I was really inspired by the two books I mentioned in the last post, also by playing around with pelmet vilene and canvas. Unfortunately I also had a couple of bad days with collarbone pain and extreme tiredness, but today I got down to some more playtime :) so there are things to show you. This is one of those triumphs of process that is really hard to explain to non creatives………I was just messing around with organza, hat netting (millinery gauze?), the painted rug canvas and some snips of threads. Trying out zigzag spirals on the canvas went well and I suddenly thought of the scorched velour samples I made on C&G and got a dark brown one out, added some coppery woven fabric given to me by a corsetry student, some thread snips and made an oval embellishment. This then made me think of bird’s eye maple and birds’  heads and then I was making samples for a piece about bereavement, based on ravens pecking your eyes out as a metaphor for losing your ability to enjoy life. And I didn’t really know until I was doing it, if you see what I mean. My process involves allowing plenty of space to let these events happen, rather than following a design schedule. Making samples is a really good way to generate the leaps, but sitting down with a sketch book and directly designing a piece is almost pointless without the samples and the leap.

You can see from my thumbs that these are not so big, though I’m always bewildered by how small most embroiderers can work – I start to feel like my fingers are sausages when it gets much smaller than this – and I’m trying to show you heads at different stages, just a flash of glittery blue braid for the eye and the scorched velour, through to layers of stitching and thread and fabric snips, to one mounted on the painted rugging canvas with the first few lines to build up the image – at this point I’m thinking a multiple view image, so the brown head acts as an eye on the mesh head. I have some very gaudy feathers that might take a black bath tomorrow! At this early a stage I just have a very loose idea of how things will be strung together, though I’m thinking a 3D structure, that could easily change, so to keep my options open, I’ll be leaving edges on everything for a while yet.

I was talking to my therapist today about the way my art process has to adapt to what’s going on around me, and that making components for mixed media work is very relaxing, because until the final assemblage (and even then, mwahaha;))things can be adjusted and tweaked, whereas with painting one blown line can take weeks to re resolve, (no pressure there then!). I think leaving things very open or till the deadline is very high risk  with the technical limitations of oil painting, it’s not exhilarating at all to just miss, but have no time to resolve, because you need three weeks drying time, so now you’re a painting short…But assemblage is really forgiving by comparison and by trusting the process, a ritual of paying attention as you make is rewarded by confidence in your own making, and a spiral of trust builds up…if the components are pleasing and/or significant, then the work will be simple to assemble because one action will lead to the next, and particularly in site-specific work, the space will give you feedback. Rigorous intuitive thinking is disciplined, but open ended; to me, it harks back to the religious mystics who held that work is prayer. An early monastic word for the ritual of prayer was observaunce and I think artists who embrace process are very much in this tradition, regardless of their religious affiliation, (if any). The power of Navajo or Tibetan Buddhist mandala painting with coloured sands is even stronger than the illuminated calligraphy of Bede : to make such beautiful pieces, which make huge physical, mental and spiritual demands, knowing they will be blown to the four corners in days, is such an affirmation of the act, the process over the the result, the product.

Again, to me, there is a link here between the consumerism of capitalist society and the art market and contemporary art industry and the loss of direction in so many people’s lives, people replace being with having. My neighbours on one side really look down on me for being so poor, which as I feel they have a totally impoverished lifestyle is very funny. They are always buying furniture so I beg the cardboard sheets off them to make permaculture beds – I offered them courgettes and tomatoes as a thankyou but was told they don’t eat vegetables, and I know their little girl thinks I must be very poor because I grow my own fruit! Real fruit comes from shops, but is only eaten in jam or pies…..oh dear, it takes all sorts….

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