Alison Carthy
I have been making a series of hand knitted strips that allude to a bandage.
I wanted to make something that represented a timeline for the juration of the pandemic – little did I know! The bandage suggests a healing, or mending process, a swaddling. By making a series of bandages I have reflected the different stages of the pandemic by varying the width and the decoration as the rules and my emotions changed over time.
My reason for making was to record these strange times. The challenge to make the monotony of lockdown visual, along with the feelings of our renewed awareness of the natural world and the wonderful spring we experienced in 2020, whilst the virus continued to scare and rage around us.
Alison Carthy
To represent the ‘lockdown’ the materials needed to be things that I already had in the studio, be available locally with most shops closed and echo the idea of healing. The bandages are made from local sheep fleece, a gritstone and white woodland, breeds common in the South Pennines. Once the mainstay of the local economy. For the decoration I have used hedgerow dyed yarn left over from a hedgerow dying project, and strips of old sheet material, another reference to healing, dyed to represent the different variants of the virus. One section, that of Christmas 2020, is knitted from recycled sari silk, from the local Fair-Trade shop. Colour for the Christmas relaxation of the lockdown rules.
I used textile craft techniques. Yarn made by carding and spinning ‘raw’ fleece, knitted into garter stitch strips.
Hedgerow dyeing for embroidery yarns. Dyeing with commercial dye for cotton strips.
Mending, embroidery and applique.
I find hand making techniques calming, they are slow and repetitive making space for thought and relaxation, it can be a meditation. The end-product in some ways is a bonus, the making being as important as the finished piece.
