My research is materials driven, initially, usually.
What do these thing say to me?
Why do I select them?
Will I use them whole?
Deconstruct them?
There’s always a moment of “will I regret taking it apart, ripping it, cutting it?”
(sometimes I have regretted… vintage clothing doesn’t always come cheap)
Is it going to say the same thing to other people that it says to me? Does it matter?
My sketch book is mostly written notes, with the occasional illustration.
My thoughts, often at first appear unconnected, become more linked as I work. In my personal blog “Threads” I recently talked about my work as either members of my family, or as the Deleuzian rhizome. I prefer family… more arguments.
My thoughts form as questions… as above. They may or may not be answered. It doesn’t always matter. More often than not, they give rise to more questions.
Working forward from the materials used to give me problems, as often the justification, concept, meaning behind a piece isn’t initially obvious, I feel my way to it.
It is at this point, more than at any other stage in my process, I fear the “comfort blanket”, and fear Bo mentioning it (taunting me with it), because my grasp on the conceptual at this point is fragile. But I have learned over the last couple of years to trust myself and my process more readily… because I know I will get there… eventually… but I might not end up where I expected…
Meaning arrives as I sew… it is teased through with every stitch. As I stitch laboriously the meditative repetitive process of stitching aids my brain. What I find is that I might make 1, 3, or 16 pieces of work that are unsatisfactory. But the process of making them provides a clarification that drawings in a sketch book cannot. Each piece gets me closer. Each stitch gets me closer. I don’t know at this stage whether the disembroidery pieces will make it to the final exhibition – time will tell – but I know I wouldn’t be at this point without having made them. I think with my hands.
So for me, if not for Bo, this will continue to be a descriptive process for a while yet.
I’m still thinking of people not pixels: or people as pixels; or pixels as people. I’m taking people apart, their clothing apart. I’m taking apart the foundations I stitch onto, stripping out the warp and weft, constructing the blank grid by deconstructing the fabric… filling the grid with the deconstructed pieces of everyday life. I think I’m quantifying, auditing, measuring something, checking the volume, can the whole really contain more than the sum of its parts? And if it can… what is the extra bit made from?
And also I’m starting to take apart what people say – recorded conversations, deconstructed, reconstructed onto a rhythmic grid – made into something else.
Whether the something else holds any meaning remains to be seen.
