The Stuff of Life. (Part 2.)
The previous post has for some reason truncated my list of “stuff.” So I have added the missing bit at the bottom. Also, Elena Thomas’s response to previous post, got me thinking and needed more space than a comment allows. Also plus, I was absolutely knackered when I wrote the last post and missed out some pertinent stuff.
So…my love of surface I think stems from falling in love with Acker Bilk, the most unlikely love object for an eleven year old. I was taken to London to see The Lord Mayor’s Show and unexpectedly, Acker and his band drove by in an open top vehicle playing as they went along.
The shock of seeing my beloved in the flesh, hearing his actual music and the crowds,caused me to run after the vehicle and pick up a card that it had inadvertently driven over. The card turned out to be a posh gold-edged invitation from the mayor himself, now mashed up with grit from the road and imprinted with the sacred tyre pattern of the vehicle ridden by Acker himself.
This dirty piece of card held iconic significance for me for many years and I think formed a neurological pathway that forever linked with emotion with surface and materials. And perhaps was responsible for the collection of and attachment to “stuff.”
Reading Elena Thomas’s comment on the previous post, I was struck by her comments about order, especially:
“The image you post also reminiscent of a piece I made for the exhibition, intended to be interactive, a magnetic board, and magnetic squares of fabric. There were either too many, or not enough of various types of fabric to make a satisfactory pattern… people became annoyed with it.”
What is a satisfactory pattern?
As I made my collage and tried to depattern it, I discovered the absoloute impossibility of random. As I started trying to place the pieces in the opposite “wrong” and unnatural way, I had to fight myself. But each time this resulted in a new kind of anti-pattern which in itself became a pattern and got repeated. The need for balance, order and colour-harmony was overwhelming, I tried throwing the pieces but found myself cheating and angling for best effect. We are so the sum of our parts.
But really, what is a satisfactory pattern?
This question has become an earworm, thanks Elena and something I need to spend time on.
To Depattern (cont)
Night sky from photograph, Carnival, 2005/deep Van Gogh, navygrey
Dishcloth, man-made, unused/candy floss-pink
Cropped edges of water colour paintings, unused, date unknown/pinkish-brown and greenish-ochre
Mock Crocodile paper, unused, worn, origin unknown/pale viridian-green
My for best handbag, pretend leather, 1985/deep mullberry
Child’s pencil case plastic 1969, used/viridian green
Ingres paper, unused, 1988/dove grey
Asda Value egg-box, used, recycled card, 2014/neutral creamy-vellum
Upholstery leather for dining chair, unused off-cut, 2008/chesterfield brown
Left-over, kid-glove leather, unused, from To Cover 2012/Alizarin crimson
Left over rubber sampler, unused, from To Smother 2010/bubblegum pink
Water colour cut-offs, unused (2)from Nicholette Goff (date unknown) yellow ochre & raw sienna and mullberry
