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I started making tapestry-like wall hangings to decorate our living room for beauty and to absorb sound.  They were so much fun to make that I made more. Soon shaman themes and earth images appeared in a co- creative process that encouraged my imagination and expanded my sense of what might be expressed.
In 2010 I began working with Joanne Gaffney exploring my internal world using the Internal Family Systems model (IFS).  These sessions are the inspiration for the second collection of wall hangings.  For more information on IFS please go the to page Internal Family Systems as my muse.

About

 

​“But how long does it take to physically make them?” people ask. 
Well, here’s an example of the way I spent time on the piece I call “Lifting Shame." It took three days of solid sewing to make the border of this “sugar and spice and everything nice” kind of world.  I had just the right amount of pink tassels to go around three sides with one tassel left over.  How affirming.  I felt very rich and grateful.
Then, I spent a week making the foreground as lush as I could make it.  It takes time to get ideas and try them out, pinning on flowers, moving them a little and then moving something else so the new flowers fit.

 
The works shown here are made of many types of cloth. Some are woven into rug backing and some are sewn directly on to the rug backing. Most of the time I work with the pieces hanging up.  I have a ladder to get me to the high places. Curvy needles allow me to stitch though the fabric and get the needle out again.  The only time I put them on the floor is to make the borders.  They take up a lot of room on the floor.
Most of the wall hangings are 4 feet wide and between 6 - 8 feet long.  Some came together very fast, others took their time. Rumpelstiltskin was finished in two weeks while others took over two years.
I cut the little girl shape out of pink taffeta and used that for a pattern for her shadow and spent several days finding a position for each that looked right.  It took a week + to make the flower background and to weave the sequin turquoise material strips I cut into the back ground.   Then I tried three or four times to get the little girl’s dress right and that took a day or two for each try.   Sometimes I added the new try over the old one and sometimes I had to rip out the old to make room for the new.

“Lifting Shame” took about a month and a half to get very close to finished in my studio. Then when I hung it in the carriage house I saw that the flowers in the foreground were too scattered and needed some container which I made out of green sparkly cloth.  The actual work took only a few minutes of moving a few flowers and adding the green sparkly material but it took a while to figure out what needed doing.

How the works are made

Hi, I'm Andy Pritchard

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