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Good day today.

Lots of creative decisions made.

Booked the project space to play in the basement, complete with scaffold tower so I could climb up and dangle things from the ceiling.

I must say the combination of hard hat, glasses and various items and tools meant a good deal of juggling went on. I had to have special training to use the tower first, then adjusted the hard hat and up I went. The usual place for me to store my glasses is nestled in my hair. Not possible, so ended up shoving them down my bra. Stylish huh? Then once equipped, I climbed up the tower. The addition of an extra 4 inches of height, due solely to the hard hat meant I had no spatial awareness and kept bumping my head, necessitating the need for the hard hat.

So it appears that I am even shorter than I thought, as even with the tower I couldn’t reach the ceiling. I fashioned a sling-shot affair to enable me to get the string over the bar, so I could tie the knot. I did this using a pair of scissors. I can hear you saying “Thank goodness you had the hard hat Elena!” Ah yes, well. Trouble is every time I had to look up to deploy the scissor weighted slingshot, propel it over the bar, the hard hat fell off. Which actually was a good thing, because once I had caught the scissors in my unsafe, ungloved hand, I was able to retrieve my glasses from their warm nesting place and get on with the job!

Please see attached photos. No artists were harmed during the hanging of this work.

Interesting… well, I think so. You might find it totally tedious, and you have that right!

Anyway… shoe sole rubbings…

It started out as a means to an end, a way of finding a shoe sole pattern the right size, shape, pattern and state of wear, to transfer and embroider onto a dress, disguised as embellishment/decoration. You’ve no idea the variations that present themselves! So many were rejected because they were too worn, not worn enough, not shoey enough, too booty, too big, too small, too boyish, too girlish…

What’s happened is, people are giving me baby shoes, and sending me rubbings!

So, I’ve started embroidering the dress now, I’ve worked out each sole will take 6 or 7 hours to stitch… and there are 13 of them. Bit of a task really.

What to do with the left-overs then? I do like these rubbings, more than prints I’ve taken. There’s soul in these soles I feel. There’s also a slowness and a particularness and a sensitivity of materials with the rubbings. The paper has to be thin enough, sometimes wax crayon works if the tread is deep, but a soft pencil picks up the shallowest, slightest pattern. I have a yen to upend various children and rub their shoe soles with tracing paper and lyra crayons. I have no idea why, but it seems to follow on somehow. I’m sure the purpose will eventually present itself. I have more confidence these days to follow these whims in the knowledge that a reason will turn up later. I think the upending of children might get frowned upon, but you get the gist I’m sure. I now see in my head a Quentin Blake scratchy character, tall, thin and stooped, dangling a small child by the ankle, sticky things falling out of pockets. I may have to draw this. But not like Quentin Blake… and it might be a short fat art teacher rather than the tall thin man.

I still find this thought process fascinating. I have an idea and I pursue it. In that pursuit, other opportunities present themselves. Sometimes the detours are more interesting than the original idea and take over. I do try to record this zig-zagging in my sketch/note book, and now here of course, too! But sometimes it happens fast, and I forget the origins, so they get lost. Sometimes they burble up again, months later, and I gasp in amazement that I could forget such a thing!

I’ve done the drawing (at 1.50 this morning, there must be something wrong with me). I’ll take a photo in a bit, once I’ve got myself organised.