Needle in a Haystack

A simple sewing needle made big news in Europe this week. Besides hitting the papers, this needle featured in prime time, international TV broadcasts too. What made an ordinary stitching implement so special?  Location, location, location, my friend.   The needle was on show, so to speak, at the Palais de Tokyo , Paris’ Museum of Contemporary Art. It was hidden in a not-so-proverbial haystack.  Italian performance artists Sven Sachsalber had just 48 hours to find it. 

 

Irish Haystacks by Johnathan Wilkins (c) Creative Commons

What’s the point of this needle? The Museum’s director Jean de Loisy explained the exhibit this way: ''It is a symbol of the search we are all doing for something.''   Honest, he really said that.

I’m gob smacked.  Here is a museum director who understands a needle’s role the process of discovering ourselves. He sees the artist’s search and experience very important.   Hooray for that. But the embroiderer in me is incensed. The director breezes over embroidery. It’s the process of discovery that is so important to him. 

 A needle is indispensable to those of us who explore the creative process – and discover ourselves--through the needle arts.   But hang on; needles shouldn’t have any thread in them.  That would leave a trace of the effort that many of us have expended during our quest of discovery. The quest and product would be embroidery and definitely not comme il faut. 

 I am delighted that the museum director gets that needles are associated with doing something time consuming (thus life consuming), but hay—oops hey-- this is ridiculous.  

A search for something concrete, like a needle in a haystack, is art when it is performed by a young handsome man devoting two days of his life to it in front of on lookers.  (Let’s hope that his time is paid for.)  The private process of embroidery, or even its concrete product, is not worth the time of the art establishment despite the thought and technical skill that embroiderers put into them.  Why?  You tell me.

Palais de Tokyo in Paris by Strobilomyces

  And the questions keep coming. Why haven’t hundreds of thousands of embroiderers worldwide produced artistic superstars worth shows in the galleries of the art establishment? Statistically there must be fantastic contemporary embroiderers out there. Surely finding them must be worth the effort of finding a needle in a haystack.  And much more interesting, I would say.

One adjudicator of modern taste the MOMA, Museum of Modern Art in New York, has an ongoing workshop exploring modern gas masks and embroidery. It’s performance based, vanishing at the end of the day. A search of the Palais de Tokyo website –not the haystack--unearthed a previous exhibition featuring embroidery as fashion embellishment.  Embroidery is clearly not the main event. And New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art did a show on textile history. That’s about as good as it gets fans. The Museum of Craft and Design has a collection of modern embroideries but you can’t search their site! 

After years of pondering these questions as I stitch away trying to understand  the world, the answer appearing out of the mist seems to be that much embroidery—not all—is made by women.  And that’s the rub, impediment, explanation, whatever you want to call it.  Amanda Vickery explored the lot of female painters through the centuries in a brilliant BBC series.  The programs got a wonderful review in the Guardian.  A quick look at the comments from enthusiastic female readers shows there is a broader understanding of sexism and feminism a foot.  So if you see embroidery as that subset of art primarily practiced by women, often older women, how can the lack societal interest be anything else than it is:  Benign neglect. 

Because embroiderers understand this condition doesn’t imply we accept it. There are many more urgent existential problems facing women that deserve society’s attention and resources. We don’t make a fuss. Still that doesn’t mean that embroiderers shouldn’t call attention to sexism and ageism. Nor should we shrink from the opportunity to needle the art establishment or to prick their consciences. It just might set someone of them searching the haystacks of their souls.

Never say Never

Technology moves at break-neck speed, or so it seems to me. As recently as May 2014, I smugly predicted that hand-embroidery was “safe” from the tentacles of technology such as 3-D printing, which enables painters/artists to replicate both the image and structure of their work.  Well as far as I can tell, embroidery is still unscathed, but there are developments.

Ingrida Kazėnaitė, a design student at from Kaunas, Lithuania, is creating a pen-like tool, which is intended to replace needle and thread in the repair of rips and tears. Her device also offers artistic possibilities, she believes. The wand would hold nano fibers in a solution and a scanner. Pass the tip over the rip to identify polyester or cotton fabric for color and structure, and then “ print” a patch from nano fibers to rejoin the edges of a tear. Her device is still “a work in progress”, but it is a finalist in the Electrolux design competition, which means the personal electronics industry sees merit in the idea.  

Miss Kazėnaitė’s  pen is based on a technology developed by Fabrican, a firm that generates garments by spraying particles of natural materials onto forms or people. Sewing and weaving techniques are nowhere to be seen. It’s quite mind boggling and certainly offers scope for artists and businessman. Have a look:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE_Q7aafKnM

I can imagine that, in time, spray-on fabric could revolutionize the fashion industry --yet again. The number of thread and cloth manufactures would shrink. Robots, working round the clock, could replace sewing machine operators in sweat-shops, much as computer-controlled machines replaced mechanics in automobile factories. Will this new clothing be warm/cool, easy to clean, and recycle?  The fashion world and its technologist will undoubtedly work hard to convince us. They may even succeed, for some categories of clothing.

As for the future of the repair-fabric-pen, well I am less persuaded. I can foresee its utility once clothing is not woven, but sprayed.  But until then?  Electric shavers and depilatory devices have not replaced razor blades, although they have spurred manufactures to improve them. Stick-on bandages, now in plastic as well as cloth, sit on pharmacy shelves along with spray on band-aids.  And we all have gadgets that were once “oh so wonderfully exciting” now languishing in drawers and closets. Sure power mixers beat hand-whisks. And floor robots are better than vacuum cleaners, which are better than carpet beaters. But can you really improve a hand-needle, besides motorizing it?

I am not convinced that you need a machine for simple repairs, even if you are hopeless with needle and thread.  I have to hold up my hand to not always attacking minor disasters with needle and thread. In the past, when life was more hectic than it is today, I was known to repaired rips or drooping hems with scotch tape. Sometime I even stapled seams. Runs aka ladders in stocking got temporarily halted by drops of nail varnish.  Iron-on (irons..anyone remember that  ancient technology? ) patches camouflaged holes in jeans. Come to think of it, some new jeans come with holes and rips. It’s not even a problem anymore. That’s the ultimate solution.

Miss Kazėnaitė’s device will likely appeal to the techno-trendy, fashion-conscious generation, who has never worn items of clothing long enough for them to need repair. To be sure her device is an attractive, clever miniaturization of the bulky industrial sprayer in the video.  But I can't help feeling it is a solution looking for a problem. Am I a Luddite? Perhaps, but that’s how I see it through the eye of my needle.

Hey Ma, look at what HEMA's got

It’s summer in my hemisphere! A string of bright, warm days enticed me to abandon my needle, switch off the computer, and take a stroll into the real world instead of roaming the Web. 

 

My local market

Fridays, an old-fashioned open-air market pitches up in the modern center of our town.  I headed there to savor the atmosphere and pick up some bits and bobs for my embroidery stash.  An itinerant stall is now my only local source of thread. When it comes to picking fibers, as convenient as shopping on the Web is, you just can’t beat seeing colors in real life in full daylight!

 The walk did me good, but left me peckish. So I ducked into Hema, an iconic Dutch chainstore, with a reasonable café.  But I never made it to the coffee bar.  I got waylaid in one of the aisles by a shocking discovery: embroidery gear.  

 

Hema sells useful everyday items like socks, housewares,  towels, and food under its own label.

Hema has added embroidery hoops, aida cloth, needles and a limited line of embroidery thread – echoing this season’s must wear colors -- to its merchandise line, which ranges from clothes to cupcakes.  I was gobsmacked.  Why the shock?

Because Hema, the Netherland’s favorite store, is a barometer of what’s hot, modern, and value for money. The store has flair, style and is hip. Its witty stuff–only Hema branded—exudes simplicity and fun for a moderate price.  Because, to the best of my aging memory, Hema banished needlework and knitting supplies from their stores over 25 years ago!  And now they were back.  

Before my very eyes, knitting and embroidery, in particular, were now being mainstreamed into the consciousness of the thirty-something-year-olds-with-kids.  Handwork was vying with digital pastimes like compiling photo albums or 3-printing.  Or is it the other way round? Is Hema, a marketing savvy organization, tapping into a trend already in society beyond their stores?  Whatever.  Chicken and the Egg.  To me this simple collection of embroidery equipment seems a  harbinger of a renaissance in stitching. I did a mental jig and forgot all about coffee. 

Okay, Hema’s interest in needlework might be a one-season miracle, a flash in the pan, a fad.  As is Hema’s way, the marketing touch is light, playful, and not serious. The small colors range reflects this season’s vibrate tones. No embroidery stitching guides or patterns are on offer.  The idea is:  try it; there is no “right” way to use these materials.  I suspect Hema’s marketing gurus know that the younger generation don’t need instruction manuals anyway, given the library of how-to-stitch videos on YouTube.  Starters do need hoops, fabric needles and thread, stuff they maybe have never seen or thought of.  It’s the “ooo-neat”, titillating quality that makes Hema’s goods irresistible! As an embroiderer, I hope it works.

Hema is expanding its quirky, quintessentially Dutch formula into the UK, France, Belgium, Germany and Spain.  I wonder if the embroidery line will make it into these new stores abroad. Each country is, of course, a different market.  We live in hope.  One thing is for sure.  I had better log off the Net  and get out of the house more regularly to stay attune to what is happening in the real world, often just down the road.  

Update:  One of my "foreign correspondents"  informs me that there are embroidery supplies on offer in Hema's Victoria Station branch in London. Well this surely signals an international renaissance.