SOBEK METS ZENTANGLES (Weekly Art Project #5, 2020)

Taking another trip down memory lane, this week's art project is inspired by the Temple of Kom Ombo.
It was a glorious sun-filled day when we embarked upon our last excursion whilst aboard the dahibeyeh.  Kom Ombo is dedicated to the crocodile headed god Sobek & with the blue sky as back drop we wandered around the remains feeling as if we had stepped into the past.

Sobek became a god because for years the people of Kom Ombo were at the mercy of the crocodiles who plagued their waters.  There were many attacks & much grief so the point came when something dramatic had to be done.  The priests saw an opportunity & devised a plan...they invented a crocodile god to whom the people would pray for protection so the crocs wouldn't hurt them anymore.  The King was on side ( no doubt with a significant wealth oriented incentive)  people embraced this new god & brought him sacrifices, worshiped him & obeyed his orders (conveniently conveyed via the King).  Alas, it had no effect on the safety of the people, it did however increase the wealth of the priests!

I'm sure there is a lesson in there somewhere!!

To me it is a temple of crocodile heads, extensive & graphic hieroglyphs and pattern!

 Large relief sculptures were highly patterned, which reminded me of the popularity of zentangles. It also made me think of quilters & their use of patterning.

It was with those thoughts that I approached this weekly practice, starting at first with pen & paper as I got to grips with the proportions & shapes of my favourite Sobek head.  I soon discovered that with an A4 limitation, I was going to have to have a slightly disproportionate snout for my Sobek!

The next task was to go through all of my Kom Ombo photos and make a note of pattern variations.  I was thinking of taking that concept of zentangle & applying it to Sobek!

This would be a very good opportunity to use my stash of black & white fabrics, most of which have been sitting in the drawer for years!  I soon discovered that a lot of what I took to be black & white were actually black & pale grey, or black & off-white! Already a decision needed to be made about how much of a purest I wanted to be!!

Mixing & matching patterns is not my forte and it was a little overwhelming to look at all of these options and wonder where to start!

I decided to stick as close as possible to patterns that were similar to those I found in Kom Ombo, that reduced the pile quite significantly.  Slowly I started working out possibilities and placement.

With most of my art making using contemporary reverse applique, the fabric layers are all the same size.  To my mind this creates a more stable outline than having different thicknesses in different sections.
However, sometimes that ideal is not possible or not wise. For this piece I chose 14 different fabrics. To have them all cut to fit the whole A4 size of the design would be physically strenuous for my sewing machine & very wasteful of my fabrics, given most of them were only gracing one section of the design.  Therefore I opted for what I call the 'collage' method!

After tracing the stitching design onto the topmost layer (which would become the outlines) I pinned it up beyond the top of the design space, and began to lay the fabrics in place, lowering & lifting the top layer to check I had them in the right spot.  I needed to be mindful of where I put my lighter fabrics, because darker colours would show through them.

Then it was time to secure them in place with stitch & begin cutting back.  This is how it went...

I had reached this point, which I thought would be the end.  A neighbour had given me a number of no-longer-needed buttons & this was a perfect eye with the additional thread embellishment.
However, the mouth was bothering me, particularly the two triangular spaces between the teeth.  It then occurred to me that crocs usually have teeth coming up from their lower jaw, so although it would mean wasting that lovely fabric, I did a little more cutting back.

This is a more pleasing result, although it admittedly would look better if there were stronger black outlines around the two 'new' teeth.  I'm really pleased with the pattern choices, particularly the spirals at the snout & the aboriginal art fabric used for his necklace.

The toughest fabric choice... and one that may inspire some discussion, is the use of the Japanese style script as background. I do think we need to be mindful when we use the written form of a language that we don't understand & value for it's imagery as opposed to it's meaning, that there may still be those in our audience who could read the language & it may have an impact that we hadn't anticipated.  I've been in a shop situation where an item included Japanese writing as a decorative component when a Japanese tourist noticed it & identified that not only was the writing upside down, but it's message was one of bad luck.

In my case, the writing seems to be in the style of Japanese script, but I don't think it can be read. (I could be wrong of course!).  My use of it is to represent the hieroglyphs I saw during this Temple visit & quite frankly...this was the most perfect fabric to represent them.
He's a quirky Sobek & it was an interesting experience using so many patterns, therefore a very good day's work!!