December 2003
Speech read at presentation ceremony of Brumley Textile Diptych, Durham
Academy
-Marguerite Jay Gignoux
History offers ample evidence that cloth has served the community of man for centuries; providing conventional warmth and shelter as well as delivering a wide spectrum of artistic expressions. We rely on the simple intersection of threads in all aspects of daily life. We look around us and we see that all manners of clothing, furnishing and architecture derive their enduring strength from the careful combination of warp and weft. There is much creative potential in the deliberate entanglement of thread.
Flexible, fragile, strong and complex: fabric when properly activated has remarkable artistic, social and spiritual range. Its very structure contains the inherent power to combine and connect. This autumn, students at Durham Academy have taken some time from their demanding schedules to make a strong and enduring statement in cloth. They have been remembering George and Jordan Brumley. This pair of textiles contains extraordinary layers of thought, of memory. It holds poems, prayers and letters goodbye. It is full of childhood hilarity and deep anguish. Students embarked on this project with great poise and purpose and deposited their very personal thoughts onto stretched lengths of sheer silk. They painted with great exuberance on the silk and on heavy canvas. They stitched, they wrapped. They ironed, they rinsed. They remembered.
Together they worked to activate the surface with their hands, with their hearts. And they succeeded in creating a meaningful dialogue with these simple materials and with each other. This collective cloth has been cut, stitched, patched and bound into a sculptural, layered composition. It is held together by long lengths of wire that have been lovingly wrapped with sumptuous yardage containing the words “we remember” written in many different handwritings hundreds of times.
Memory isn’t linear. It is stacked
behind today; hidden and then not. It is full of mystery and provides
us with surprise pockets of wonder and delight. These textiles have been
constructed with this in mind. Small squares of translucent silk joins
heavy layers of hand painted canvas. A poem emerges along the surface
of these works hinting at the enormity of feeling that is concealed below.
Those that worked on this tribute to George and Jordan Brumley will recognize
their hand in the cloth. It is all there; brilliant shouts of color and
line and emotion joined in loving memory.
