance still, Tresaith, West Wales, 9th August 2023
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So, last August, during my holiday by the sea in West Wales, I began to knit. I am a swimmer and love to be immersed in water. I swim outside in a pool or the local lake almost every day, but I especially love the wildness of the sea and an expansive horizon. Of course, British seas and skies are rarely the colours I had in my palette, but there’s something about the imagined colours of water and sky that I find very calming, and I always find that knitting on the beach or with a view of the sea is very cathartic. It’s one of my happy places. In fact, I now realise that I often choose to knit in a range of blues when I’m on holiday…
Knitting Stash on the beach in West Wales and Cornwall, August 2023
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Shapeshifting, living sculptures
Shapeshifting
/ˈʃeɪpˌʃɪftɪŋ/
Noun
- the ability to change shape, form, or identity, or the act of doing this.
- the ability to change into a different person or animal using magic.
(Collins Dictionary, no date)
Part of my process of making is to try on my work as I’m making it. As I was making Stash I did several impromptu performances with my knitting on various beaches, to the bemusement and possible delight of other holiday makers.
Stash, work-in-progress shapeshifting performance, Gwithian, Cornwall, 25th August 2023
Cloth is fluid and flexible and very responsive to movement; knitted cloth is especially stretchy and malleable. My wearable sculptures are designed to accentuate the multiple, changing shapes created by the wearer as they move. They become animated when they’re worn, the wearer becomes a living sculpture, a shapeshifter, changing shape and form with their movements, involving multiple transformations.
As I discussed in my last blog post, cloth and clothing can be seen as a second skin, but there are obviously also clear connections between garments and the whole body (Baker, 2024a). The artist Christian Boltanski suggests that ‘clothes are like a body’ (in Rosenbaum – Kranson, 2010). I think there is something about the activation of clothing by a moving body that gives it an even closer connection. The body is ‘an eminently osmotic shell: when we adopt certain garments…through direct physical contact we…assimilate them, we make them our flesh’ (Cavallaro and Warwick in Simonson 2008, p 217, their italics). This assimilation blurs the boundaries between body and clothing, ‘creating new areas for meaning’ (Dormor, 2008, p241). The intimate physicality of clothing, with the blurring of sight/touch/smell associated with it, adds a multi-sensory dimension which expands its significance; the clothing seems to ‘take on a bodily resonance rather than to offer up symbols as such’ (Nixon 2005 p174).
Lou wearing Stash, a shapeshifting, living sculpture, performance still,
Gwithian, Cornwall, 25th August 2023
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Themes of Self and Other are pivotal to my practice (Baker, 2024b). Identity is often communicated through the clothes we wear, but, at a deeper level, the multiple selves we reveal to the world can conceal our true sense of self. Clothing as body ‘provides…a very real…material boundary and…a more ambiguous metaphorical boundary between self and ‘not self’ (Bristow 2011, p45). I’ve been investigating links between clothing and self for many years, developing the idea of wearable sculptures and I often make sculptures specifically to be activated by others. As they wear them they become Living sculptures (Baker, 2018). These garment-like sculptures offer participants the opportunity to become performers, to explore a range of temporary identities in a safe and playful setting.
Most of the time these performative interactions with my work stimulate thought, conversation and lots of laughter but there can be something rather disquieting about them too, a darker side. They’re shamanistic, witchy, evocative of ancient ritual, apparition and magic. I think there’s something about boundaries within these responses – embodiment/disembodiment, absence/presence, form/formlessness, concealing/revealing and, of course, Self and Other. Sadly, there isn’t room here to discuss this fully here, but visit my MA research on Apparition for more (Baker, 2024c). This aspect of my work is becoming more significant, I think, and needs more research to develop it further.
Making thread visible
The shapeshifting qualities of my work, including this particular sculpture, Stash, extends to the more static gallery installations too. I’ve been very pleased to have had the opportunity to install Stash in two very different ways as part of seam’s A Visible THREAD exhibition.
In September 2023, at Black Swan Arts in Frome, Stash was suspended site-responsively in the stairwell leading to the gallery; a tentacled, otherworldly, blue form. Some visitors commented on the beautiful colours, texture and installation; others, however, found it rather menacing as it lurked, triffid-like, seemingly creeping above their heads.
Stash installed at A Visible THREAD, Black Swan Arts, Frome from 16th September – 29th October 2023
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Stash installed at Black Swan Arts, Frome
At Llantarnam Grange, recently, Stash was installed very differently, on an adapted mannequin supported by a rusty pole and a concrete base. It’s the same sculpture, with that exquisite spectrum of textures in imagined sea- and sky- blues, this time with flowing tentacles spilling onto the floor around it. However, for some viewers it has a disquieting presence, as if it’s a figure which might reanimate at any moment. It’s imposing, towering over most visitors, rigid, totemic; what might be a head is tilted downwards, the face concealed by a hood-like form. It can definitely be seen as rather threatening!
Lou visiting Stash at A Visible THREAD, Llantarnam Grange, Cwmbran, South Wales.
It was installed there from 17th February – 4th May 2024
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Stash installed at Llantarnam Grange, Cwmbran, South Wales
I really value having this opportunity to trial different methods of installation in a gallery setting, as it’s an extremely useful form of research. However, alongside these more formal installations, in my mind’s eye I see the joyful, dynamic, living sculpture, frolicking on the beach; it delights me that they’re all the same piece of work, shapeshifting.
Lou wearing Stash, a shapeshifting, living sculpture, performance still,
Gwithian, Cornwall, 25th August 2023
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Edited April 2025, Lou Baker
(This article was originally written for the seam collective website, as part of our 4-venue, Arts Council-funded A Visible THREAD exhibition tour. Many thanks to seam for this opportunity. Please see the original version here.)
Select references
Baker, L. (2024a) Busting someone else’s stash; on collecting, sustainability and grief, Available at: https://seamcollective.org/2024/03/22/busting-someone-elses-stash/
Baker, L. (2024b) Self and Other Available at: https://www.academia.edu/115350902/Lou_Baker_Self_and_other_plus_transcript_and_references_January
Baker, L. (2024c) Apparition, Available at: https://loubakerartist.weebly.com/apparition.html
Baker, L. (2024d) Social knitwork at Social Scaffolding, Shepton Mallet, Available at: https://www.loubakerartist.co.uk/lba-works/installation/social-knitwork-at-social-scaffolding-shepton-mallet.html
Baker, L. (2020) Critical knitting; knitting as a research method, MA dissertation, Bath Spa University, Available at: https://www.academia.edu/44486763/Lou_Baker_Critical_knitting_knitting_as_a_research_method_Jan_2020
Baker, L. (2018) Living sculptures; research and development Available at: https://www.academia.edu/95661816/Lou_Baker_Living_sculptures_research_and_development_2018
Bourgeois, L. & Rinder L. (1995) Louise Bourgeois: Drawings and Observations, Little, Brown and Co: Boston
Bristow, M. (2011) ‘Continuity of touch- textile as silent witness’ in Hemmings, J. (ed.), 2012, The Textile Reader, Berg: London, New York pp 44 – 51
Celant, G. (2010) Louise Bourgeois: The Fabric Works, Milan: Skira Editore
Collins Dictionary (no date) Shape-shifting Available at: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/shape-shifting (Accessed: 2 February 2020)
Cavallaro, D. and Warwick, A, 1998, Fashioning the Frame, Oxford: Berg in Simonson, C. (2008) ‘Introduction’ in Textile, Volume 6, Issue 3, pp 216-221
Dormor, C. (2008) ‘skin: textile: film’ in Textile, Volume 6, Issue 3, pp 238-253
Gage, J. (1999) Color and Meaning: Art, Science, and Symbolism London: Thames and Hudson