December 2022

Part of what I love about quilting as a whole is when they are created to commemorate something, whether life events or historical events. I wanted to create something with all the cork boards I draw each month for my newsletter. I thought they would lend themselves to a one piece quilt as the designs are already squares in a 3 x 4 grid. Instead of creating the front of these quilts out of patch-worked fabrics, it is one large printed cotton, with a layer of wadding and the back which i made from a patchwork of tie-dyed fabrics, a real combination of all my experiments with fabric dying, patch-working and quilting i have been learning. I wanted to create an overall design which would be consistent for each year in the future. I decided I wanted each year to have a colour of the rainbow, so the first year is red and the second year is orange. The edge is made from red or orange bandana and the background from red or orange patchwork I made from hand dyed fabric. I was going to have the colour on the front of the piece behind the cork-boards too but it looked too busy so I decided to put a black and grey square behind instead so that each cork-board stands out. I really love how they came together and the simplicity of them, they showcase my dedication to not only my newsletter but my journey into quilting too. Next October I’ll be posting a yellow quilt to commemorate the third year of my newsletter!

Last year I made an illustration showcasing a selection of my personal and professional highlights and I wanted to continue that tradition this year. Its a great way for me to focus on the positives instead of focussing on all that I am missing out on with chronic pain. 

1. I was featured in Womens Work: From feminine arts to feminist art by Ferren Gipson which is a chronology of textile and ceramic artists including Faith Ringgold, Louise Bourgeois, Anni Albers and the Gee’s Bend Quilters. 
2. An artwork was bought by The Cartoon Museum for the This Exhibition is a Work Event show and their permanent collection. My first artwork to be bought by a gallery and it was a political slaughter aimed at the Tory party.
3. After delays because of the pandemic, SWARM x ICA exhibition Decriminalised Futures opens with great success. I was able to do an online embroidery workshop and create tutorials which are available to all here
4. In January I started my quilting journey and throughout the year made 8 in total! I combined printed felt, felt applique, patchwork, Shibori tie-dying and quilting to explore new ways of making art.
5. In September I completed my second year of my monthly newsletter, im proud that its something I have been able to put out very consistently and hope is as interesting to read for others as it is for me to compile.
6. Hanecdote turned 10! Is it my shop name, is it my alias? Probably a bit of both, regardless more people know me by this name than by the name my parents gave me. It has become part of me and I cant believe its been 10 years since I began selling screen printed tshirts and handmade patches. Thanks to all who have supported me and shown me love in that time and the future.
7. I was lucky enough to go on a few road trips with Mum and Dad this year, we stayed in Norfolk twice, once February when it was very cold, and again in August where we visited a field full of sunflowers and more National Trust properties. It was gorgeous to see Norfolk during the different seasons and see what the weather and nature had to offer. In May we drove to Birmingham to see my friend and mentor Sharon Walters’ solo show and then headed to Stoke-on-Trent to see one of Dads friends at his parents house in the countryside. It was amazing to go to Middleport Pottery, the only ceramics factory working the same process as it was in the Victorian times.
8. Mum guided me to keep a plant alive after attempted for the past two years and I finally had success. I sat back and felt pure happiness and satisfaction after putting love, care and energy into the plant all year. Its hard having a life outside of you to look after when you struggle to look after yourself but I DID IT FINALLY!
9. Lastly, I made a new friend! May feel lame to share but it was a real lifeline for my mental health. Me and Mary have been mutuals on twitter for a while, and she joined in on my very intimate embroidery workshop. She reached out afterwards to see if I wanted to hang out in the future on the phone or facetime, which I appreciated because I find myself becoming more and more isolated throughout the pandemic. Her instagram @invalid_art is a great resource for Disabled people, and personally we have bonded over quilting and textiles in general. Shes hilarious, caring, smart and all round lovely, Im so grateful to have met her. 

I really wanted to get this artwork titled My Neck, My Back, My Arthritis Quilt finished in time to include in my newsletter, as I didnt want to start the new year with any half done projects. Theres a few artworks which I have designed and planned this year will be physically made next year but most of them havent started yet. I have been consistently have neck pain, basically sharp pain which on top of all my other chronic pain just become unbearable. I drew some self portraits last year when I was experiencing this neck pain which included me turned to stone, me stuck in a jar, my skull with flesh fallen off and me with a neck brace and a shit on my head. Pretty much sums it up perfectly. Apparently I have some kind of degenerative disease in C5/C6 in my neck, probably connected to my auto-immune arthritis in my spine. 

I liked the look of this pin wheel style quilt block, and chose a colour palette from the bandanas I had already been experimenting with. Then the iconic Khia lyrics “My Neck, My Back, lick my pussy and my crack” came to mind but I havent had sex in a long time so I made my own edit to be “When I say My neck, my back, im talking about arthritis, not my pussy or my crack.” 

I wanted the back of the quilt and binding to contrast the colours in the front so I chose to pull from the blue bandana. The back is patch-worked calico I tie-dyed earlier in the year in shades of blue and teal. I like how it came together but I have learnt my lesson with making the binding so thin, it is just so much more difficult to fit all the layers inside and also doesnt show off the bandana designs that much.

It was lovely to hear that I got quoted in the Sew What? Podcast where host Isabella Rosner interviewed author Ferren Gipson who wrote Women’s Work. This book was released earlier in the year and features a chronology of artists working in textiles or ceramics, mediums which have been sidelined and gendered within western art history. It was an honour to be featured as the youngest artist amongst so many legends, any of whom have inspired my own artistic practice. I know I am an artist no matter what, but being unable to work properly and consistently towards my art career often messes with my confidence and sense of self. To be not only featured in this book, but also quoted in the Sew What? Podcast means the world. Ferren mentions how I said that embroidery is just another form of mark making like paint or pens. This is something I have felt since I was 17 at college and first started to learn embroidery. Have a listen here on spotify but probably available where other podcasts live!

I designed this piece Reap What You Sew last year in response to a brief set by the Horniman Museum and Gardens, in Forest Hill, SE London, which I had submitted to. The Museum is named after Frederick Horniman, who inherited his dads business Horniman Tea founded in 1826. The Museum opened by a different name in 1890 but reopened in 1901 as a purpose built museum. The collection is full of tea and coffee paraphernalia formed throughout the british empire. Unfortunately I didnt get the opportunity so the detailed complex work stayed in my ipad until I remembered it this month. I share below the writing I submitted about how archives, galleries, object and empire combine. 

“As a colonised person living in England with an interest in the Victorian era of innovation, collecting and exploring, i see the privilege that those people of wealth enjoyed while colonised people across the globe were worked to death. I wish i could travel, return to my mothers country of birth and collect amazing textile art from different places while i make art and learn about history. Instead I feel it is my duty to make art which decolonises our institutions and brings our stories to the forefront of them. There is a conflict which many of us face living in the UK, while our government prevents institutions and schools from having these important conversations about our shared history. Colonised people know the history of the British empire but most of the general public have purposely not been taught about it.

While Europeans were dictating that colonised people were savages in need of civilising, they were also stealing our scientific and technological knowledge which advanced their society. 

I have a deep passion for the collection and protection of world textiles, much of which has been lost to the wear and tear of human life. As an embroidery artist and historian this history is at the core of my practice. Textiles tells the history of human activity, humans have been using a needle and thread for over 40,000 years. 

This drawing encompasses my interest in Victorian life, needlework, collecting art and objects and the invention of greenhouses/wardian cases to preserve the natural history specimens being imported from across the globe. 

The woman sits at home doing needlework, her back facing away from some of the hard truths displayed behind her. The labour, control, violence which was involved in creating all the components of her content “British” life including afternoon tea. Her dress showcases the history of empire. Global travel on ships, sugarcane and tea plants worked by enslaved and displaced people, the cutlass used for the hard labour involved in cutting cane, the creation of west India docks on the Thames which became the global tea exporter of the time. Textiles, tea and sugar were three of the major exports which made Britain rich, by plundering the textiles industry in India, enslaving African people for labour and spinning cotton picked by them in many British mills or stealing tea seeds from China and forcing them to trade. 

The oil rig, flames outside the window and melting icebergs under her dress all reference the environmental issues which really started with colonialism and the onset of capitalism which contributes massively to our planets decline.  

Our government are currently try to stop the important works surrounding decolonisation, which I believe is integral to the future of our country. The true history of Britain needs to be acknowledged and reflected across all institutions because the legacies of colonialism are seen everywhere within them, and to this day ex-colonies suffer from poverty and corruption caused by Britain and Imperialism. 

My dream is to have access to many archives of institutions across Britain, to dissect the items within them and create art to tell stories which have been hidden away from the history books. 

As a mixed race person I can see the disparity within my own lineages as far as accessing family information. I know my paternal family history because they had the privilege of time, education, wealth and travel which allowed them to explore their family history. My maternal family came from the poorest communities of India to work as labourers in the Caribbean, their history is oral and comes with so much trauma that much of it is left unsaid. They never had access to education and when they did it was under colonial rule which forced them to assimilate and see the mother country in glory. While beginning the journey of trying to find more information about my Maternal family history as Indentured labourers I soon realised how difficult it would be to access. The land owners, ship captains and people of note where categorised and labelled within Kew Archives, which means if your ancestor were involved in the Slave Trade you could easily trace your family history. Whereas colonised people must spend weeks searching through records. 

My mum was born in Demerara, Guyana, an ex-british colony which was home to the first Indian Indentured labourers who worked the sugarcane plantations after The Slave Trade was abolished. Britain like to paint themselves as historically moral for abolishing the slave trade, but i personally know that they found cheap labour in India and other colonies, otherwise my family wouldn't have ended up in the South American country of Guyana on the Caribbean sea. 

Despite being the origin of Demerara sugar, my country Guyana is not known on a global scale. When I learnt that the western invention of anaesthesia has origins with the Indigenous Guyanese people who use blow darts for hunting I was shocked. Or that John Edmonstone, an ex Enslaved African man from Demerara, Guyana taught Charles Darwin how to do taxidermy in the Amazon rainforest, which lead to him being able to prove his theory of evolution. How many more scientific discoveries have roots in Indigenous knowledge from across the globe? 

Britain became rich through textiles and trading many different goods which they stole or used slave labour to cultivate and spread across the world. This included tea and sugar, close to both my heart and the rest of the countries as well as the core of the Horniman’s collection. Without the Victorian obsession with tea and cakes, sugar wouldn't have been worth the same as gold.

In my heart, soul and probably coursing through my veins is my love and passion for hand embroidery. The identity crisis I have had relating to hand pain Ive experienced since 2017 when I graduated, continues just less frequently. My love for hand embroidery doesnt take away from my love for most other textiles, but it is an advocacy I have taken pride in. I would have eventually made quilts but chronic pain and disability forced my hand into adapting new ways of making. That is both a humbling and exciting experience. 

At the beginning of the year i was scared of the sewing machine now i am so much more confident and comfortable on there. I still have so much to learn and practice but its amazing to reflect and see the progress Ive made. I have to give credit to Psilocybin (magic mushrooms) as I believe the micro-dosing I did at the end of 2021 not only helped with my depression but also gave me the confidence and oomph I needed to just give it a go. I had a very visceral feeling that I couldnt go any longer without making an attempt at quilting. That was that! Ive spent pretty much the whole year drawing quilts, making quilts and resting in between😂

I have been using natural calico and paisley cotton bandanas to make the patch work fabric. For me, I want to respect the quilt process, but also use it as a background for appliqued design to go on top! I began with cutting colourful felt and then I discovered I could print my illustrations onto felt so I have been exploring that and will absolutely continue to in 2023. Im excited to see how these techniques can work together to compliment each other and create some impactful and tactile, soft pieces.

If youre interested in reading more thoroughly about my progress throughout the year check out these months:

January

February

April

June

July

August

November

Grandma wasnt much of a cook but her baking was a real treat that she would bless us with all year round. She would make your fav cake for your birthday and sugar cookies at Christmas. Looking back through my pictures, 2018 was probably the last time Grandma baked for us at Christmas, by 2019 Josh did the majority although overseen by Grandma! Her Dementia/PPA got so much worse with the isolation and disruption to her routine of the pandemic, she lost her ability to take care of herself and live independently. When I think about it, I wish I had treasured every bite of the baked goodies she made for us all those years ago but we didnt know what they were at the time. Thankfully we have her recipes so this year Josh decided to bake some batches of sugar cookies, making sure to use the same 100s and 1000s that Grandma chose. We had Grandma over for tea and cookies, she wasnt really feeling herself, was more confused that usual and didnt seem to recognise us, but she kept grabbing cookies and looking at the bowl of more cookies behind me. We took this as a good sign that she was enjoying them and maybe deep down remembering the way they taste even if she cant communicate that. There was even a moment where Grandma was twisting her mug on a tissue in a rotating motion as if she was using a cookie cutter😂 Im feeling grateful for my brother for restarting this family tradition, not just because I have a sweet tooth.