Weaving together shredded parts

Well, it's been a while since my last post, and I just wanted to catch up and see what everyone is doing. Watched The Notorious Bettie Page before, had to turn it off and find a better movie to watch. In between I've been trying to attack my fringe with a pair of kitchen scissors in an attempt to fix a horrible, horrible haircut.

I went to an artist talk on Sunday at the Ararat Art Gallery, about conserving medieval tapestries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Very interesting, Tina Kane was talking about the techniques in conserving these tapestries which often come to them in pieces; the process is something that takes a great amount of expertise in a traditional craft, which I respect a great deal. It's made me realise that to get where I want to be and to have that expertise I have a long way to go.

Have to go - Malcolm, or Paris, Texas?

Foma variations

I'm working on some ideas for Foma and I'm liking this mask idea - the motif is a representation, for me, of the idea that most people deep down are scared, but it's ok, because we all are. It's something I don't like to forget.

I was trying to see what the wedding dress would be like with the blanket - I am someone who believes in a lot of the doctrine that organized religion teaches us, but don't believe I need to be told this by an organized religion. The blanket is a metaphor for the protection that a religion gives its members - from the responsibility of working for our ideals, our principles, our own process of rational thought. The wedding dress is my own tendency to have belief in certain aspects of religion despite my lack of faith. It's my own truth and lies. And how they work, or not.
I don't know, what do you think?Releasing Ceremony
This is my old flatmate Christi at the Releasing of the Costume Ceremony, where we took a costume that I hated and stuck it in a tree in Rosalind Park. I'd decided that it's time in my life was at an end, so we met up in the park and left it in a tree. When I went back the next day it was gone, so if I see any homeless people in Bendigo with it on, I'll be happy.

I think this is in line with an idea of mine that my costumes shouldn't really be in galleries anyway - they need to be on the street on people, or in trees, or hanging from telephone lines (if I was doing shoes that is, which I am actually). I'm going to investigate this further and get back you. Cheerio!

?

why do i hate my art so much?




I think there's a Freudian explanation in there somewhere.


After all, I do think of them as my children while I'm creating them.

Foma edits

I've been working on my Foma pieces for the upcoming touring show, and I'm a bit stuck. To be honest I hated the works and wished that I could have done something different for them, but I've been experimenting with the pieces and trying to do something I'm happy with. The result is that one piece I have changed into something I'm not sure about (but at the same time I love it) and the other I am trying to obscure somehow.

This is the piece that used to be a blanket, and now I've somehow turned it into a coat type thing, and now i'm just figuring out what's going on underneath. I don't know.

The other piece is a dress that I'd covered in silk cranes, and I'm not really happy with this one either and considering taking out my frustration by covering the entire thing with tangled string to obscure the front. It's almost there, I'm hoping that the mess will come out from the front a fair way. The question plaguing me is: is it Art or Fashion? And should it be one or the other for this exhibition?

Magic and thread #2

Jimbob said yes (i think on the proviso that I take around ten years to finish it). New project!

There is absolutely no way that I am domestic in any way. I can't even make Single Snack pasta without burning the milk. I used to have to write a P on my hand when I was cooking pasta so that I wouldn't forget I was cooking it. So in case anyone wonders whether I sew because I have a desire to express my connection to my inheritance of domesticity as a woman, the answer is No.

I sew because I think it's cool to do some of the things I do with fabric. I think it's cool to make people look a certain way by gathering this and circular cutting that. So yeah.

Magic and thread

I've lately been directed to research the idea of process and slow making time when it comes to craft and in particular hand embroidery (maybe because I'm frustrated by it right now), and I started thinking about the magic of hand stitching:

"She saw it on one burning afternoon sewing with her on the porch a short time after Meme had left for school. She saw it because it was a woman dressed in blue with long hair, with a sort of antiquated look, and with a certain resemblance to Pilar Ternera during the time when she had helped with the chores in the kitchen. Fernanda was present several times and did not see her, in spite of the fact that she was so real, so human, and on one occasion asked of Amaranta the favor of threading a needle. Death did not tell her when she was going to die or whether her hour was assigned before that of Rebeca, but ordered her to begin sewing her own shroud on the next sixth of April. She was authorized to make it as complicated and as fine as she wanted, but just as honestly executed as Rebeca's, and she was told that she would die without pain, fear, or bitterness at dusk on the day that she finished it. Trying to waste the most time possible, Amaranta ordered some rough flax and spun the thread herself. She did it so carefully that the work alone took four years. Then she started sewing... Meme could not help thinking about her when they turned on the lights on the improvised stage and she began the second part of the program. In the middle of the piece someone whispered the news in her ear and the session stopped. When he arrived home, Aureliano Segundo had to push his way through the crowd to see the corpse of the aged virgin, ugly and discoloured, with the black bandage on her hand and wrapped in the magnificent shroud. She was laid out in the parlor beside the box of letters." - One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

also http://www.anahitagallery.com/aharch06.html - a look at traditional embroidery in Central Asia and its relationship to ritual and 'magic'

I just like the idea that a stitch is a marker of time, and that marker falls closer and closer to death. Not that I particularly measure the time between now and my demise, but I would be very satisfied somehow if I were to start making my wedding dress (nope, no plans in case you're wondering, and stop being so nosy), and say, "When this dress is finished, I will be ready to wear it." There's something very magical in that, and I'm not sure what it is. Maybe it's the idea there is no production schedule for an event like that - no RSVPs, no seating arrangements, no choosing between chicken or fish for the dinner, blah blah blah. No Bridezillas, because there's no deadline to stress them out. Just, when I am finished this work, when it is complete, I will step into the next phase. I like that.

I wonder if Jimbob will be freaked out if I start making the veil?

Foma #3

I've been working on Foma #3 for the possible touring show, I spent about 7 hours on the couch last Tuesday working on one section approx. 6cm squared so I'm a bit unsure about whether this is really a practical thing for me to be spending my time on. Why don't I leave it to the viewers? Have a look at the pics of the piece below, and you can comment on whether I should finish it or not. (In case you're wondering, the image to the left is of a painting I did about a month ago, it's currently showing at the Collage Wall in our kitchen.)

The piece below is two jackets (unfinished at the moment) sewn together at the sleeves, and I am embroidering the sleeves with Blackwork embroidery and other motifs that are memory markers from my life, and doing the same on the other jacket for my boyfriend (actually it may not be my boyfriend in the end, could be ghosts of memories of past boyfriends. Not sure yet.) Anyway, I like the piece.