Water River Flood. 2022
Embroidery created with the support of a Micro Commission from Somerset Art Works
In this commission I wanted to link the environment around the village of Muchelney - the ‘great island’ on the Somerset moors, with global climate change and how we might view this - not with worry and panic, but circumspection and an eye to how nature and people can adapt. I am creating a long embroidery of aquatic and bank-side plants which will become an installation in St Peter and St Paul’s church, Muchelney. It will rise ( or fall ) from the font in the west of the church and flow down the nave. There is a public event in early October where the community and the public will come together with songs about the nurturing and life-giving value of water, both physical and spiritual.
I'm not sure how may kilometres of thread I’ve used, but the “Flood” embroidery is growing!
I am calling the installation I am making for Muchelney Church ‘’Water, River Flood”, which is too late for the SAW brochure, but as I am sewing, this encapsulates the direction of my thinking:
Water is our precious resource, the source of all life. Here in the UK we take water for granted, as it flows through the landscape and we turn on the taps. But with the hot summer we’ve had (in 2022), and an increasing awareness of the devastation that can be caused when there is either too little or too much, we should be far more in awe of the precious presence of water.
The subject of my embroidery is the plant life that lives along the river-side, or is submerged within its depths. This summer I’ve been swimming in the Parrett with goggles, and have watched the weeds underwater as they flow and tangle with my legs. Earlier, I watched the yellow water lilies (Nuphar lutea) emerge, spread and flower along the surface.
This embroidery will flood out of the font and up the nave of the church; a small flood that doesn’t reach far yet. I plan to continue sewing into next year, with more of the early summer plants - water plantain (Alisma Plantago-aquatica) and arrow head (Sagittaria saggittifolia), so that the fabric, in a couple of years, reaches to the altar.
