The Spaces Between

It’s been a patchy week in terms of making time for my own work; business appointments and writing applications to register our company, parenting and the day job. I feel unsettled and uneasy; I need the mental downtime that writing and making give me.
I have managed to make some drawings using soluble graphite on wet paper. I have snatched half-an-hour here and there to relax with some jazz music and sit on my living room floor drawing and spraying, letting my mind unravel, watching the graphite bleed and run.
I’m intending to use some of these drawings to make more tubes with; I like the written thoughts on them, the combination of fragments of drawings, and the inner lighting; lanterns shedding a light onto my thoughts.
I’ve been experimenting with hanging the tubes on a string of fairy lights (a safer alternative to using candles inside paper structures, I felt!), and although I wasn’t overwhelmed by the overall effect, I liked each individual ‘lantern’ and I managed to achieve some quite painterly effects by increasing the contrast in the photos.
This idea is still rattling around in my brain amidst the rest of the clutter, and I know that I want to continue to explore it through a combination of making and writing. My thoughts now are directed towards how to present it. I’m pleased to be moving my ideas out of a sketchbook and making them occupy a physical space, drawing in 3D, shedding some light on what it means to be me.