I’ve probably landed in some sort of “middle ground”. The problem is that I find middle ground can be a bit confusing. I like extremity and obsession. I like the fact it can take me six weeks of constant hand-stitching to get anything finished, and I like the fact that my friend can produce 200 images in half an hour. Both hold an edge.
The problem is I can’t come to terms with myself… it isn’t sitting comfortably yet. (One could argue it shouldn’t.) I don’t know if I’m making things because of the thing, or if I’m making a thing in order to turn it into a digital image. I don’t know if I’m happy with it being both.
I have produced some fabric strips and tapes with stamped letters on. The phrases come from conversations – real and email. I stamp them as if they were dialogue in a book. They take on an importance somehow. I can now stitch, but I am almost frightened of becoming addicted again after my enforced cold turkey, so I am being frugal with the stitches, using them to manipulate and fix the fabric rather than to apply the text.
Stitching my handwriting is very personal. Using the stamps is anonymous. And yet within the text are clues to the identity of the person who said them, or the person they were said to.
I could do with having a sort of story board in my studio, so I could pin things up chronologically in an attempt to clarify, or at least see the connections. I tend to pin things up in a haphazard fashion, until the wall space is full, then I take everything down, pin up a couple of the things I like best, and move on. Maybe I need to photograph the board before I dismantle it in order to maintain connections? The blog is useful here in chronicling , but of course I am very selective about which bits of work I show. It is 9 days since my last Threads post, 5 since posting on pix. A lot can happen in the gaps. I make an awful lot of stuff. Making stuff is my 3D sketchbook, my way of working things out.
In addition to the words, I have this sculptural stiffened muslin thing going on… which I am sure will at some point bump into the words. It might also bump into the digital images in terms of some sort of projection.
As I read back through this post before publishing, it seems very disjointed. I have attempted to make it less so, but actually, disjointed is how the work feels.
I know I’ve said before “God knows where I’ll end up!”
But isn’t that kind of the point of being an artist?
I don’t know, and there isn’t an end.
