For the application for the HS6 I made quite a few works which have since been placed back under the bed to live…to live with the monsters! I thought I’d pull them out and revisit a few over the next few weeks…
The chain reaction link I made (see previous post) took about two and a half months, and I loved every minute of it, just going through the repetitive process of stitching the same stitch with my own hair over, and over, and over again. It sounds simplistic but the quietness of my mind through this process was delicious…I miss it so much, through that silence I lost my fear of being a maker…I really didn’t care if no one liked my work or got it, I made it for ME! I have tried to recapture that experience again recently with work which I will endeavour to blog about in a weeks time. A lot has happened in the past months through work and emotional shifts, where the same old message and situations from the past have come back to haunt me, but i feel more able to deal with them now. May be through maturity or just being fed up hearing the same old criticisms. As I wrote above, Ill be bring some past work back and seeing how it has fed the work I’m working on right now… and giving the work its right to be seen!
The work below gave me the idea for the “hole” in my hair blanket, I just couldn’t ignore it!
Leitch. (October 2019). Garment ‘Pious man’s sleeping bag liner’. Silk, silk thread and hand carved mother of pearl button. (Application for HS6)
I came across a neat book entitled The Medieval Underworld (Andrew McCall 1979), in the local high school library. In it McCall discusses the Catholic Church’s idea during 1340 to send out night gowns to married and pious men. It was a basic linen mix with wool and acted as a normal night shirt, however with one difference; it was to be worn when the married man in question would impregnate his wife by popping his penis out through a hole in the gown, so his male member would be the only skin to touch his wife ‘while the deed was done’ (McCall p.57), thus not bringing lustful thoughts into the marital bed. It didn’t catch on, surprisingly. I thought how this could be brought into a contemporary world? Perhaps camping accessories for the pious chap who likes to keep a bit of a distance from his significant other, separating, forming a physical and emotive cold connection? Alongside this I thought about making a female version too, very similar in form; although if it’s pious, maybe a more humble material will be used…jute sacking reminiscent of the gowns of humiliation worn by women accused of witch craft or wrong doing by the church? In the original garments, religious texts were sewn into the seams of the robes and were intended to repel the devil; what a miserable, painful and tragic experience for a woman to endure. The most famous garment being discussed in the catalogue which accompanied the exhibition Spellbound, p.124-5. (Ashmolean museum), was worn by Anna Kramerin from the German town of Veringenstadt in 1680 who was simply accused of gathering herbs to make a restorative tonic for her husband. She was tried, ‘found guilty and burned’.
(Detail) Leitch. (October 2019). Garment ‘Pious man’s sleeping bag liner’.
McCall’s, A. (1979) The Medieval Underworld , Club Associates, London
Spellbound, Magic, Ritual &witchcraft. Ashmolean Museum. University of Oxford. 31’August 2018 – 6 Jan 2019.