Grief, Textile and The Creative Process
I was up in Manchester for meetings about work current and future the last few days. I went to the Craft Design Centre, looked in on my work and had lunch with Kate (Direcrot) /Kaylee (Exhibitions) and heard that, shock horror, the comments book got stolen last week!. Strange thing to lift, I hope whoever has it will read and enjoy, luckily Kaylee had transcribed a lot of it, but some responses will be lost. And of course there will be many responses I will never know anything about, which is both a comforting and disconcerting aspect of having your work in public. Sometimes they come back years later, from random meetings with people who have contributed to or seen the work – this happened quite a few times with The Gifts at unexpected moments.
They had also just finished editing the Artist Talk: Grief, Textile and the Creative process that I gave on the opening day, now up on vimeo. The edited version is 18 minutes long. It was probably the most personal talk I have ever given or will ever on my work, and I realise that the whole process of this show and blog is another form of staged ‘closure’, another level of trying to complete the incompletable… This was underlined by the presence of my family in the room, my mirrors and also my rock.
