Threads

I’m touched…

I’m not sure these days where to post…. Most of my thinking and making is going towards the work with Bo so I feel I should be posting on “pix”. But more personal ramblings should probably go here. When I started out with the joint project, the delineation between that work and my own was clear. There was a difference between that and “my own”.

However…..

As time has gone on, as I’ve worked and read and talked and worked some more, it’s all become more blurred. Hence confusion about where to post now. It’s all now “my own” work.

But… This blog is called Threads, and its intention was to draw all the threads of my work together after all.

It’s the talk about touch that has drawn everything closer. I’ve been thinking about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts, and that unfathomable thing that makes it greater… And been thinking about the unfathomable sense of touch…. What is happening between my skin and my brain… I feel a gap… Slippage…

This is where the connections are. I look at my last body of work, all those children’s clothes with hand marks… Touches.

How we use the word touched to mean things other than my hand upon yours, me touching you… it’s more than the physical.

It means emotionally affected…. Or emotionally unstable even…

The stitches that I’m currently unable to use, ironic, coincidental, they have fallen down a gap, have slipped.

They have also become imperceptible, unfathomable, invisible. But they are still in my head. When they come back, which I hope will be soon, I will have a stronger sense of how they fit and what they are for. How I can take the parts and hold them together. Stitches and pixels and parts, strewn around the floor, waiting to be pulled into the whole, so I can find the bit that makes them greater.

I can use them where they touch, to find the part that touches.

My work has always been about touch, even when I didn’t know it. I feel my way through fabric and garments, touching things in my cupboards and on rails, waiting for the spark, an emotional connection initiated by touch. My work touches these things, becomes part of them, all the way through. I like the word interference, but it does seem to have negative connotations that others don’t like.

I think I have to find away to encourage people to touch what I have made…

Just a short update here… still a little incapacitated, but getting better thank goodness… albeit slowly! Some making happening… nothing too strenuous, a bit of experimentation with fabric stiffening, but it makes me feel better! Most of my writing has been going on in “pix” instead of here… but I’ll be back!

www.a-n.co.uk/p/2910921

My lovely sister-in-law phoned me up, because she had read my previous post and was concerned that I sounded so miserable. I re-read it, and yes, I did didn’t I? Lots and lots of people have expressed concern, and I would like to thank you all, it is lovely of you to be bothered to do so!

I am still physically rather restricted, but have gathered myself together a little, and am now coping with it all in a more dignified, mature fashion. I have stopped having tantrums just because I have to eat my cereal with my left hand.

I have begun to think around the problem too, of making and thinking, and in the long term this enforced period of not-making might actually be good for my brain. I am taking short cuts, and doing small experiments with small materials that don’t require the strength and dexterity of both hands.

I find, thankfully, that my ability to argue with Bo has been unhindered by my injury. Not sure he’s so thankful. So, I am being kept going by the folks around me, and trying to remember to be thankful for small mercies. This is a temporary condition that requires minimal alteration to my lifestyle to accommodate it.

Feel free to remind me to get a grip if I start moaning again.

I haven’t done anything.

I have just sat here moaning.

I haven’t read anything.

I haven’t thought anything.

I am a local expert in moping about and whinging.

I still cannot hold a pen for any length of time, and only the sort that doesn’t require any pressure to write or draw.

I still can’t drive.

It appears my ability to think is inextricably connected to my ability to make. I had thought that yes, a lot of my thinking gets done while I make, but it hadn’t occurred to me that my thinking relied totally upon my being able to make.

I am seeing small improvements, I am now able to move my thumb, I have achieved opposability again. But can’t grip or hold any weight. So still bloody useless. Still off work (a silver lining here, Ofsted have arrived in school while I am off, but I feel guilty I cannot be there supporting my colleagues)

So if I’m not making anything or thinking anything, and I’m being a miserable self-pitying cow, there’s not going to be much to blog about is there?

I am being very irritable with all I live with, and I think my husband thinks I have become mentally unstable. Let’s pray for rapid recovery huh?

Well that’s buggered up my plans.

The theory is I have a cracked scaphoid bone at the base of my thumb. It hurts like hell. I’m not in plaster or anything, but can’t sew, draw, write with a pen, use a fork. Certainly can’t drive. So pretty much most of my favourite means of expression and entertainment removed. Thank goodness for social media, laptops and iTunes.

Bo sent me an image he’d done from a drawing I’d done on an app on my iPhone… yes, still stealing each other’s work. (I’ll post it if he says I can, waiting for a response…) As quite often happens, we seem to have ideas that link, even though coming at them from completely different directions. Having explored the obvious, and the close at hand, working through ideas with bits of muslin, laying foundations as it were, learning the grammar and the vocabulary, I am now in a position to mess it up, push a few boundaries, get bigger, play a little more.

This body of work has taught me such a lot about myself and my working practice. I’m actually more methodical than I thought I was. I have worked through things in a reasonably logical manner. Not taken short cuts, but dealt with ideas as they present themselves either in my sketch book or by making. I’m not sure if this is out of some sort of sense of responsibility to Bo, to make sure I’m doing it “properly”.

It does seem a little jerky though… I head off down a pathway full of enthusiasm, then grind to a halt and need a bit of a prod to set off again. The prod at the moment comes from Bo. Why can’t I do it myself? I know I’ve said it before, but without the crit, I just can’t seem to do it. Even if I disagree totally with what someone has said to me, I need that other voice to enable me to move forward. Is there some way I can learn how to do this for myself?

Anyway, that’s the intellectual exercise that perhaps I can think about while the physical has let me down…

I am desperate to pull apart huge swathes of muslin… starch it, mould it and stiffen it into three dimensional shapes… stitch into it… but that is currently impossible. What I’m scared of is the possibility that the enthusiasm to do it will have worn off by the time I’m physically able to do it.

Got a pile of birthday cds to entertain myself though…

I Am Kloot’s new one, “Let it all In”

Jesca Hoop “The House That Jack Built”

And a couple of old ones that I have on vinyl up in the loft, that I miss listening to:

Tom Waits “Heartattack and Vine”

World Party “Bang”

Right, I’m off for a sulk.