I’ve been trying to remember and draw a Native American Kilim that hung on my Grandparents wall. I remember it so clearly and yet I’ve been finding the details of it elusive. I thought I knew it but then found I can’t quite get there.
I’ve had to do a bit of online searching to find similar rugs to jog my memory as well as ask family members to sketch out the pattern they remembered. I’m so surprised to find that one family member has no memory of it – though he would have had a grown-up memory so more chance to not have the fog of childhood. But then perhaps it is because it is from childhood that I do remember it – in that way that kids look at things and pay attention to details in depth. Perhaps even being a foundation-laying building block. A slide was found of the room it hung in and send via a photo taken on a phone while holding the slide up to the window. While not the best quilty (a rather fuzzy image and only a fragment of the kilim is seen) it feels appropriately similar to my memory of it – that it is there and not there at the same time.
Now, I am wondering where the final work is within these various remembered images/drawings – is it recreating the final remembered-found version life-size; redrawing all the attended rememberings; creating an overlapped ‘final’ version which includes all the rememberings; or perhaps another thought still needs to come. I will sleep on it and continue to play with it tomorrow.
