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I don’t often go to work these days. By go to work, I mean arrive at a certain place by a certain time and stay as long as someone else expects me to. This doesn’t mean I’m not happy to do it. Indeed the work I’m turning out for today is part of the “get a cheap studio” deal. So I am absolutely happy to do it. But the day has a different feel about it. First off -I set the alarm. I hate being late. I am the person that will sit reading in the car park for an hour rather than be late. So alarm is set, I have an early night but spend the whole night waking every couple of hours thinking “the alarm will go off in a minute”. My sleep pattern is so much better since I stopped having to set an alarm most days. I also set out the clothes I am going to wear in the morning before I go to bed. This is ridiculous as I’m not exactly an elegant woman, I am a jeans and jumper and converse or boots sort of woman. Nor do I possess a lot of clothes, there aren’t that many decisions to make, especially when you take into account my colour coordinated laundry programme. All the red and purple stuff is waiting to be washed, so that’s not on the list of possibles. But even so, I’m not a “morning person” so indecision overwhelms me and the choice between green or navy t shirt under blue or slightly darker blue jumper becomes impossible. So, clothes laid out, alarm set, I can go to sleep. Ish. I could mention here that at the moment we have a small mouse problem in the loft above the bedroom. Thankfully all my fabric stash is in well sealed plastic boxes. But my husband’s 40 year collection of Walsall Football Club programmes is perilously exposed to nocturnal nibblings. We have set traps and poison but the little bastard still eludes us. We are contemplating a shot gun, from the bed, at regular intervals. It is only the prospect of the aforementioned fabric stash crashing down on our heads that stops us.

So this morning, here I am sat, an hour before I need to go, dressed in the pre-arranged clothes, breakfast eaten, teeth brushed, make-up on. I feel bleary, not at all alert.

 

Contrast this to my usual pattern: I go to bed when I’m tired which is generally between 12:30 and 2 am. I love that quiet time (when all I can hear is the sodding mouse). I sleep now, about 6 or 7 hours. When I had the proper job it was rare I got more than 3 or 4. I sometimes get up straight away or sometimes I read in bed for a while. I get up when I feel like it, and eat my crumpets while I read emails and check out Facebook etc. I drink a bit of tea, and generally finish the mug! By this time I do feel alert and ideas for the day have started to push through the fog. Then I will gather my things together and go to the studio for a few hours and work and play to my own direction, coming home when my brain has stopped.

Through these relatively recent habit developments I believe I have rendered myself totally unemployable.

And this makes me completely content.

And this makes me completely broke.

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I was told I would probably be able to drive about four weeks after the op. Well it is four weeks today and I’m not. Well… a nearly-lie… I drove about two miles yesterday. It wasn’t good. Felt decidedly wobbly, even though I had my husband with me. We swapped. I’ll have another go tomorrow. It is as much about confidence as it is about the state of my knee. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a confident driver, not like the ridiculous woman I heard say “oh I’m not very good at reversing!” (to be honest I think she should have her licence revoked until she is). What I mean is the confidence in my own body to do what I ask it to. I’m not quite there yet. Also, not doing it for a month makes the re-start very self conscious, I find I am explaining to myself in my head where the windscreen wiper controls are. But I’ll get there too… like my physio, a little bit more each day…

 

All this leads me to my studio. I found myself also losing studio-confidence as I hadn’t been there for a month either. I had forgotten how I did “studio”. I started to feel weird about it. As if, unlike bike riding, I would forget, and end up letting it go, unable to find that feeling I had grown to love.

 

Anyway… today I was given a lift in, and my husband helped me carry back some of the stuff I had taken home. We carted the stuff up the stairs. I walked up very slowly, good leg first, one step at a time… this is really pissing me off now, but if I try to lead with the “bad” leg, it all goes horribly wrong.

The room was dark and icy, the Farmfoods Christmas decorations through the window made it seem worse, not better.

I dumped everything on the table and Mike left me to it.

Kettle on. Heater on. Lights on.

I started to unpack things… the red bra, the wired up white bra, some paper, and some drawings, sketchbook, and a variety of Apple products.

As the kettle boiled I plugged in everything to charge, fired up the bluetooth, connected everything together… “Can you hear me Houston?”

I made the tea and cracked open a packet of jaffa cakes.

 

I sat on my quilt-covered chair and assessed the situation: I have 2 bras finished and wired. I bra finished, waiting to be wired. I have a wall chart waiting to be filled in. I have a variety of sounds, songs, lyrics, all waiting to be pieced together, and a whole lot more still to be written.

As I laid everything out before me, the room was warming up nicely. The tea was warming me on the inside. I looked around the room and all was well. It was still an extension of my brain, the things on the walls were still relevant. The music playing soothed the savage beast (Jesca Hoop).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bxpLcNod80

Two hours later, Mike knocked on the door to ask if I was ready to go home. Yes I was. Two hours, thats all. I feel worn out. This is obviously another aspect I am going to have to build up slowly. But at least I know now I can do it. I haven’t forgotten. 

 

Daft Cow, what was I thinking?

The edges of people don’t stop at their skin…

This phrase arrived in a poem I wrote over a year ago, before the collaborative/joint exhibition with Bo Jones.

I suspect this post might meander about a bit, but I feel the need to get it straight in my own thinking, and that is what the blog is for… one of the reasons anyway.

I have been brought back to it by the recent posting on “The Museum for Object Research” curated by Sonia Boue, the latest post being written by Patrick Goodall. It’s the bit about policemen’s bums and their bicycles that got me…

I think, if an idea, a theory, or a flight of fancy sticks for this long, then it must be true mustn’t it? if I suddenly find it applies to a new body of work as well as the old, It must be a core part of my work. It must be important. So I revisit it here.

The work with Bo began as a sort of desperate bid to not lose the impetus and productivity, and relationship gained whilst doing our MA. The topic we picked, was the way we linked our work, the singularity and complexity of stitch and pixel. We worked away at it, both collaboratively and individually. We both arrived at different but linked conclusions.

In retrospect, it was enormously valuable, and enabled me to pick apart the very essence of my work right down to the molecular, the grain of thought, the smallest action. The MA started it all off, but to be honest, the two years since finishing the course have been even more intensely, personally educational.

 

The train of thought went like this… ish… the tale has been condensed in the thinking and telling…

One stitch is useless.

more stitches make things stronger

strength in numbers

the community (of stitches, and in the analogy, of people) is stronger than just the collection of individuals

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” (Aristotle)

If I am greater than the sum of my parts, what is the extra bit then?

The extra bit is the bit that rubs off… affects others… memory… genetics… love… pain

 

The work I did on the back of that allowed me only to use the left overs from previous projects, that lay out on my table, because I’m untidy and hadn’t put it away (thank goodness!). In fact… I am still only using those scraps of fabric now. I’ve got nothing else out since. I don’t seem to be running out of materials… how can this be? These left overs are the memories that affect each other. The “genetic material” (pun intended) of my work can be tracked back now for over three years… I wonder how long it can go on?

The bras have moved in though… second hand, derelict almost… useless. I work on them with the materials that are still on the table. They are also greater than the sum of their parts. They contain parts of the women that wore them… undoubtedly the traces of real DNA have been washed away… but I can imagine them still there. I also imagine the memory and the love and the pain. these bits are rubbing off onto me, I am rubbing off onto them… My DNA as I prick my finger on the needle is certainly still there.

The songs I now write also contain and spread the extra bits… words full of memories real and imagined, some autobiographical (I’m not saying which) but some not. Some are the tales of the mythical women. We continue to rub off on each other… leave our traces.

 

The edges of people don’t stop at their skin.