pix

Ok…

I’m tying myself in knots thinking about this…

I have a list of questions I’m working through to try to make sense of it.

Deconstruction/reconstruction – when you deconstruct something do you necessarily make it less?

Is it degenerated?

So am I aiming for something less than the original image?

Or am I looking at it closely to find some truth in it?

Am I really able to reconstruct something original from that degeneration?

Will it inherently always be less than the thing I started with?

But I didn’t like what I started with.

I like what we have both done with it more than the original piece.

I said that when you get in close you can’t see it anymore… does that by definition mean that it is less?

“Less is more”?

Is the fact I can no longer see the original work actually what I am aiming for?

I can’t see the piece I hated, that’s good.

I can see my stitches that I like, that’s good.

Bo asked how far he could push his process and still see my work. Actually, before I sent him the images, I had done enough deconstruction to mean he could not see what it originally looked like…

Bo, did I ever send a photo of the (in)complete work before I chopped it up?

Do you want to see it?

Should I show it here?

I also wrote about a “spiralling down”, but maybe I’d feel better if I said spiralling up?

I think about layers and depth here. Am I just working at one level, just responding to what is sent and not really getting anywhere?

Bo is right about addiction… but I’m not feeding his, I’m validating my own by implicating him. The temptation is to look at the dozens of images he sends to me, and make a response to each one. Just translating it into fabric and stitch… lazy…

I have enough stimuli to make a thousand embroideries, a million quilts… each one another “fix”?

But are they merely fabric illustrations of Bo’s work?

I have to ensure my brain is engaged, must not get drunk on the images swimming around my brain.

Back to the single stitch, the single pixel. Take it to that, examine, rebuild afresh.

Disembroider/re-embroider? I have spent half a day totally dismantling, or “auditing” one of the little pieces. I ended up with a pile of assorted fluff and knots, three pieces that were reusable, in total about 12 inches of thread, and a canvas that was warped and for the most part, unusable. It was a soul destroying process, not in the least creative. Of course not. But the fact I was left with nothing that I could practically reconstruct from it meant I probably won’t be doing it again. Even though I knew it had to be done once, just to find out. So I will do some more play, and see where it gets me. The canvas embroideries are complex and tangled, even though built upon the even weave pixel-grid canvas. Maybe I should unearth some ancient discarded cross stitch and undo the squares of that instead?

I will go back to the perfect little pixel, the perfect stitch, the building block. Magnifying, translating, re-imaging.

I think about the venn diagram.

I don’t know that it’s a good analogy anymore, as I suspect Bo and I might both be working in the bit in the middle.

As my friend said previously….

Questions… Questions…