Shadows

Emma Maclean

Interview by L. Valena

December 4, 2021

Can you please start by describing the prompt that you responded to?

I received a black and white drawing of a woman who was crying, and whose hair is actually flowers. And there’s a moon in the background. A portrait, but a portrait where things aren’t what they seem to be at first.

And what was your first reaction to that?

I was really struck by the florals. I love working with floral patterns and things like that. I was interested in the ability for things to transform in the drawing. At first glance it looks like one thing, but when you look further there’s more and more to it. Also the amount of contrast present in the piece was striking. The really strong black and white, and how they played together.

What happened next?

I actually printed out the picture and just put it up in my office so that I would see it as I was going about my day. Originally, I had been thinking that maybe I would make a portrait. I live with migraines, and so I think a lot about what a visual representation of a migraine attack might look like. In this portrait there are tears or leaves flowing down the left side of the face. The left side of my body is the side where my migraines most often manifest. So I started working with that, and like most pieces, it wasn’t what I wanted.

So I came back to it and thought about what else was inspiring, and I thought about that transformation idea. Something that looks to be one thing, but turns out to be something else. And because of the high contrast I started thinking about shadows, and was brought back to the idea of being young and watching things transform in front of your eyes. Your hands become this wolf creature. I thought I would lean more into that and explore the shadows, light and dark, and how those things relate to each other.

Something I find really striking about your piece is how solid the shadow feels, and how transitional and not solid the hands feel. Can you say more about that?

Yes, I think there are a few things happening there. I was interested in playing with the inversion of the expected. What casts a shadow? And on a brief shadow tangent - there’s actually a quilting phenomenon called shadowing, which is when a darker fabric shows through a lighter fabric in a piece. Generally you want to avoid shadowing - so you are advised to iron seams toward the darker fabric - but I like it. I enjoy getting a peek behind the curtain and seeing how something comes together.

Back to the question: What does it mean to be a solid thing? How does what we expect to see influence how we see it? What should something “look” like? Living with an invisible illness, I think a lot about how I represent that illness to others. (“You don’t look sick” is a phrase invisibly ill people hear often.) Sometimes to get the care I need, I have to make my illness visible in a way that is recognizable to other people. At these times, my body - my hands in this piece - is less impactful than the shadow or image that I project.

And the reverse can be true too, right? Like how our concept of reality about something can seem really big and important, and maybe it’s actually not that big of a deal.

Yes! Absolutely. And thinking about how light plays, things might change depending on where we’re standing. Obviously, in what I’ve made, we’re seeing both, but is there an iteration of this piece where we just see the wolf, or just see the hands? The perspective of where you’re positioned is also going to change the way you perceive reality.

I was just remembering when our dear cat Tiny Henry, who we lost a couple of months ago, experienced shadow puppets for the first time. It was just like a year ago, and it was the funniest thing ever. Just waving our hands in front of a light, and he was like, “What the fuck?!?”

“Are you guys seeing this? It’s gonna blow your mind.” [Laughs] I work with a theater group here in Chicago called A.B.L.E. This Fall we’ve been devising pieces and the connecting theme is telling stories around a campfire. I really didn’t think about that until you mentioned your cat, but it connects back to this idea of what is a story? And what do you need to make a story? So little. All of the fabrics I used in this piece are already in my home and using these known objects to make an unknown thing is also really interesting.

That’s kind of the heart of everything we do, right? Taking known stuff, be it fabric, language, music notes, or flavors, and making them into something different. A narrative, something that takes us outside of ourselves.

You said you had some kind of false starts. Do you want to talk about that at all?

I can definitely fall into the trap of thinking about things to no end, and then never executing on them. I remember in college when I was working on my thesis, my advisor said, “Yes, you seem to be thinking a lot about this. You’re reading a lot, but I don’t really know what you’re making.” The time limit on this piece was a real blessing. I didn’t have the time to over think. I had to do something, and could sit and decide if I didn’t like it later. It is very easy for me to think infinitely, which doesn’t necessarily correlate to work that I like better.

I mirrored the floral imagery in the prompt piece with the floral background fabric (reminicent of old wallpaper, which I love). The false starts were helpful, in that they articulated something that this piece of art brought up, and it just wasn’t the thing that I was ready to explore as deeply. I initially cut strips of all kinds of floral fabric, but the simple whole cloth background was a better fit.

I think in making art in general, but especially with textiles, I try to lead with what feels easy and joyful. If that is not what’s happening, I’ll switch it out for another project. I have no limit to the number of half-finished projects that can be going at any given moment. So even though that floral false start didn’t lead me exactly where I was going, there was still thinking happening, and those ideas could be pulled into something else.

The piece continues to reveal itself. Something I’m always struck by when I make quilts is how much the quilting changes the nature of the piece. I think you can see it in the photos as well. The light and stitches become such a textured part of the piece. So that is wonderful too; it takes a little bit of a leap of faith. I know what I think I want the quilting to do, but then it always surprises me on top of that. Thinking about shadows and light. The way the quilt can capture light is so different from just a piece of fabric laid out on the floor. That’s interesting in trying to photograph the piece too. How is light a component in this work? Both from the subject matter, but then actual sunlight caught inside it.

I’ve been admiring the patterning of the quilting. It’s a really cool and unexpected pattern. It does feel like a callback to old wallpaper, but it also just gives so much motion to this piece. And you expect it to have motion -- it’s about shadow.

Yes! The flickering. And I was basing the idea of the patterning on a traditional quilt design called the Baptist Fan. The idea of things moving in cycles, and in circles, in waves. The prompt piece had the moon, and also these lines that radiate behind the face, and I wanted to try to capture that as well. I want the background to feel more alive, more present than just a figure in a blank space. I assumed that the figure in the prompt was female, I think because of the eyelashes, but in talking about it and looking at it further, that’s interesting too. I saw myself reflected in the drawing because that was my first idea. There are things that happened automatically in my brain, that I didn’t even realize were present until we started pulling it apart.

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

I am a quilter, and I work with both reused and new fabric. I’m really interested in how we can translate and make the invisible visible. As I talked about a little bit earlier, I have had chronic pain for a lot of my life, and live with migraines. I’m really interested in how that pain becomes material or physical. That’s something that I explore in a lot of the work that I make. I have a series that I’m doing where I’m making a small framed quilt that represents each of the words in the McGill Pain Index, which is a very interesting document if you’ve never seen it before. That feels very present in my work. I’m also interested in figures and bodies. Because quilts, when present in our lives, say living on a bed or couch, are so close to our bodies. I’m interested in how the figure remains present in the quilt, even when there is no body with it. Also, I love handwork. I hand quilt everything, which is an amazing opportunity to sit with a quilt and use it for its intended purpose while it continues to grow and take shape. If you look closely at the quilting, it’s not going to be perfect, and that’s the point. I want it to look like a human made it. So all of those themes are present.

I have to say, having made this first shadow puppet quilt, I’m very interested in maybe digging a little bit deeper and making some other pieces. I was very taken by making this, and it was nice to have it in a very short period of time. I’ve been wondering if there are other shadow puppets that need to find their way into pieces.

Please keep us posted if you do! Do you have any advice for another artist approaching this project for the first time?

Having had so much success pushing past my own first idea, I think that would be my advice to other people doing it. Make your first idea, and then get rid of it entirely and see what your second idea is. I think that for me was so much more fruitful and engaging. Enjoy the time crunch -- I loved that aspect of it. What can you do? If it’s small or unfinished, what does that mean? That’s kind of its own indicator as well.

Is there anything we didn’t talk about?

No, I think we covered it. It was wonderful to speak with you. It’s great to be able to talk about art with people. I feel like I haven’t been able to do that in a long time. Seeing art used to be a bigger component of my life. What a gift to have people talk about your art. The invitation to the conversation is so wonderful.

Call Number: Y68VA | Y72VA.maSha

Emma MacLean is a textile artist living and working in Chicago. She has always been a crafter and a maker of things, a passion that was nurtured by her mom and aunt Joan for as long as she can remember. She is fascinated by invisible things and truly believes that everything is art. You can see more of her work on instagram (@emmamakesit) or on her website emmamacleanquilts.com.