| Part 1 Designing
a sampler by giving it life and the power of speech is no easy task. It’s by drawing from deep within my soul, and
because I want to share a few secrets, that this “Marquoir Story” has come into
being. You just need a little imagination. This story in stitching really
exists. So that you can really understand it,
I’m revealing to you a little piece of my own garden that opens up into this strange
world. In order to understand Part 1, just
close your eyes and imagine the following scene… Logically, you have to begin with the
central tree. If you’ve done that,
you’ve uncovered the focal point of the work. I
won’t tell you what’s going on under the tree, but rather what you see around
it. The tree in this sampler is the soul
of the work. From this tree springs the life
of this secret place. It has 10 equal,
symmetrical branches, all bearing fruit. The
lighter in color the fruit is, the purer the tree is, and the more peaceful it stays. When the fruits are darker in color, the tree is
recharging its batteries. The change from
light-colored fruits to darker ones is normal – it’s a natural cycle that
conjures up all kinds of emotions. The sun is the healing core: it’s the heart that warms us and calms us. That is why our tree has a ray of sunlight in its trunk, and why two hearts are at the foot of the tree – so that love is always ready to bloom inside us. The lower panels represent the plowed earth … that represents the unknown in all of us. We don’t know what will grow there, or when, and we won’t find out while we make this sampler. Flowerpots have been placed on either side of this section at the bottom. The colors have the same meaning as the colors of the fruit on our tree. They are different, in order to clearly show the cyclical nature of the changing seasons, and of time that passes and brings constant renewal. Moving upwards
a bit, two thick, woven round borders protect the patch of garden where our tree has lived
for many years. Only you can get past these
borders, which are guarded by tiny pairs of pointy scissors. If you see flowers instead of
scissors, that means you’re starting to like this place! Not far away, two houses are there
for rest and relaxation. Apparently, the
number of windows indicates the number of children living in each house. I chose the house on the left for my
kids: Aurélien on the left, Julien on the right and Alexandre up above under the eaves. The other house on the right is a personal
refuge, which I call “my garden cabin”. It’s
a mysterious place and I’m the only one that can go inside, especially since the
extra set of keys to my heart was lost by someone who only left me pain and
loneliness… But I still hope I can find them, maybe a bit further away on the
fabric… I share the three windows with the
gatekeepers to my heart, Guizmo and Casper, who keep me company. Just to repeat what the two houses stand for: the
one on the left is the house where one lives every day, with or without children, and it
always has windows because it’s the house that is most used; the house on the right
is a personal refuge. That’s where you
keep your intense joys, heartaches, tears, dreams and illusions. That’s where you go to rest and
rejuvenate… The letters (for now, we only see the
end of the alphabet) are there as a sort of personal stamp in this place unlike any other,
but all that will be explained in another section of the sampler. To be continued…
|
Textes et illustrations ©Isabelle Vautier
Thank you very much to Susan Stumme for the
translation in English of the pages of the Marquoir Story.
|
|
|
