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What we do with our hands has an immediate effect on our emotions and our sense of self, and evokes deep aspirations.
After four months of exchanging emails, Glenys Mann and I finally meet late one afternoon of the Mittagong Textile Fibre Forum in April of this year. As I am about to find out, this is a particularly appropriate place to discuss Mann's life and work, as the Mittagong Fibre Forum has played a pivotal role in her personal and creative development and is somewhere she returns to for inspiration and to renew her own energy (and what energy she has, our conversation is constantly interrupted by outbursts of her infectious laughter).
She has brought examples of her work to our discussion - a quilt from her 'Emotions' series and two quilts from her recent 'Horizons' series, and she explains, "I am fascinated in what happens between where the land and the sky meets, there is always just this line - and you never ever get to it".
The first quilt, 'Heat Haze' consists of strips of yellow hand dyed fabric sewn to a whole cloth backing; a shimmering heat haze through which a circular form appears then recedes. The 'seed' quilting stitch, formed using a double thread of differing colour tones, adds to the iridescent effect. Her images are intentionally ambivalent as she expects the viewer to be drawn into and to interact with the piece - a setting sun upon the horizon, the intense heat and sheer size of the wide-open space that evokes country Australia and our place in it.
The second piece, also a work-in-progress, is entitled, 'Horizons: Sweat of the Land'. It depicts an inland lake seen on the horizon (a mirage?), which on closer examination is formed from the section of a worn and faded blue worker's singlet sewn onto a backing of two lengths of the finest wool suiting, these are joined horizontally and the selvage - complete with the inscription, "Super hundreds Tasmanian wool" Made in Italy" - forms the 'horizon' of the title. An allusion to our migrant history; this quilt looks in turn to our past (the suiting donated by a friend, dates back to the 1920s) but also to the future as the distant horizon. It succeeds in connecting our nation's history with a more personal one; the singlet belonged to Mann's father-in-law and she found it hanging faded and discarded over the back fence.
It is this serendipitous juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated pieces of cloth that seem to characterise Mann's most recent work, and she describes how she will have a piece of cloth in her studio and allow herself time to respond to the cloth rather than force it to fit to some preconceived plan. Most such pieces of cloth are old and rich with previous use and Mann adds additional meanings through over-dying with eucalyptus and/or other natural substances and hand stitching. This is a radical departure from her machine stitched and heavily embellished pieces of the past.
The third quilt is just such an example. Entitled, "Emotions 4: Document Approved", this quilt was included in the Celebration Quilts 2001 exhibition held in Canberra to celebrate Australia's Centenary of Federation last year. A length of wool, appliquéed silk fragments and hands stitched with mirror writing (a letter telling of life in Australia) and complete with an "official' stamp (of approval), it infers identity, rite/right of passage, an official recognition of the crossing and boundaries and borders and is once again a reference to our migrant past. Here again the viewer is invited to add their own meanings, words are almost but not quite intelligible, and the quilt has crease lines, suggestive of much handling and a document of significant personal value.
It is another of the quilts in the 'Emotions' series ('Rubber Stamped') that has been recently acquired by the Stanthorpe Gallery in Queensland.
Mann lives and works in Tamworth in country
"The turning point. After teaching (in Mittagong) for two years, everyone got to know me and got to understand where I was coming from "and I was invited to teach a lot of other places".
In 1997 American quiltmaker, Nancy Crow came to
Australia
and taught a Master Class organised by Mann in
Tamworth
. Crow invited Mann to attend the 1998 Quilt and Surface Design Symposium in
Columbus
Mann's most recent venture has been a live-in 5-day workshop for women'Self Journey and Messages'. Participants are invited to bring along an "object of fascination", anything that holds personal interest (a doll or a key perhaps, one participant even brought along a mallee root). Each day starts with an exercise involving a design process and the final result may be a single quilt or a series of smaller pieces. Mann explains:
"There is something about sitting down with a group of women and stitching, - it's like coming here (Mittagong), therapy!"
Many women have indeed described her work shops as "a life changing experience" but Mann takes the utmost care not to provide solutions (or indeed represent herself as therapist), aiming instead to allow women to locate sources of inspiration for themselves, giving out a personal energy which she in turn replenishes by attending other workshops and continually seeking out new directions for herself and her own work.
Mann's definition of what constitutes a quilt is as flexible as is her working process; she prefers to term her work, just "cloth, worked cloth". She describes how in 1987/8 she had 27 rejections from quilt shows and rather than (in her words), "burying her head in the sand", she sought out new workshops and techniques to widen her skills. She works to the minimal requirements (now usually two layers) and describes herself as essentially "wicked" - a non0conformist who has become even more radical with time. And it is these characteristics that may well be the secret of Mann's success, a generosity and good humour which — combined with the courage to push personal and technical boundaries in a search for new areas — is limited only by the rate of movement toward new horizons, spiritual and professional.
The reference for the quote at the beginning of the article is: Thomas More, The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life, Hodder and Stoughton, 1996, 72.
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