Threads

This time tomorrow I’ll be in Paris, waiting for my fight across the Atlantic to be reunited with my coat.

I am curiously, at the moment at least, not at all stressed about the journey. I think this is partly because I am responsible only for myself, but mostly because I am so excited!

It seems to have come about through serendipity, chance, coincidence…

One minute I’m reading Wendy’s blog, then I send her an email, and a few months down the line, I’m packed and ready to be off!

My friend Bo says that God is in the coincidence. I don’t know about that, but serendipity is a culmination of things that happen, I believe, because you have put yourself in the position to make them possible. You have to say yes to things, you have to talk to people, be nice to them, help them, have faith in them. You also have to know who and what you are, in order to say yes to the right things… and… no too. Saying no to the things that don’t fit can be more difficult, but just as crucial. I have to know what sort of artist I am, so I’m in the right place, doing the right things. This way, onlookers also know what I am and who I am.

If I’m doing what feels right, if I have established principles and practices, my path is clear, and I am open to opportunities. My view isn’t cluttered by the wrong stuff, so if there’s a lovely little tangent, I can zip along it, and back again… spurred on and inspired.

Open and clear. That’s my Spring resolution.

It makes for a light heart, and puts a spring in my step.

Do other artists make rules for themselves?

I do it all the time… I can only use this pile of fabric… I can only do running stitch… I can’t use brown (this is more of a phobia than a rule).

The piece of work in progress at the moment is a case in point… but I think I have started cheating…

For a start, I began with a ready made pair of baby trousers – cheat!… and I want to “armour plate” them with loads of layers of extra fabric on the bottom and knees. Ideally, I would like them to stand up on their own. I could sneakily use milliners’ wire to help, but that is another cheat.

But the biggest one is, I am hand stitching, and now up to about 5 layers over the knees, I have made a hole in the end of my finger. It has now become physically impossible to stitch by hand without my trusty, but cheaty, leather thimble. The trouble is, I can’t build up enough layers using my bare fingers, to allow the stand alone thing to happen.

So what I have to do then, is decide which cheat I can live with, and which is a step too far.

I think I can live with the thimble being used, as then at least the final piece of work will have that structural integrity (if it works). Milliners’ wire is not allowed, because I could use that now and they would stand up. Also, there will be less blood stains on the work. Last night I had to sponge a stain out. Now some of my work has previously used stains… and some has definitely been blood… but the blood of some anonymous historical fabric user, not me in the making of the work. That would be a different work completely.

I’m taking this work with me to America, but by the sound of things won’t have time to sit down long enough to do any!

Hope to blog through my experiences over there, as I go, and tweet and facebook etc… but you know what? I might just save it all up and splurge it all out while recovering from the jet lag and waiting for the adrenalin rush to subside!

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Getting ready to go to Jamestown… lists… I make lots of lists…

I’m almost ready I think…

I have my clothes sorted, including posh frock, and New York Haircut/colour, a few pieces of work, my passport, tickets, insurance etc.

I will probably need some dollars.

And one of those foreign pluggy in thingies so I can use my laptop and keep it charged… I may have time to blog…

Trying to whip up a bit of a social media whirl so that the show goes out with a bang… if any of these things come across your radar, please feel free to retweet, share and so on…

This time next week I’ll be there.

And by the end of the month I’ll be home again.

When I started this blog, I hardly ever talked about my teaching. I think I wanted to establish the Artist Identity first, before letting out my shameful secret!

I think I sort of managed it. I think I do have an Artist Identity.

The Teacher identity is a struggle. I’m not denying its existence, but it wrestles power from the Artist. Since re-establishing myself as the Artist, the Teacher isn’t happy. There has been a permanent wrangling between them. I feel the two have overlapping time-share rights.

At the moment, the Teacher has been temporarily evicted from her home. The Artist is cock-a-hoop!

On occasion, I have been asked questions such as “How do you integrate your art practice in your classroom?” and my answer has most often been “I don’t”

But as I reassess and look around me for new opportunities and ways to change my life and work, some of the most attractive opportunities are those which could be loosely called educational. I think the key word here is LOOSELY.

The Artist is fed up with the Teacher being hide-bound by prescription, inspection and on no account deviation.

I think the reason the Artist has denied the Teacher is that the Teacher had become a bit of a fuddy-duddy. The Teacher hasn’t been happy with the Teacher for quite a while either.

I think I am probably a teacher by nature. It is in me. Can’t deny it.

BUT… I think I’ve been doing the wrong sort of teaching…

I’ve used the word “think” about 7 times in this short blog.

Been thinking a lot lately.

Strangely, middle aged women tend to get a little bit frosty when you ask if you can have their discarded underwear…

Can’t imagine why!

I have been thinking about this a lot. And while I wait around for Bo, money, and my flight to New York, this is a good time to tackle it perhaps.

I was also asked today to state, in one sentence, why I choose to use discarded clothing in my work. I came up with two sentences…

“Discarded clothing brings its own history that I can use as a short cut to memory – mine and the viewers’. Stains, wear and tear, and its style and vintage all add to the narrative that I can interfere with for my own purposes.”

Up until recently, children’s clothes have been the thing. I love them, and they will continue to be used, I’m sure. They are also accessible to a wide audience. It can be difficult to engage some people with contemporary art can’t it? But I find that a little girl’s dress or a romper suit with a train on the front, if nothing else prompts the “awww cute” initial response. My interferences* with this cute factor make it easy for me to engage people in conversation. I think the work is strong. But this accessibility factor makes it fascinating to me as an artist-teacher… another point for later discussion maybe?

Anyway…

Bras…

Worn, grey, elastic perished and useless, wires missing, some with mends and alterations…

I have been given a bag of them from someone who helps in a clothing bank. These would never be offered to anyone else. I was having trouble getting bras tatty enough for my use and interest. Of course no one I knew would dare give me such an item, with me knowing it to be theirs! The confession is shaming.

But I knew they existed… how? Because I have worn them myself. There’s a confession for you!

The tatty bra is a clear indication of how a woman feels about herself. (One has to disregard those fashioned to fit and put up with out of economic necessity)

On the outside all is respectable. The outside shows how the woman wants to be seen by the world, the outside is the mask, the performance. I am becoming a little obsessed with respectability, reputation, maintaining standards…

It hits in that cloudy, edgeless era of middle age… children had, tended to, brought up… work done… either career or just a job to pay the bills… housework, caring for elderly parents, cooking, cleaning, all those stereotypically feminine roles.

Due to lack of time, and pushing yourself further down the list of things that need dealing with, the bra is the last thing on your mind. Nobody sees it. Sometimes, sadly, really nobody. It becomes the thing you couldn’t possibly NOT wear, but also, often, the thing taken off at the first opportunity. It smacks of personal neglect and lack of self esteem.

Does the tatty old bra have a connection to the libido of the wearer?

Then…

Revolution!

A new bra dawns!

The beautiful, expensive, effective, lacy, silky, sexy thing right next to your skin…

It makes you walk differently… pushes your shoulders back… chin held high.

Suddenly, what is worn underneath shows on the outside! The return of self esteem, confidence and personal pride.

This is why I am drawing old bras. I think I want to start a sort of second wave of feminism burning old bras, and getting a bloody good new one, and strutting about in it!

*interference: I have been told this word isn’t the right one to use. It has unsavoury connotations. It has been suggested that I find another. No. I like it. It has lots of different meanings, and most of them at one time or another refer to the things I do to discarded clothing.