The Bobby Pilling

Rune Speaker

Yesterday, Saturday the 10th of October, Carole Rinard came past the house loaded down with my stuff from the education exhibit at national seminar in Pittsburgh. Carole is the new chairman of the national nominating committee. Our good friend, Wanda Anderson, now living in Gunnison, CO, is the new Director of Education, a post that Carole just vacated. I love the way the power within EGA is slowly coming west. If we are not careful, we will have another national president from Rocky Mountain Region.

Along with my two blackwork samplers, my two models for A Fish Swallowed My Pencil and Pirate's Gold, she brought back my piece that won the Bobby Pilling Award this year, Rune Speaker. Ah, the Bobby Pilling Award for stitching outside the lines. I think a lot of the award was for explaining how I had stitched outside the lines.

Below are the words I wrote to the committee who judged the pieces entered for the award. There was some very good embroidery entered in the competition. But I thought I had a good chance because one of my private goals is to shatter some of the traditional styles of embroidery and make them, twisting and turning in color, break into the 21st century.

Thanks, Carole.

Rune Speaker

American non-traditional Hardanger doily
Linen ground with cotton threads
Decorated with a broken hand-carved wooden stamp with two types of gold paint.

I have long been exploring the very edges of Hardanger. What rules can I break and still have a piece have the look and presence of Hardanger?
The rules of classic Hardanger are old and strict. In this work I have broken four of them so that I have a piece that speaks of its maker. The first of the rules is about symmetry. All classic Hardanger work is formally symmetric in the placement of the motifs and areas of klosters. There is nothing that is formally symmetrical about this piece. All the klosters areas are randomly ordered. The second is that the shape of the work is random also--something that would never happen in classic Hardanger. Third is the use of paint and stamping to make it a truly mixed media work. And last is the use of color in a way a little different from the classic Hardanger’s white-on-white or off-white; different from the modern Hardanger of soft color with matching threads. I have used light lilac and metallic gold as complementary colors with the stamping dwindling away. To me the piece is like a piece of faded parchment with hidden messages and meanings long obscured.