pix

The materiality of what I’m doing is a little confusing for me at the moment, I will have to crash on through it to see what becomes of it all. I’m using materials I used years ago. Old bits and pieces, offcuts of embroidery canvas and cross stitch fabric, they used to get all manner of traditional illustrative designs and folky stuff stitched onto them, now the bits half discarded are the bits I’m using. I used to construct charts on my computer…. coloured pixels, coded symbols….for publication in craft magazines, and even a book (if you are that determined you can still find it on amazon for a penny, £3 postage.)

Now, the work is unplanned, the canvas picked at… deconstructed… maybe even unpicked stitches…?

The fact I am acknowledging and revealing my crafty past, revisiting and demolishing it is I think quite interesting… “Hello, I’m Elena, I’m a cross stitcher, and after 10 years without a chart, I have picked up the canvas again. I may need help.”

It sounds like Bo has a plan though, doesn’t it? That scares the doodahs out of me. My working practice entails a fair amount of crashing about and swearing, and he’s already experienced more than two years of that! But… as always… he stops my complacency taking root. He is my insurance man. That will stop these little canvasses and large quilts being merely cute and pretty, and keep them interesting to me, him, and hopefully other people. The familiarity of the materials might lull me into a false sense of security… that needs to be guarded against, shaken off. I need to make sure I’m looking at the new drive for this, not well trodden old ground.

Although…. I do have a drawer in my studio full of rejected/abandoned embroideries from years gone by. I don’t know why they were kept really other than the reason if you spend over 100 hours stitching something, it deserves a little respect. Will chopping them up, and deconstructing them a little, further the discovery here? I’m no stranger to chopping up other people’s abandoned work, bought from charity shops, so why not my own?

And in answer to Bo’s question about blending… I don’t think that’s what I’m aiming for… more a sort of acknowledgement of points of contact… a Venn diagram even?

I have a starting point, an idea… a genesis. No set imagery… just a working methodology to construct from via deconstruction. I love to ask questions, so for this my work will take the line of an inquiry… an examination – of mine and Elena’s working practices. I will query, challenge, proposition and debate. No argument… just learning… progression… development. Building blocks… a pixel… a stitch… Elena is wrong when she states our work hasn’t overlapped until recently… We have been working together for over two years now and it amuses me that she’s not seen it… She warns that I will laugh at her… annoy her… But the conversations we have shared about her work has only informed and further advanced my own. We both alter what is already there… give new meaning. Collaboration gives me a second voice… you know… that whisper in your head… that that answers your doubts… reassures on the paths you follow… points out the errors… provides the new… teacher aiding teacher… learner supporting learner… friend informing friend… I aim to create an image each month for the conception of the show. That’ll involve a lot of prep work; research; selection and rejection; links to work and my own blog. Elena will assist me on this, ensuring that only quality will represent our partnership… she’ll surely try and keep me in check… won’t she? I won’t attach my name. I trust our styles are sufficiently different… I wonder if they’ll blend…

Elena’s first post:

We haven’t started arguing yet.

I remember, a while back in my personal blog, talking about collaboration and how when it’s not with the right artist, can be disastrous.

Well since then I have worked with quite a few other artists. These alliances of varying duration and intensity have come about far more organically than before. My previous experience had been with artists similar to me. My thought being that we’re bound to work well together and produce something good.

Wrong.

What we produced – if we ever got to the point of producing anything – was something safe, boring, unchallenging. And in hindsight, I think I didn’t have the confidence to be challenged too much then.

Which brings me here…

While doing an MA, you rub up against all sorts of people. Sparks can fly. Work is exciting, challenging, thinking about it mind-blowing – if you do it right!

Occasionally you meet someone REALLY annoying who drives you up the wall because he questions every decision you make about your work and then laughs at you when you struggle to come up with a coherent answer. That one, for me, was Bo Jones. He has sharpened me up.

His working method is completely different to mine. His output, up until very recently, had no point of contact with mine.

But…

We have certain values in common. We both teach. We have overlapping taste in music – which for me is a big plus. We have conversations that ramble all over the place. We agree on enough stuff, but not everything.

We did talk about working together, as our course drew to a close, more, I think, as a way of continuing the conversation. Recently, through that continuing conversation and exchange of images, we’ve made a material and conceptual link between our work that wasn’t there before – or if it was – we didn’t see it.

We’ve booked a space, and now we have to work towards filling it.

And I have every expectation that Bo’s first post will disagree with mine, just for the hell of it. He’s like that.