The Textile Cuisine

This year spring is playing cat and mouse with us. So instead of fresh greens and young sprouts I'm sticking to fermented veggies. Deep red tones keep me warm on the wintry April's days. They inspire new stitched projects too but before they come to life take a look at the last summer's stitched veggies mix: Can you recognize my favorite ingredients? Cauliflower and carrots with a lot of salt. Oh, and a dill which is the key factor in my ferments! Broccoli brings this lovely dark green spots. And radishes for joyful pink tones. Kohlrabi, spices and... the magic of fermentation does the rest. Then it is just to find the way how to translate all the movement into stitches. But that's the fun part as much as eating the models with a big pleasure :)

For the past few months I was stitching plants. All kinds of imagined plants in many shapes and sizes. I'm fascinated by medieval tapestries, the natural world depicted in them on a very detailed and complex way. At that time they were the most expensive pieces of art considering the high quality of raw materials used and a very long and difficult production process. They were called "mobile frescos of North" and decorated walls of the noble interiors. Of course I don't want to copy medieval tapestries but studying them makes me eager to create complex worlds filled with intricate details, pulling viewer through the layers and textures just to amaze them and bring joy of unexpected discoveries. It's not fashionable nowadays to spend hours on this kind of time consuming work, but who cares? At least it is the time well spent and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who appreciate this kind of work. Wanna see some process pictures? Enjoy!

Feeling like a "Good wife" (pictured above) presenting her clean and tidy kingdom. Well, not all my kitchens are clean and tidy. Some are seriously touched by decay, like this "Abandoned kitchen": I'm not sure if birds are a good addition to the place where we cook but... licentia poetica works in textile art too. They say that kitchen is the heart of a home. I agree but I also love to see them as spaces with their own personalities. Sometimes bright and cheerful: Sometimes more dramatic: I can see late night shows going in the kitchen while the rest of house sleeps: And we love it when the cooking is like music, don't we? The most recent kitchen you saw in the previous POST but I want to show you the one that took the longest to complete - "My Italian kitchen" (started HERE ): The pile of ideas for more is growing up. Captured this recently and I can see a magic city with lots of pinnacles... in the kitchen, of course!

Fancy a fish dish? You're welcome: The idea for fisherman's kitchen portrait arose long ago. It was percolating slowly on the back burner and now the time has come to express it in fabrics. I wanted it rather dark, in tones of browns and blues. Hand dyed antique linen and lace (aka fishing net) were the starting point setting the mood for the whole piece. Smoked fish and the basket of fishes were the obvious choices as well as the big pot with fish soup. I wasn't sure what window view I want but the scraps just lined up for the big sky and the sea. So what to put on the table? At first I wanted simple silver plates but the addition of fishes turned it into splendind feast. That's how we ended up on the fine dining in this humble fisherman's kitchen. I love making kitchen portraits. In the next post will show you more of them, the ones created through the time I was absent here. But of course I had to share my newest baby first, right? Bon appetit!

Last summer I went crazy with fermenting veggies. It wasn't my first attempt to it but this time I started looking at them along the process. I like to try different combinations both for taste and... for the color. So the ideas for new textile works started to pop up. Yes, watching fermenting radish, zucchini and garlic made me to create roses. My main focus was on the background - hand dyed it myself to repeat this smokey rose hue. But wait, roses come in all colors, don't they? Yellow pepper, radish and turnip resulted in another roses' idea - this time "Colorful rose garden" was born. Both of these wall hangings are available for sale HERE , as I'm sure that more will follow. Actually I already have an idea for another rosy piece but this time it will be slightly different. Of course you don't think that my ferments are only for artistic inspiration, right? I really eat them in big quantities. And I make them all year round.

As some of you know I'm a member of a small group of textile artists "15 x 15" (see us HERE ). Every two months we create a piece of textile artwork on a theme. For this year we had to choose a country we want to explore through the year in our art. The first theme was "Emblem". So what is more emblematic for France, the country of my choice, than baguette... ... and cockerel! Back in Ancient history Romans were laughing at Gauls because of a linguistic coincidence – in Latin, the word gallus means Gaul… but also rooster! Later on the French kings adopted the rooster as a symbol of courage and bravery. And I have a thing with roosters. You may remember my "Rooster on blue" (posted HERE ) so let me introduce to you the brand new "Rooster in black". What's so special in roosters? Well, visually they are very impressive, aren't they? But if you dig dipper in folklore they are also very positive symbolism - sensitive to daylig

Hello! After lots of changes and tribulations I'm back in my old saddle. Not sure if anybody is still here but I hope you come back to see what am I up to. This little bun I'm serving for visitors comes from my most recent "Fly me to the moon" textile creation. Living with a bread maker transports you to the cozy galaxy of the warmth, smell and all kinds of heavenly tastes. So I couldn't resist and had to transform all my feelings on a theme into fabrics and stitches. How close my work stands to original models? Judge by yourself. Bon appetit!