Seasonal Greetings

I made a deliberate choice this year to spend Christmas only with my children, and no one else- well actually Christmas eve-which left lots of lovely leftovers for Christmas day and I didn't have to do much at all. It was deliberate  as I am working on my  textile pieces for  Palaiseau which are interpretation of the feminine at Chartres. The church is devoted to Mary of course and it seemed apt to reflect on Mary at this time of year, given she was the mother of Jesus. I have also been "studying" the various studies of the architecture/stone sculptures at Chartres and the changing interpretations as time has moved( Male, Panofsky, Ball et al) on to the  study I am presently reading ,Margot E Fassler's The Virgin of Chartres . I am trying to understand why Chartres Cathedral played such an important part in the Marian cult ( which still exists) and why there are so many sculptures devoted to the female form. It's proved to be fascinating if dense reading ( the footnotes are almost as long as the  book itself and the appendixes are long as well) and I haven't got to the art part yet and reading it makes me wish I had done Medieval studies at university, but then this kind of study was only beginning to emerge. when I studied.  Fassler marries history ( well several histories , we all know that history isn't a linear line that  knows all) with music (in which she is expert) liturgy and imagery, and I find I am reading something as dense, rich, complicated and mysterious as the Cathedral itself and I haven't even got to Fulbert yet!

So you see my mind is full and I am not actually creating anything except a few small embroideries at the moment- though bigger work is  in the planning but I am just waiting for this  family stuff to be over- I have to drive my mother back to her house the other side of Melbourne later today and I won't get back until tomorrow. When I really get my head down to working on an exhibition i find i need clear headspace as I need to imagine what I am working with, to try and understand the ideas and the feelings they evoke....

The first  embroidery is inspired  by la Bell Verriere- of the Virgin said to contain the blue glass , the blue that no one can work out how it was made. I know the image is not strictly correct, but I am just trying to get the feeling of them.And the number of images are starting to build and be almost like the torn pages from a book- they measure about 9 inches square and are  hand dyed  muslin onto a dark lutradur which adds to the torn page feeling.

And the second one is another interpretation of  one of the female figures of the Porte Royale or the western portal. I do draw the image first, and if they were drawings they would be different ,somehow the stitching changes small nuances in the image- hard to describe, but the slight sideways movement of a stitch ( which happens) changes  almost the whole way the image looks or feels.

So I hope you had a Merry Christmas and that the season brings you everything you had hoped for!