” The Princess lies waiting” was inspired by a visit to a museum about a lost culture along the Silk Road. They were right on the trading routes so were influenced by many other cultures. They had a very large replica of a tomb they had found. In it were the remains of 2 people probably royalty of some kind surrounded by all their possessions, most of which had partially disintegrated.
It was so poignant and so beautiful that they had been lying there for almost a thousand years, as though they were waiting to be found. This fitted with my fascination of ” things that come together and things that fall apart ” as fabrics had almost fully disintegrated but the silver items had fallen apart in a very unique way. Their masks were made of gold so looked as if they were new.
I started making this piece on scrim, a very loosely woven gauze. I built up layer on layer with recycled silk from Indian Sari’s, then recycled bits of Indian embroidery in metal and silk. I have tried to capture the falling apart of the threads by working very loosely and just couching threads down on the scrim. The background is made of a material used by florists which had an interesting texture which I then painted in layers of different colours with gesso and acrylic paint. The flower was an old velvet one I had from the 1930’s that I pulled apart and the mask has been made from painted metal paper. So I was able to use all kinds of pieces from all kinds of cultures that I had saved in boxes waiting to find their place in an art work.
Hand sewn using: silk sari thread, silk embroidery thread, metal thread, metal paper, recycled Indian hand embroidery, velvet, felt, scrim, acrylic paint, gold paint.( size 75 cm x 75 cm ) 2019 Carola Goodwin
