This tape is stitched with road sign warnings, in a triangle? ……repeatedly I have stitched MIND THE GAP and sometimes KEEP YOUR DISTANCE…..some disintegrating into part words.
I am feeling the weight of of the end of the degree course approaching. The GAP between making pieces for ARTSKOOL and my real life. Until I started at ARTSKOOL I sold my stitched work at exhibitions, I was minorly known locally for my different approach to textile art and a sense of humour. I did not reduce my work to flowers and birds [almost a certain sale] but explored and expressed the concepts in my mind, using the human figure which relates almost as well as birds and flowers. But I wanted to develop, to push the boundaries make more extreme responses to what goes on in my head.
So I started the Fine Arts degree.
Now I am finishing it, I have a body of work, large and startling fabric figures commenting on my thoughts of the situation of women in a patriarchal society. I have probably done enough to pass, but……what have I done? None of my pieces would sell, in some ways perhaps it should be categorised as OUTSIDER ART
as Wikipedia claims
the English term “outsider art” is often applied more broadly, to include certain self-taught or naïve art makers who were never institutionalized.
Typically, those labeled as outsider artists have little or no contact with the mainstream art world or art institutions. In many cases, their work is discovered only after their deaths. Often, outsider art illustrates extreme mental states, unconventional ideas, or elaborate fantasy worlds.
