place

Where are you?

What place does place have in your making?

Have you ever stopped to consider what effect place has on your making?

What does place have to do with your design outcomes? 

This is something I consider often, as someone living in another country, far from where I grew up, and the nth country I have lived or worked in.

There are the obvious things, like time zone and season. But while obvious, have you stopped to consider their impact?

light + time

What are your working/making hours like? Do you get up with the sun and go to bed with the sun? Do you get up and work in the dark, or work late into the night, or do you work only when you have natural daylight available?

I tend to make when I have good daylight available. There is always some close handwork, or hand quilting to be done, so good natural light is such a necessity. I sit near a window for hand sewing, and generally only do it during the day. Especially any black on black work.

Does this affect how long you spend making in any given day? Maybe you only have 6 hours of daylight, maybe you have 14. Do you work longer/shorter time in your studio based on this?  

Sometimes, I like to sketch in this changing light of a new day. Shadows and objects take on new and sometimes unexpected shapes. I don’t tend to do much in the evenings, a result of early mornings and young children means an early night generally.

Do you work indoors, outdoors, near windows, in a basement? How much does the arc of the day dictate or impact your creative work?

weather + seasons

What is the quality of the light that you work in? Is it bright sunshine, or overcast days with their diffuse cloudy light.

Then… seasons… How do they affect the light? In winter here where I live the days are short, but not only, the light is somehow different. More muted, quieter. Slanting in low.

Latitude and global location affect light too. It seems strange, because we are so used to where we live, but the light is also different based on your geographical location. All related to the slant of the light from the sun. In Europe for example, the late afternoon sun in winter is almost always a diffuse soft light, where as in Australia I remember a stronger light, brighter, cleaner. This may also have something to do with actual physical particles in the atmosphere. I would hazard to guess that where I live in northern populous Italy, based on the climatic reality and the smog reality there is a different filter applied to the light due to pollution vs light in Australia.

Well, maybe you choose colors differently, due to the quality of the light, or based on your mood and the season. After a long winter, are you more drawn to bright spring colors? After a long hot summer, do you crave the coolness of blues and greens? If you live in the desert, do you gravitate towards greens, or what is around you in the physical space? Dusty reds, ochres, yellows, greys.

physical place

How do physical geographical elements play into this? Are you influenced by the shapes around you? When I go walking daily, I see many splayed trees, and long lines receding to the horizon in the fruit fields where I walk. I see certain shapes in the houses and buildings that are native to this part of the world. This would be different if I was in Australia, or another part of the world. The structures and shapes available as inspiration are many and varied and change place to place, which is probably why we get so stimulated when we travel to a new place. Everything is fresh. The senses exalt!

distance

How does proximity to family affect your making? This is also about place, no? Do you get nostalgic for your cousin’s baby whom you haven’t met and make them a quilt? What about that friend who lives on the other side of the world who you hardly ever see, but thoughts are invoked when you see a certain fabric, or set of colors and down the inspiration rabbit hole you go…

availability

Does availability of resources affect you making decisions? Personally here, I don’t have ready access to (insert name of a mainstream solids fabric collection) that appears to be so readily and easily available to quilters in the US for example, such as Kona solids, Bella Solids by Moda, Pure Solids by Art Gallery Fabrics, Colorwork Solids by Figo, etc.

So, my place dictates what colors I have access to. I can make with only certain commercially available colors. Of course, you can get into dyeing, natural dyeing too, and that adds a whole new dimension to place. What local plants are available to you for use? What colors do these produce? Another avenue for exploration.

Do you make about the place you are in? Or places you have been? Or places you would like to go?

How does place affect your making choices?

Leave a comment, I would love to know how you see place as an influence in your work.