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Gwen Edwards

Interview by L. Valena

January 24, 2022

Can you start by describing the prompt that you responded to? I want to hear the whole thing.

It was a digital image and I was immediately struck by the color. It's so intense! They seemed really such powerfully strong colors, and not colors I personally would normally use, so that was a bit “Whoo!” I was just trying to make sense of it because it wasn't immediately obvious to me what it was. The color was so intense and just seemed – angry is the wrong word – hot, tempestuous, just very emotional, a lot of energy in it. But I still can't really work out what the narrative is and it makes me slightly worried that maybe this is some massive social phenomenon that I’m completely oblivious to. [laughs] I still have that concern in my head: am I just unaware of this and stepping into something where I might cause offense? I think that was my worry with it.

My first reactions were confusion and concern, I guess. In my reading of it anyway, there are two characters in there. One is in the foreground and it’s an animal, maybe a dog or a cat or some kind of thing. And then in the midground, there's a kind of digital person. There are two toilets immediately behind them. One’s open, one’s closed. There's what looks like torn yellow paper coming out of the toilet on the left and that's strewn all over the floor, quite haphazard and chaotic. There’s an abandonment or carelessness about it. Or maybe that was the thing that triggered the anger? But it's on the floor. Coming out of the other toilet with the lid up, there's a black snake. Again, is this some sort of symbolism I'm unaware of? And there’s something coming out of the toilet and my reading of it, excuse my language, was That’s shit! There's a pile of shit coming out of the toilet! [laughs] That's not right! Why would it do that? Are the toilets not working? Are the toilets blocked? Why would you have two toilets? Just a lot I don't understand. You'd obviously normally expect toilets to be inside a building, but this doesn't seem to be in a building. I read it as a landscape, but it's not really part of the story other than adding color to it. So that was the confusion, but then also concern. You know, does this person need help? What is it they need? There's something that’s gone wrong here, it's not good. How can I help them? That was the next stage of my response.

How did you get from there to figuring out a direction to go for your own piece?

I thought it was more about the question, the title of the piece, “Where’s My Flock?”. I felt my response needed to be about “What can I do to help them?” There is an artist on Instagram that I follow, Jackie Morris. She's an amazing illustrator and storyteller through usually watercolors or ink. She will often share some interesting work. The day that I received the piece from Bait/Switch, she posted a work that an artist called Iain Cotton had made. He does this incredible carving in stone, usually lettering. That day, he had posted a carving from All Shall Be Well, which is by a very old, I want to say 14th Century, monk. It’s very old, ancient wisdom. I think the fact that he carves it into stone somehow makes it even more powerful. So this carving that he posted, that Jackie reshared on that day, All Shall Be Well, just seemed to be quite centering. You know, there's a way through this. Whatever this problem that's represented in this piece is, there is a way to help. It seemed to be a guiding light, really. I thought that if the intensity of my response feels urgent and that they need help, and with the title “Where's My Flock?”, well, we're here. We're here to help. And that tied into the carving that Iain Cotton had made.

Where'd you go from there?

Last year, I made a couple of small quilts and embroidered text into them. One of them says, “What you stay focused on will grow.” It's just within sight of where I work because I'm often either distracted accidentally or I'm asked to do work that isn't central to what I do. It's just a reminder that where you put your energy and your time, that's the thing that will increase. If people are asking you to do work that you don't want to do, and that's how you spend your time, you're going to get more of it. I just find it quite a useful little mantra. It helps me know that this small number of words on something that I can visibly see just redirects me when I need it. I was thinking, in terms of this piece, maybe what they need is just some redirection. “Where's my flock?” We're over here. We're here to help. So I thought I’d develop something that's about direction: an arrow with one or two words on there, just to say what's in that direction.

Initially, I was going to do “We're here” with an arrow, and then I thought, well, I'm not actually sure that what they need is their flock. I think what they need is help from friends, or at least to know where they are, so I just decided to respond with that text and the same color. I'd actually received some donated fabric the same day that the piece came in, which seemed to have the same intensity as the image. I decided to embroider an arrow with the word “friends”, and I'm going to link it back to the birds, the flock, by hanging it in the garden. What I really envisaged was that I could get a photo or small piece of video of a bird or two sat on my sewn response, in the garden. So I sewed the piece and then I hung it in the garden and set up a camera. I didn't quite catch on video any birds landing on it. It's nearly happened so many times, and it's happened so many times when the battery has run out! Of course. But that's the way it's meant to be.

If you look at the piece that you made separately from the prompt, what does it say to you on its own?

I’ve used a really organic stitch that I use quite a lot in my work. I've got quite a natural rhythm in stitching it and it tends to move quite freely as well. It's fairly easy to keep in a straight line if you focus. [laughs] I wanted it to have that organic feel because it just gives you a sense of almost swimming, like it's moving. I stitched the “friends” more simply. I was initially going to make it very solid and quite intense, but then I decided that you do need to work to read what it says. I think there needs to be some effort in it. And I was quite determined it was going to hang in the garden, so that's why I put those loops on. I think it's quite important in terms of fixing, just to make sure it stays readable across its length. A couple of times when I was trying to video, it was moving in the wind and that was quite nice as well. And again, I can see that the stitching adds to that movement. That's worked out quite well.

I think the only thing I would change – I realized afterwards when I started to place it in the garden – that actually in my garden, it would have made more sense for the arrow to go the other way. But, you know… [both laugh] I should have put my paper maquette in the garden first and then I would’ve clocked it. But it will work by the front door. So in the future, when friends are more likely to visit, if they go to where the front door is I can use it outside.

You're right. It is sort of like, “Friends, come here.” “Friends, this way.”

Yeah. “Friends are over there. Go that way and you will find them” or “If you are a friend, go this way.” It's got that to duality about it.

The whole idea of having friends has become so loaded during the pandemic. There's a lot more to it these days. You know, we have to be safe. We have to figure out who we’re going to actually hang out with. Do you want to talk at all about what it's meant for you?

Yeah, I'm happy too. I think you're right. It's really difficult to kind of navigate those relationships, isn't it? You've got relationships with people, whether it's colleagues or friends or family, where you've known somebody a long time and you think you know them. Then, whether it's through things going on in politics, or approach to vaccine, or testing or mask-wearing – all of that stuff now is just so emotional, right? It's so intense. Trying to navigate all of that is so tricky. For me, I'm very alert, very cautious. I really don't go out much at the moment. I'm quite aware that my friends have now started to meet, but I'm not ready to do that yet. And because they’re friends, they understand. So that's cool. But at some point, I have got to get my head around this. I'm not there yet, but I know that it needs to happen.

During the pandemic, I've stitched three out of what I hope will be four quilts about hugs and contact and the question of how we’ll negotiate physical contact in the future. In the past, I’d hug friends and give them a kiss on the cheek. It was normal then, but not today. And when I am ready, how do we then navigate that? You know, do you ask each other permission? “Would you mind if I gave you a hug?” It seems such a strange thing at the moment. I think other people are ahead of me on that, but I’m just not there yet.

How does this piece relate to the rest of your work?

I’m working a lot in fabric and stitch at the moment. I've always sewn but I'd not really done this kind of work before. The last two years, I have been doing quilts and embroidery and just a lot of that. I find it very therapeutic. Stitching is slow work and sometimes you’ve got to focus and a lot of times you haven't, which is quite nice. I can recycle fabric. It's easy to do something and undo it. It's got that changeability that I think we're so used to now, doing stuff digitally. I quite like that flexibility.

I'm finishing one quilt here, which has just come off [the frame]. This is the first one that I've done on a quilting frame, so that's been quite an interesting process for me. I normally just sit with them on my lap, stitching them. That's been good fun to do. Next up, I'm going to do a hug quilt. In fact, I have the maquette for it here. You're going to be able to put your arm inside the hug. Let me just put my arm in. [Demonstrates her arm going inside the quilt] I'm going to stitch my dad's hands, and then maybe my mum, and it's going to be like a 3D hug. So that's the next one.

Ohh that’s awesome.

Then I'm going to do some smaller wall hangings as well. I enjoy those just in terms of messaging and lettering. I really like doing lettering in all forms, so that's been fun. It's been nice to do that on here as well, actually. That's really appealed to me to get some lettering into it.

Do you have any advice for someone else approaching this project for the first time?

Just do it. Just do it and don't overthink it. I find it quite useful to just keep open a Word document and keep track of my notes to try to work through stuff. And to put in references and things I’ve found. I felt I got more from it by doing that. It's like a no-rules thing, right? Do what you like. However you want to do it, do that and just get stuck in. I think the two-week timeline actually really helps that. You just gotta crack on and do it. So yeah, go for it. Get on the list.

Call Number: Y69VA | Y71FI.edHe

Gwen Edwards: Based in the west of England, I work in the tech sector, but at heart I’m a maker and a mender. Whether its gardening, sewing, printing, drawing, or sculpting my brain and hands are never still. Lockdowns in the UK have brought hand quilting into my life, and I’m hooked!