I'm Still At It :)
So ... I have this passion for something other than threadpainting... but, it'll only be a minute before I absolutely get back to the threadpainting ;)
About 10 years ago when I started my journey with genealogy, I was loaned a book 'The Seven Daughters Of Eve' authoured by professor Brian Sykes of Oxford University, UK.
In this book Brian Sykes attempted to put some very scientific knowledge into layman's terms. Turns out he found, in his research involving very ancient mtDNA, that, in Europe, all mtDNA sequences seemed to lead back to seven women, and these sequencies are only passed down from mother to child ... but sons never pass it on ... it only passes on downline to daughters !!
Such a strong connection to the first women of the world !
He decided to give imaginary names to these seven women ... each name begining with their Haplogroup letter. I belong to Haplogroup H - Helena was the name given to the
Coming soon 'mother' of this line.
Recently my fibre work has included posterized portraits of my direct mtDNA line ... going as far back as my 2 times great grandmother, including myself, and I am progressing in that line to include my 3 daughters ... then my 6 grandaughters if I have the time ... all sewn on a sewing machine in 4 colours, black, white and 2 shades of grey.
Needing to do a 'fibre piece' based on my favouite book for an upcoming show, I decided to stay with the theme and do a portrait of Helena ... what would she look like ? Where did she live ?
A week-long journey on the internet viewing artists renditions and facial recontructions on skulls led me to the conclusion that we look so much like our ancient ancestors !! Trust me whenI say that I did my level best to research Paleolithic, Neolithic and Neadrathals in my search for a particular face from Helena's time. ofcourse there are copyright laws so I just couldn't use an image from the research .... but, I could use mine!!!!! Really, my RBF (resting bitch face) would work beautifully ... hahahaha. So, took a selfie, posterized it in 4 shades of grey, printed the result, mapped the 4 arears that I needed to show onto the photocopy, traced the results onto plain white paper ... enlarged mapped tracing to a managable, realistic size ... trace enlarged drawing onto water-soluble ... and sew !
Pics and progress to follow.
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