Sketchbook
I had an idea ages ago that I thought would work really well, would take this body of work into the three dimensional, and allow me to project digital images onto something other than a wall.
I’m very impatient.
Having written about it and drawn it in my sketch book, I was certain it would work. It took me weeks to get going on it, I felt I needed the place to myself, uninterrupted to get this up and running. It didn’t work. I turned the air blue with foul and despicable language and now will have to go back to the original idea, and my test pieces, to try to figure out why it wouldn’t work on a larger scale.
I remember having another idea some time ago, that I wrote about in this blog, which prompted me to accuse my sketch book of lying to me. A perfectly sensible idea on paper, just doesn’t work when you do it for real. Where is the lie happening? Before I even get it on the paper? In my drawing of it? In the testing? In the execution?
I am impatient.
I don’t have much staying power. If things don’t work I get very annoyed with myself and the idea, and frequently ditch it. I have boxes, drawers and bags full of unsuccessful projects, abandoned. I will undoubtedly abandon songs too (how fortunate they won’t need storage space).
Occasionally I tip stuff out of the boxes, and review them, can they be used in some way? Dismantled and reassembled? This does, I realise now, have resonance with some of the work I have done with Bo. See? Even when I think I’m doing something new, eventually some previously unseen link rears its (sometimes ugly) head. But the fact there is a link makes me happy nonetheless.
Staying power then… I’m a bit of a grasshopper perhaps? It might seem like that, but in retrospect I see patterns and paths, in the work and my sketchbook. I’m flitting about, in the knowledge/hope that at some point all will become clear. These patterns are reassuring, and ought to give me faith to carry on regardless.
Directionless?
So I feel a little directionless. I don’t know what work belongs where.
I’ve got bits of fabric stitched together with bits of text, ostensibly for the work for “pix” with Bo. Pieces of things. Elements and thoughts in fragments. I’m ok with these things but the edges aren’t there. There are overlaps with other work. But good grief, isn’t that what the pix stuff is all about (for me): the edges not being where you expect them?
I have these tracing paper drawings – not the bra ones, but others, a dress, a hand: These feel connected to the elements, the touch, the fragments, but is it real enough? There are material connections, and a drifting concept. I think it may just be a lack of confidence that makes me want to pin it down. I’ve been here before. I do pin it down, but then there is an obviousness about it all that weakens the work in some respects, leaves no room for the viewer.
All is well in my head, right up to the point where I have to decide what to show in October, because at the moment it is all TOO bitty. I don’t feel the elements have a strong enough connection. I need fresh eyes on it.
Actually, what I probably need is a bit of faith.
I’ll start with this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzTbEnUtz9M
