on collecting, sustainability and grief

Stash
noun 
/stæʃ/

An amount of something that has been stored or hidden, especially a large amount

(Cambridge Dictionary)

Experimenting with part of a large stash of domestic textiles that belonged to my late mother,
as part of seam‘s Holburne Open residency in Bath, March 2022.
I’m holding (m)other, the first in my Transitional objects series of sculptures, which I made during the residency

Stash, hoard or collection?

I imagine that many people reading this will know what I mean by a ‘stash’. I have one, and its considerable. I like to think of myself as a collector, but sometimes, I’m not so sure. As well as the expected stash of wool, cloth and thread etc, I have a number of large, ever-growing collections of curious objects – fruit nets, ring pulls, pill packets, bottle tops, and even a collection of my hair and fingernails! However, my biggest stash is of used clothing. To me, this is treasure and it’s with this that I normally construct my stitched sculptures.

Until recently, this stash has consisted mainly of my own clothes and those of my family members. However, over the past couple of years, I’ve acquired two large stashes of textile materials that used to belong to other people. Using these materials to develop new sculptures has made me think differently and introduced an interesting change in control to my work.

Thinking about my habit of gathering materials is rather an uncomfortable topic though, frankly. Apparently,

‘(t)he difference (between hoarding and collecting) … is how these items are organised. A collection is usually well ordered, and the items are easily accessible. A hoard is usually very disorganised, takes up a lot of room and the items are largely inaccessible’ (NHS, 2022).

Part of my mother’s stash of bedding and towels as a trial installation at The Holburne Open, March 2022

And why am I compelled to stash all these materials anyway? In 1994, the psychoanalyst, Werner Muensterberger, suggested that attachment disorders and ‘unresolved childhood anxieties may be at the root of the collecting impulse’. I was, however, subsequently heartened to read that nowadays, according to the psychologist, Shirley Mueller, ‘few experts would say that collecting is pathological.’ (2022)

I like to think that my own stash is purposeful and ordered enough to be a collection – just – but sometimes it definitely feels like too much stuff!

Art and sustainability

Working with seam has made me question my practice in a number of ways, but I think the most significant issue for me has been about sustainability in my practice. For seam’s month-long residency at The Holburne Open in Bath in March 2022, we wrote a manifesto about how and why we wanted to find ways to make thread visible – through experimentation, connection, conversation, thought… and sustainability (seam collective, 2022). It was the beginning of the collective’s research and development for our tour.

(m)other at seam‘s research residency at The Holburne Open, Bath in March 2022.

Hans Dieleman, professor of Sociology at the University of Mexico City, maintains that,

‘the change process to sustainability is ‘more than rational’. It is about emotions, desires and fears, lifestyles, identities and intuitive notions. It is equally about visions and expectations of the future or of multiple futures. In essence changing towards sustainability is the ‘art of being different’, of using different products, designing different lifestyles and engaging in different practices, doing things in different ways and seeing reality in different ways.’ (2008, p2)

‘…changing towards sustainability is the ‘art of being different’, of using different products, designing different lifestyles and engaging in different practices, doing things in different ways and seeing reality in different ways.’

Hans Dieleman

He goes on to suggest the ways that he believes art and design can play a significant ‘role as change agents’ in sustainable development, globally:

‘Art is in essence exploring, shaping, testing and challenging reality and images, thoughts and definitions of reality. Artists engage in these activities in their specific ways, using creativity, lateral thinking and intuition. I conclude that art and artists can help in actual change processes and that many are already doing that.’ (ibid.).

I find the whole subject of climate change and the environmental crisis terrifying and utterly overwhelming, as I’m sure that most people do. Textile waste is, of course, an enormous factor. Apparently, each year, in the UK alone, approximately 350,000 tonnes of clothing are dumped, incinerated or shipped elsewhere in the world (London Borough of Redbridge, 2023).I can’t help thinking what difference will it possibly make if I change the way I make art? However, the history of protest shows that multiple, small, individual actions CAN lead to big changes, so I’m determined to at least see if my tiny contribution can make a difference, somehow. One artist deciding to use second-hand materials is clearly not a solution to the urgent problem of textile waste worldwide, but I hope that it might at least highlight the issue and raise awareness.

Someone else’s stash

My two new sculptural works are both made with someone else’s stash. One is my late mother’s and the other belonged to a total stranger. I was interested to discover so many differences between working with my mother’s ‘stuff’ and working with someone else’s. I discuss here my thoughts about working with my mother’s stash; I will explore the differences I felt working with a stranger’s stash in a second blog, to be published in April 2024.

Grief can be a complex thing. Both my parents died at the end of 2021, within 3 months of one another. They were elderly, frail and struggling with a range of physical disabilities. Supporting them in the years leading up to their deaths was extremely difficult, for them and for the whole family, but it also meant that I spent more time with them, for which I am now most grateful.

Sorting through my parents’ belongings after their deaths, I brought home 6 bin liners of their used clothing, bedding and towels, much of which was in the colours of my – and their – flesh – a wide range of pinks, white, cream, beige and palest yellow. My mother loved pink, and I see it as predominantly her stash; in the stereotypical gendering of roles of their generation, she was responsible for the acquisition and subsequent care of all domestic textiles.  

I began to stitch this rather bizarre stash, experimenting with surface, texture and form… and the result is a series of 5 idiosyncratic, life-sized, abstract, bodily sculptures, my Transitional objects.

Transitional objects, 2022, hanging out at ACEArts, Somerton, January 2023

Cloth, intimacy and grief

For my undergraduate dissertation, Second skin, I researched the meanings behind the use of second-hand clothing in Fine Art (Baker, 2014). Then, my research focused on concepts like embodiment, memory, loss, absence and the abject; now, I realise that using someone else’s stash adds other dimensions to the meanings behind my work and, also, hopefully, highlights the issues surrounding textile waste as I challenge myself about sustainability in my practice.

Second skin? Details of some of the tactile surfaces of my Transitional objects

I was most struck by how cathartic I found it to work intensively with my mother’s used textiles, day in, day out, as I developed this series of sculptures. I’m sure that others will recognise the deep, almost meditative, state conjured by many textile processes. Psychologist, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, calls it ‘flow’ (2002). This state obviously isn’t exclusive to textile processes, but almost all the techniques I use in my practice are intense and repetitive and, consequently, lead to flow – knitting, stitch and, as I recently discovered during last year’s socially engaged exhibition tour with Social Scaffolding, even pompom making! (2023)

I often find that when I’m in this flow, my mind becomes open to deep and different ways of thinking. Consequently, while I was making my Transitional objects, I found myself remembering my mother and gradually began to unravel aspects of our complex relationship. It helped me to process my grief.

When the artist, Shelley Goldsmith began to work with used clothing, she wrote ‘…perfumes and bodily smells were revealed, I found it rather spooky and provocative…we are unable to live our life without leaving a part of ourselves behind in them’ (in Wildgoose 2008). I too found that the process of handling, manipulating and transforming my mother’s used clothing and bedding was very poignant. Through multiple senses – sight, smell, touch – I found an unexpected intimacy and comfort in the familiarity of cloth that had clothed and protected her body.

This blurring of the senses, I think, is a very distinctive attribute of textiles generally. Curator Pennina Barnett suggests that there’s a merging of the senses of touch and sight associated with cloth. She says ‘The eye…does not simply look. It also feels. Its response is both visual and tactile…’ the senses are ‘…each enfolded in the other’ (1999, p185, their italics).

‘The eye…does not simply look. It also feels. Its response is both visual and tactile…’
the senses are ‘…each enfolded in the other’

Pennina Barnett

There’s definitely something about cloth, memory and smell too. Discussing Louise Bourgeois’ use of clothing in her work, curator Marie-Laure Bernadac suggests that ‘(c)lothes are the body’s second skin; they cling not only to its shape but also to its spirit, enclosing the fragrance of a specific period in their folds’ (2006, p 154). Worn clothing can evoke individual memories or a more universal sense of loss, depending on the context (Baker, 2014).

And what about intimacy? Judy Attfield, design historian, discusses the private nature of cloth, suggesting that:

‘because clothes make direct contact with the body, and domestic furnishings define the personal spaces inhabited by the body…cloth is proposed as one of the most intimate of thing-types that materialises the connection between the body and the outer world’ (2000, p1)

The intimacy of prolonged contact allows cloth to take on the shape of the human form and absorb the scents and bodily stains of the wearer (Baker, 2014, p5).

Me with my Transitional objects on my mother’s birthday
at seam‘s A Visible THREAD exhibition, Fine Foundation Gallery, Durlston Country Park, Swanage, 17 May 2023

I’m very conscious that the items I selected to work with are probably some of the most intimate I could have chosen – everyday domestic textiles like sheets, towels and flannels but also some of my mother’s quaint, old-fashioned underwear. This semblance of intimacy definitely helped me to grieve.

Transitional objects?

In 1953, the psychoanalyst, Donald Winnicott, used the term ‘transitional objects’ to describe ‘those blankets, soft toys, and bits of cloth to which young children frequently develop intense, persistent attachments’. Winnicott suggests that these attachments ‘represent an essential phase of ego development leading to the establishment of a sense of self’ (Litt, 1986). Much of my work focuses on explorations of identity and the Self, as is clear in a recent overview of my practice, Self and Other (Baker, 2024). Psychologist, Michael Fordham, proposes that individuation begins the moment we’re born (Urban, 2024). Philosopher, Julia Kristeva, talks about this process of separation between mother and child in childhood too. She says, ‘the abject marks the moment when we separated ourselves from the mother, when we began to recognise a boundary between me and other, between me and (m)other’ (Felluga, 2011).

‘those blankets, soft toys, and bits of cloth to which young children frequently develop intense, persistent attachments’

Donald Winnicott

It interests me that I have, in fact, dissected and sutured sections of some old or unfinished sculptural self-portraits into these new works, creating uncanny chimeras of parts of me and parts of my mother, my Frankenstein’s monsters (Baker, 2020b).

I have written elsewhere about textiles and touch (Baker, 2023). I often find that people can’t help touching my work, so my Transitional objects are made to be touched; visitors are invited to sit with them, to rearrange them, to hug them, to explore the highly textured surfaces. But, of course, they are my uncanny monsters so the pastel pink palette and their irresistible surfaces bely a darker side. At first sight they appear to be appealing, life-sized, cuddly forms… but on closer inspection there are several disquieting aspects to them – disembodied limbs, multiple, protruding breasts and pockets of human hair and nails. As ever, I’m interested in provoking a range of conflicting responses and exploring ambiguity and here I’m highlighting the boundaries between comfort and discomfort (Douglas, 1966).

My Transitional objects‘ first outing,
for seam‘s A Visible THREAD exhibition at ACEArts, Somerton, December 2022.
It was wonderful to see people interact with these
touchable sculptures in so many different ways.

All of this, of course, takes me full circle to my previous musings about my precious collections generally, hoarding and attachment. I don’t have any answers, just more questions. And I quite like it that way.

Making thread visible

I have been thrilled to be able to exhibit my Transitional objects twice so far as part of seam collective’s A Visible THREAD touring exhibition. My touchable sculptures had their first outing at ACEArts in Somerton in December 2022 and then toured to The Fine Foundation Gallery at Durlston Country Park in Swanage, in May 2023. The images of visitors interacting with the sculptures evidence the curiosity and delight that many people experience when they realise they are allowed to touch my sculptures. However, comments from other people highlight their reticence and uncertainties about what it is they’re touching!

Transitional objects at A Visible THREAD,
Fine Foundation Gallery, Durlston Country Park, Swanage, May/June 2023

Some of the fabulous team seam with my Transitional objects at Fine Foundation Gallery, May 2023
Back row l-r: Jane Colquhoun, Alice-Marie Archer, Nina Gronw Lewis, Lou Baker
Front row l-r: Joy Merron, Oly Bliss, Helen MacRitchie

For the current iteration of A Visible THREAD, at Llantarnam Grange, I have, in fact, chosen to install my other recent sculpture, which is knitted using the second stash I mentioned earlier, a stranger’s stash. This sculpture is just called Stash. For more about my thoughts and theories behind this work, keep a look out for the second instalment of my Busting someone else’s stash blog post, due to be published by in April 2024.

In the meantime, A Visible THREAD is on show at Llantarnam Grange until 4 May 2024. Catch it if you can!

Lou Baker

Select References

Attfield, J. (2000), Wild Things, the Material Culture of Everyday Life, Oxford, New York: Berg

Baker, L. (2014) Second skin; used clothing in the works of Louise Bourgeois and Christian Boltanski, BA dissertation, UWE, Bristol, Available at: https://www.academia.edu/32294698/Lou_Baker_Second_skin_used_clothing_and_representations_of_the_body_in_the_work_of_Louise_Bourgeois_and_Christian_Boltanski_2014

Baker, L. (2020b) Frankenstein; self and other Available at: https://loubakerartist.weebly.com/25720-frankenstein-self-and-others.html (Accessed 2 March 2024)

Baker, L. (2023) Sculpture’s gone soft! Available at: https://seamcollective.org/2023/04/25/sculptures-gone-soft/ (Accessed 2 March 2024)

Baker, L. (2024) Self and Other Available at: https://www.academia.edu/115350902/Lou_Baker_Self_and_other_plus_transcript_and_references_January

Barnett, P. (1999), ‘Folds, fragments and surfaces: towards a poetics of cloth’ in Hemmings, Jessica (ed.), 2012, The Textile Reader, Berg: London, New York pp 182 -190

Bernadac, M. (2006) Louise Bourgeois. Paris: Flammarion

Cambridge Dictionary, (no date a) Stash, Available at: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/stash (Accessed 29 February 2024)

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2002) Flow; the classic work on how to achieve happiness. London: Rider

Dieleman, H. (2008), Sustainability, art and reflexivity; why artists and designers may become key change agents in sustainability, Available at: https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/36464560/Dieleman_2008_Sustainability__Artists_and_Reflexivity_in_Kagan___Kirchberg-libre.pdf?1422738720 (Accessed: 7 August 2022)

Dormor, C., (2008), ‘skin: textile: film’ in Textile, Volume 6, Issue 3, pp 238-253

Douglas, M. (1966) Purity and Danger. London and New York: Routledge

Felluga, D. (2011) ‘Modules on Kristeva: On the Abject’ in Introductory Guide to Critical Theory Available at: https://cla.purdue.edu/academic/english/theory/psychoanalysis/kristevaabject.html (Accessed 5 May 2020)

Goldsmith, S. in Wildgoose, J., 2008, ‘Considering the evidence’ in Hemmings, Jessica (ed.), 2012, The Textile Reader, Berg: London, New York pp 64-67

Rosenbaum-Kranson, S., 2010, Christian Boltanski, Available from: http://www.museomagazine.com/CHRISTIAN-BOLTANSKI (Accessed 18 April 2012)

Litt, C. (1986) Theories of Transitional Object Attachment: An Overview Available at:https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/016502548600900308#:~:text=Abstract,frequently%20develop%20intense%2C%20persistent%20attachments (Accessed 1 March 2024)

London Borough of Redbridge (2023) Fashion doesn’t need to cost the earth Available at: https://www.redbridge.gov.uk/news/feb-2023/fashion-doesn-t-need-to-cost-the-earth-help-reduce-clothing-waste-in-redbridge/#:~:text=Published%3A%2028%20February%202023,water%2C%20fossil%20fuels%20and%20energy (Accessed 1 March 2024)

Mueller, S. (2022) Hoarders versus collectors, Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-mind-collector/202202/hoarders-versus-collectors?amp (Accessed 29 February 2024)

Muensterberger, W. (1994) Collecting: An Unruly Passion – Psychological Perspectives, New Jersey: Princeton University Press

NHS (2022) Hoarding disorder Available at: https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/hoarding-disorder/#:~:text=The%20difference%20between%20a%20%22hoard,the%20items%20are%20largely%20inaccessible (Accessed 29 February 2024)

seam collective (2022) Making Thread Visible, Available at: https://seamcollective.org/making-thread-visible/ (Accessed 2 March 2024)

Social Scaffolding (2023) Home Available at: https://www.socialscaffolding.art/ (Accessed 2 March 2024)

Urban, E (2024) Fordham’s Model of Development Available at: https://www.thesap.org.uk/articles-on-jungian-psychology-2/michael-fordham/fordham-model-development/ (Accessed 1 March 2024)