Hmmm… it always seems to me that Bo has a plan… He is much calmer than me with my chaotic scatter-gun/headless chicken approach.
My process appears to me to be a haphazard thing, rather than organised, and the starting point I suppose is wherever I choose to jump in…
Looking at the work I have flitted between over the last couple of weeks or so, I have 3 or 4 themes on the go, at various points in the deconstruction/reconstruction cycle.
1. The fabric I use is always reclaimed clothing so it has always already been through someone else’s selection and construction process. Once I have selected various items, they are then deconstructed into their constituent parts and put in little piles: collars, cuffs, buttons, pockets and so on. The seams are stripped out and put in another pile. Then I am left with various flat pieces of fabric to chop up into “pixels” ready to be reconstructed into the quilt. There is a layering process here too: depth, structure, purpose, there may be issues of construction, and finally the stitches that have the function of holding all those layers together are decorative and textural too. The pixels of fabric, as well as the textural stitches are directly inspired by Bo’s work.
2. Disembroidery is another angle I’m working from – I have talked about it briefly in my personal blog. I have invented this perfect word (I think). I am unpicking the previously stitched work, fraying, examining, cutting, de-layering… a sort of archaeology perhaps? I’m being careful, but not particularly respectful. It is my work, abandoned many years ago, so I can do what I like! The deconstruction of this piece has been the making of it, The craft has become art. It is images of these pieces that Bo is currently working with.
3. (or possibly 2 and a bit) Disembroidery charts: can I code the destruction, in a similar way that the creation is charted? Do I want to codify it after the destruction, to record it? Or before, in order to plan it?
4. The pixels for me, are suggesting huge variations of scale. I can stitch 28 stitches to the inch… or 32 if I get out my extra strong glasses and the swear box. At the other end of the scale, one pixel could be a square metre of fabric (or larger). The square on the chart can represent any size. The squares on the charts don’t vary much in scale. They are usually around 10-14 squares/pixels per inch, too many to the inch and they become impossible to follow clearly (even if the stitching is much smaller) too few per inch and the design appears incoherent. I have some of Bo’s pixels to play with this weekend.
The bit that I love here, is that Bo is sampling from images of my work, and I am sampling from his. The ultimate collaboration and appropriation of each other’s work. If I take a photo of the quilt I am making, inspired by him, I stand a good chance of seeing it further deconstructed and cycled back to me… then I can make something else. The concept of the cycle, the exchange, the stealing and the giving is interesting and exciting to me.
Bo talks of the space which I pursue… I’m not sure I know that yet. I’m following all these trails… I could end up anywhere… but I doubt anything I end up with will look like Bo’s work, but hopefully that little segment in the Venn diagram will be discernible.
