India... the quilt 2015

At one incredible palace, we saw ancient carved stone window screens with geometric patterns, called jali.  Women of nobility in these palaces could only see the outside world through the protective (and imprisoning) screen of the jali. Like the windows of our tour bus, they were both protective, and both limiting.

I decided to make a bus window into a jali, using many photos of our bus, and other buses, and Photoshop. 

I made the images into thermofax screens, and printed them on white cotton. Then began the somewhat tedious process of fusing the cotton to batting material, cutting out the window openings, and sewing back the edges to create a jali-like screen:

Here is the original layout of the image under the jali...

..made of Indian textiles, photos printed on cloth and prayer flags.

And here is the finished quilt, jali (39"h x 27"w), with details:

If you look along the bottom of the quilt, you can see many of the images from the last post on India.

Women working, carrying bricks, mixing cement, while wearing beautiful fragile saris. Look closely, and you'll see different images of jalis, plus one ceramic version.

While in India, I bought some patchworks which were sewn together from scraps of various textiles. The pieces were roughly patched together with a thick, couched yarn, as in this sample:

I used the same couching technique to outline some of my images:

To be clear, I was NOT on an All India tour. I just used that wording to help identify the bus image. 

OK, that's it for cartographic quilting and travel-related posts. Starting Monday, I'm finally ready to share a whole new direction in my art, one that I've been working on for over a year now.

India 2015.....need more than a map for this one

Until I was almost 60, I did very little traveling. Then my husband and I flew to London, and Paris, and even Japan! My sister and I flew to Ireland, and Turkey and Israel. I went alone to Australia and New Zealand. I began to feel like I really knew my way around the world. Then we went to India, and I realized I knew nothing.

This was the only trip going with a tour, and, coward that I am, I'm very glad we rode encased in a white bus-bubble. We traveled the part of India called the Golden Triangle, the section most visited by tourists: Delhi, Agra and Jaipur. Yes, there are marvels to see - among horrifying poverty, disgusting filth and  insane roads. 

There are NO GARBAGE TRUCKS.  People sweep trash up into piles, animals rummage through the piles, and it stays there. Along the banks of the Ganges River, women do their laundry, in the filthy water.

Dried animal dung is used as fuel. I watched women use their bare hands to form the dung into patties and pile them up to dry.

I could see the handprints on the drying fuel.

Women cooked on small fires in rural villages, and in city gutters.

I saw these pumps everywhere: water for drinking, washing, laundry, everything. People bathe right along the roadside at these pumps.  There are no public toilets, so people urinate and defecate everywhere. 

In urban areas, it was common to see shanties like these, often huge groupings of these improvised buildings. When I discussed this with someone, they said "you think this is bad, you should see Mumbai!" I can't imagine.

My sister and I, and our fellow tourists, rode along in air-conditioned comfort, drinking chilled bottled water, sealed off from reality, going from one gated, guarded, luxury hotel to the next.  

I've read travel accounts describing the wonders of India, the spirituality, the beauty: that's like describing the beautiful face of a starving woman. We should be sending aid, not tourists. Look, I don't have this set up so people can leave comments easily, but I'd really like to hear what other people think about this. At the top of the page there's a CONTACT you can click and write to me, and I will answer your email.

Tomorrow, the quilt.