February 6, 2005

• Remember the "male gaze?"  For those of you who asked - those who didn't can close their eyes if they wish, lol  - here's what I perceive to a narrative or "factual" rather than a homoerotic male nude that Sashi did in Chinese ink some years ago. 

  
  

  I've many, many things to look at in the room where this is hanging.  Men's eyes skitter around the room, then almost inevitably, unless they are the totally aesthetically blind sort, land here, with the gaze then quickly averted.  I can usually count in seconds how long it takes the "male gaze" to shift back after looking away, and the cycle often repeats itself for quite a while, until the idea that a male can be just as naked in a painting  as a female finally sinks in and they are not quite so uneasy or embarrassed by meeting up so plainly with their own anatomy. 

  
  

  Every spectator's reaction makes it plain as day that being the object of our equivalent of the "male gaze" is terribly disconcerting. 

  
  

  Come on, fellas.  Get used to it......  Sauce for the goose and all that.....

  
  

  Meanwhile, woman are so used to seeing themselves naked in museums, of  being the object of the "male gaze," both in a museum or gallery and outside, that we don't, I think, have the same vivid reactions after the first 100 times we encounter that, which probably takes six months on the outside.

  
  

  I've a whole closet full of Sashi's paintings and drawing.   Many of them have male nudes.  When I'm feeling especially feminist, I start thinking about framing one for every room in my apartment, but there are so many other things in line first for frames, that I dont' think this will be done anytime soon.

  
  

  The flower arrangement in the photograph is Victorian and made of wrought iron.   

  
  

   

  
  

  In my spare time, what a construct, that, as if I had truly structured time, I pick up an embroidery project.  My grandmother, Lillie Lou, was the craftswoman in the family, knitting, crocheting, sewing, making dolls and doll clothes.   She had hooks for a quilting frame in her dining room ceiling.  My mother refused to learn any of this except sewing, practical, even necessary, in the days before decent ready to wear was available.  

  
  

  Me?  I taught myself to sew when I was 8 and my mother made a particularly ugly dress.  I decided I could do better and so commandeered pink and light blue linen Lillie Lou had gotten from a neighbor returned from Ireland.  I made a dress with a pink scalloped yoke, the rest of the dress and the sleeves blue.  It buttoned up the front with little lucite buttons, imprisoning a pink rose in a bubble of clear plastic.  I liked it better than the purple and chartruse squaw dress that had inspired me to conquor the mystries of the Singer, of gussets and set-in sleeves and how to gather a skirt and make a hem.  I never stopped except when I was overseas and had a dressmaker or tailor and even then continued to do some sewing for myself, sometimes with a machine powered only by a fast couple of twirls of the flywheel.

  
  

  The fabric stores in my area, even in the wealthier parts of greater Chicago, are frequented most by immigrants from South Asia and Africa and older women.   Is it soon to be a lost art?   I don't know. 

  
  

  I remember sitting with books as a little girl, practicing how to make a French knot, then embroidering pillowcases I bought at the five and dime, for the "Hope  Chest"  they were; all good girls had to have a Hope Chest, though I didn't have much hope and never much in my Hope Chest as a result.   I taught myself to knit, too, but never learned crochet, though I never put my mind to it, either.  I did learn a lot of embroidery, though. 

  
  

  Here's what I'm working on now.  I bought a machine embroidered dress, liking the cut.  As usual for online catalogs (except for my ebay listings, which have good, clear closeups of everything important), the embroidery wasn't pictured well.  When the dress arrived, I had two choices - pitch it, or redo the embroidery, even though that meant a lot of work, as the colorw were awful.  .  

  
  

  Here's a partial transformation.  The little turquoise and gold flower is original.  The rest have no relationship to the image of the original pattern on the right except shape.  

  
  

  The camera I have now doesn't take good closeups, sigh.  If it did, you could see that the centers of the large pink-edged flower on the left had both deep orange and deep rose shaded in, and that the crimson-edged flower opposite it had three shades of pink in the part between the yellow french knotted center and the crimson edge.  

  
  

  This motif occurs 4 times, on each side in the front, and on each sleeve.  I've just finished doing satin stitch for the long and short stems on three of the four.  That leaves the body of the long little pointed leaves on all four repeats - I'm not sure yet whether or not they will be of two colors or only one - and the odd large flower on the sleeves along with some small ones on the front.  

  
  

  If I didn't wind up with aching in the joint of my right thumb after an hour with this, I would be doing even more, and have my hands already on some embroidery books with patterns from Chinese motifs for my next dress or blouse.   Then, of course there will be something for the granddaugher, and later, a vest with a Chinese dragon for the grandson....  

  
  

  Did I mention the embroidered wool sweaters I felted and have put away to make handbags?

  
  

  I do love making beauty....

  
  

  pearlbamboo  

  
  

  ©2005

  • 3:37 am
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