Over the last month I have had the privilege of working behind the scenes at Garsington Opera as it wakes up and gets ready to receive guests again after lockdown. I wore the masks and bandannas I made while at work, which I have documented with selfies in different locations around the site. I tried to get different parts of the experience, from the wigs department boxes through to costume rails, dressing rooms and the green room.
During the time I have worn my masks to work I wanted to see if anyone noticed what I was doing. I was pleasantly surprised with the responses I got, I received many compliments on my masks, and several people when I explained my project told me I should make more and sell them to the cast. One lady said she thought the design was opera inspired because it had a similar design idea to some of the items sold in the shop during the season. I hadn’t intended there to be a correlation there, since I have never actually looked at any of the items sold in the shop, but I love the fact that someone recognised a similarity.
While working I occasionally had a quiet moment where I could stop and use the time to stitch into the masks. I wanted to use this as a meditation of sorts to reflect over the time I am living through, because it is so unusual and I am going through a big change in my life. These masks will be part of the living memory of this stage, I will remember what I was thinking and doing when I sewed the stitches, and the masks are the perfect conduit to the year we’ve had. Not only do I have a front row seat at the reopening of theatres after lockdown, but I am also at the significant stage of life where I am looking ahead to my next steps at uni, and looking back at where I was a year ago when I left school early because of the pandemic.
I tried to keep most of the stitching on the masks of the operas that were rehearsing on the day (either Onegin or Der Rosenkavalier), but some of my earlier stitching was on whichever of the masks I was wearing that day, since a portion of my time at Garsington was before rehearsals started.
Some of the motifs I stitched into the masks are inspired by the set of the operas. The Rosenkav set has big swirling 3D scrolls over the walls which inspired the swirling stitch patterns. Onegin has a lot of wood in the set, which inspired my use of the brown thread, as well as some of the stitch patterns.
As the season progresses I will continue to stitch into the masks, since the season hasn’t even begun yet, the project is only just beginning. So far the masks hold tangible record of two weeks of set up and two weeks of rehearsals, and with the season starting this Wednesday I can’t wait to record the next phase in stitch.
While manning the green room till, I had a good opportunity to observe my surroundings, so I recorded things and people I saw in a sketch book.
I had originally planned to use sketches I made in a repeat print pattern I could then use on the jacket in the other part of my project, however I felt that the sketches didn’t lend themselves to print in their current condition, and I had no time to develop them further when I was home from work. Instead they remain a companion to the larger project pieces, with elements of the sketches influencing stitch patterns and shapes. I like that they also give an insight into what I see in a day, the sketches can capture some things which stitches can’t.
Ellen's Macraetions 