pix

Pix

Ingredients

Elements

Pixels

Stitches

People

Edges

Particles

Scraps

Patches

Pieces

Fragments

Fractions

Parts

Call them what you like, it amounts to the same thing.

I have been off on a tangent or two, and have come back to this refreshed. I panicked that I wouldn’t. But I should have had faith. Bo tells me I should have more faith.

I want to make the most of the six weeks ahead, focussed, because once we both start back to school in September, the time will fly by, and October half term will be on us before we know it. My personal target is to know what I will show by the end of the six weeks. I may need time to finish work, but at least I will know what needs to be finished. I also need to allow time for any framing or presentation issues to be resolved.

So I have reviewed things.

I have made lots of elements.

I have used scraps

I have written words, stitched them and stamped them

I have a pile of ingredients

Some of these things I like and some I don’t.

I’m playing a game of musical materials… when the music stops I swap something round.

I pin it for a while, live with it a few days. If it works, I then stitch it. Gradually, the parts are becoming wholes.

I’m baking a cake

I’m building a wall

I’m constructing an image from pixels

I’m embroidering over some holes

I’m making a dress

This fits me

I’m enjoying it again

I have renewed enthusiasm

Anything could happen in the next 6 weeks

I wonder what Bo is up to?

Sometimes he sends me hundreds of images

When he does, because of the sheer volume of them, I find myself making snap yes/no decisions of their worth.

Over the last few weeks he has sent me two.

Because of this I have been far more thoughtful about my consideration of them. I made a snap decision, then questioned myself.

“What’s he done that for?”

“Don’t like those lines, they jar”

“He obviously wants them to do that? Why?”

“That is beautifully drawn, he should do more of that”

None of my business whether he does more drawing or not – it’s his decision.

Because of the nature of his work, I find myself liking some elements/ingredients/fragments etc, and not liking others… but…

By sending me only two images, he’s done me a favour. By not liking some bits, I like the other bits more. The conflict is what throws it out at me.

Elliot Smith, the now deceased writer of very sad songs once said something about if he didn’t acknowledge the sad, how could he recognise the joy?

The conflict and contrast is what pulls us out of a grey world.

Don’t send me so much stuff Bo. I prefer it this way.

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I seem to have gone off at a tangent, so nothing I am doing seems to fit here at the moment…

Unfortunately, Bo’s not posting either, due to the fact he teaches full time, and exams, moderation, marking, inspections and such are taking his time.

So I thought I’d post something just to let you know we’re still here!

Out to Lunch

Back Soon…

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…………

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“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.

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ET.

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” – there is no use for one stitch – there is strength in numbers.

Recent work concerns the abstract and philosophical nature of stitches. The stitch as a metaphor for family and society, as something that holds us all together. An allegorical device for that which repairs, gathers, strengthens and embellishes life.

I don’t know that I am the other end of things from you, most likely it is a circle… If the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, where else can the extra bits be, but maybe in the code, the minute, the microscopic, in the bits where God is?

BJ

Oh, but they’re real. That’s the point!

Your statement that I asked for specifically says the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I am blatantly disagreeing with that statement. The interest for me is the parts. The beauty of those parts and how they reconstruct themselves. There are parts that cannot reconstruct themselves, that seek out hosts to live in…… That interests me because it changes the meaning of existence.

I struggled this morning to put across my excitement at the path I follow…… This is much more than art now. When I have the time I will be far more concise. I was hinting as you suggest.

ET.

I think the “greater” is in our perception, belief…. the parts are all there, but our interpretation is the “extra”

All the parts are there… people, thinking, make the greater.

That is the art. That is where god is.

This has become my philosophical personal argument with myself…. God or god? art or Art?

BJ

I’m kinda more following the “Matrix” I think. But there’s a God in that to.

God holds enormous interest for me. But to deconstruct that? That’s like deconstructing the purpose of art?

ET.

Three letter words….big words…

BJ.

Yup……. DNA……..!

ET.

There’s also the way we….. by we I mean human beings, not just you and me…. assign meaning to things at the drop of a hat… we could choose a piece of thinking at random and decide it holds some sort of magical meaning. We could invent a new “religion” that lauded the three-letter word… a new trinity…

Human beings just do this, it is how we are made, we seek meaning everywhere….

Who’s to know if it’s true or just rubbish concocted out of a confused mind?

Sacrilege and blasphemy are everywhere, if god is!

I think I prefer art…. causes less violence.

BJ.

God don’t cause violence…….. Humans do……..

ET.

Having a God is fine. Religion is the problem….

Prefer art.

And that’s how it goes between the two of us… backwards and forwards as we unpick and reassemble…

I don’t know if we’ve said, or if it’s even obvious… but clearly it is becoming important…

This collaboration… this event… this show we embark on…

We do this from distance. We haven’t met up. We communicate electronically and share digitally. We haven’t sampled or felt the textures the other creates. The imagery that we share goes through its own process… dismantled and rebuilt as it leaves one screen, is broken into bits and bites… its own code of 1’s and 0’s… before reappearing on the other screen…

We communicate with remembered sound… our text conversations carrying the echoes of voice from the past two years…

This process underpins all that we do… whether Elena chooses to acknowledge it as a part of the process or not I’m not sure?.. But it was suggested that I might try and sew a bit in my own work… I have!

Perhaps, whilst Elena is laid up with her injured hand, someone might like to suggest that she attempts to digitally process her idea – (for me, the sewing provoked and challenged some interesting new lines of making) – but I wouldn’t be the person to do that… I’ve found that its best to rile a little and then stand back and gleefully watch as she eventually reaches the same conclusion…!