pix

What happened then, is that because I can’t touch the work to make it (well, sort of) I’ve ended up making work that can’t be touched.

I am reaching the point where I am almost now able to sew again – nearly – but find myself in a quandary. Should I pick up the stitching where I left off, or should I follow this touch-free tangent to its logical end?

My instinct is to stick with it for a while. The enforced break from sewing has definitely given me a different outlook, different opportunities, different working methods. I have undoubtedly “borrowed” from Bo. There was a suggestion in a comment somewhere that he take up the sewing while I couldn’t. Then he threw down the gauntlet for me to attempt working digitally. So he has, and so did I! Having to re-teach myself Photoshop hasn’t helped. I don’t have an iPad, so don’t have access – other than on my iPhone – to the seemingly millions of apps Bo has. But I have enjoyed playing. I have generated dozens of images, some more successful than others. I have enjoyed learning too.

But producing digital images in the way that I do, in comparison to the way that Bo does, makes me feel vulnerable, incompetent and scrappy. Not used to that! I am extremely confident in using stitches and textiles. I have called them “my voice” in a very pretentious arty farty way on many occasions.

I have posted a couple of images on my personal blog. I felt I had to be brave to do that. I feel even less confident here, with them sitting alongside my friend’s work.

After a session with the digital though, I am finding myself drawn back to my sketch book, jotting down notes about what I can do when I get my hands on a needle again. I don’t think I am going to be able to resist the tactile for very much longer. I might end up projecting these images… if I do, then I think it will be onto something soft, moving, touchable… or something that is pretending to be.

I do feel somewhat freer though now… how strange… time will tell whether I come to regard the stitch as something precious, or whether I now am just not so bothered by it. Having spent the last 6 years trying to prove to myself that textiles is a valid medium for a fine artist, and fighting its corner somewhat. I will feel a little fickle if I discard it too readily.

This started out as an exploration of pixel and stitch. It’ll be funny if I end up not actually showing any stitches…………

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” (Aristotle)

This is becoming the mantra that I run everything through at the moment. I believe it to be true. But I don’t know what it is or why. But it seems to apply to everything I look at or think about. It is mysterious. It holds within it such faith. But it is deeply human to me. We are more than what we are made of. More than skin and bone, more than a screen of pixels, more than a line of stitches.

Listening to the talk about touch and haptics has got me thinking about this more too… we hardly know anything about ourselves, how our skin works with our brain.

The effect this has on my work is beginning to show. At last, I’m beginning to see the benefit of the enforced break from making, allowing me to think this through WITHOUT the touch. Coincidence at play again.

We feel things without touching… how amazing is that? The touch thing is pretty fantastic, but to gain information about the world around us without actually touching it is downright miraculous.

I am starting to think about the work, even unmade, in terms of the gallery space. For me there is always the conundrum about touch. My work is so tactile, the feel of it to me as I make it and hang it is crucial. Yet in the gallery setting, touch is positively discouraged. I deny my audience the main thing the work is about.

I didn’t know this was where I was going. I read back over this blog, and until a week ago I had no idea this was in my head. Ridiculous, and Bo will undoubtedly claim to have seen it all the time and say he was just waiting for me to catch up. I have a special noise I make on these occasions but I don’t know how to spell it.

I look at the work I have hung up in the room where I work, gauzy pieces of muslin wafting in the air currents I feel but don’t touch, moving differently as the air gets warmer throughout the day, in the changing temperatures I feel on my skin. I have already started to harden some of these fabrics so that they don’t move. I had started to do this a couple of weeks ago… why? Why had my body started making something that I have only just thought about with any sort of clarity.

Because we are greater than the sum of our parts, that’s why.