Water River Flood. 2022-2024

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 have created a long embroidery of aquatic and bank-side plants as an installation in St Peter and St Paul’s church, Muchelney. It rises ( or falls ) from the font in the west of the church and flows down the nave. There was a public event in early October ,2022, and again in late September 2024 where the community and the public came 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 grew! It is now about 1700 cm long.

I am calling the installation I have made for Muchelney Church ‘’Water, River Flood”. As I was sewing, this encapsulated 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.

I started drawing, and then embroidering in the winter 2022, so my subjects had lost their flexibility, or else were bent and sparse in their forms, such as Knappweed, Nettle, Wood Dock (or Curled dock) and what is possibly Canadian Fleabane. The leaves of the Common Reed (Phragmites communis) were equally weatherbeaten and flittered awkwardly in the wind.

Each summer I’ve been swimming in the Parrett with goggles on, and have watched the weeds underwater as they flow and tangle with my legs. The occasional fish appeared and disappeared. I have watched the yellow water lilies (Nuphar lutea) - also called brandy bottle or spadderdock, apparently - emerge, spread and flower along the surface, visited by flitting damselflies. Later I discovered in the faster flowing water arrowhead flowering (Sagittaria sagitifolia), difficult to see from the banks. Their tall waxy stalks a miracle of white flowers and buds.

In quieter ditches I found Frogbit (Hydrocharis morsus-ranae) with the most delicate three-petalled flowers with a yellow centre, growing in linked lines, each plant showing a few hairy roots. Here also is water plantain (Alisma Plantago-aquatica), Branched bur-reed (Sparganium erectum), Iris, or the yellow Flag (Pseudacorus) and abundant growths of Purple Loosestrife. All these prefer the stillness of water, and avoid the currents.

This embroidery floods out of the font and up the nave of the church, the fabric imitating the ripple of water, until it reaches the altar. Now that I have completed it, I feel that it is a piece for contemplation, just as it was as I worked on it. No need to hurry, just observe nature as it is and as you move through it. Its beauty and its presence.