Recently I had a remarkable conversation with my sister. In our family her memory is celebrated. It is believed her stories can take you back in time and I was anxious to ask her about a few iconic patterns -most from more than 30 years ago.
She did not remember in any detail the specific fabrics, wallpapers, and floor coverings I asked about, but in her detailed descriptions of adrenalin games played with our younger brother (and my sideline role as comforter and engineer in charge of hiding evidence) I was transformed.
With all that I have read about memory and our brains and notions of identity and place, how could I have been so short-sighted. One can’t experience first-hand the malleability of memory by thinking hard and rolling over on oneself.
tags: memory, boys and girls, superheroes
http://ruraltok.blogspot.com/search/label/%22memor…
F O L L O W T H E W O R K
I have gutted the walls of the hot pink war room after two frustrating days trying to identify a debate central to what I am doing. I have not been following the work. I have wasted valuable time attempting to wire a machine without knowing if it is a television or a toaster.
Today: experiments with tiny, tiny felted sheep and the realization there may be others who work like me what with all this layering and looking in and looking back and experimenting with scale
A body’s memory forgotten…
Last night I read a September journal entry and was surprised that I had not remembered writing it when I wrote entry #6 here less than a month later. I am writing about and revisiting some of the techniques I used in art making as a child and am particularly interested in my body’s memory for some of those techniques. Here is an excerpt:
“in 1972 the floor in our finished ‘rumpus room’ was cold to the touch – composition tiles with textures and a seemingly random pattern of raised, solid circles, or was it ovals? or random shapes?
oh, how i loved to pick a spot on the floor and see just how many identical spots i could find from where my cheek was pressed to the floor. i would pull my body around in great circles and survey the entire circumference in an effort to reunite the separated shapes.
and i discovered i could make amazingly professional looking turtles by making rubbings with crayon and adding little turtle heads and legs. all while laying flat on the cold, composition tile floor.”
tags: boys and girls, memory, pattern, maps
