I’m continuing to work with words and ideas from Wordsworth’s Ode, and have taken the last line for my most recent piece of work: THOUGHTS THAT OFTEN LIE TOO DEEP FOR TEARS.
For me, it’s almost a summing up of the depth of the meaning of the poem but as a phrase in itself is evocative of times when there are no words for an experience or one cannot make sense of memories or remembrances.
I’ve recently learnt more about Kantha stitch - small running stitches that piece together and adorn Indian Kantha cloths. Wondering how the stitching would translate to paper, I tried using silk on the same layered Khadi tissue paper that I used for the sewn and stitched pages of the whole poem which you can see in my previous post.
In a glancing light the directions of the stitches show with different subtleties of shine and shade in the silk. I wondered how this could be used for lettering.
So drew out on graph paper skeleton letter shapes and spaces to make the phrase: ‘Thoughts that often lie too deep for tears’ into a geometric-looking block. This was the stitching guide for the work.
I simply ‘filled in’ the areas with continuous running stitch, changing direction for each block. Here is the work against the window to allow the light to come through - the stitching shows quite clearly.
Each line of letters is 25mm high. The whole stitched area measures 225mm x 125mm. Below is a sideways image that shows the resulting texture and play of light across the stitches.
