I’ve just completed my very first application for arts funding. I know. I’m 52 for goodness sake! What have I been doing all my life?
Anyway, it’s done. I’ve done my best with it. The rest is up to someone else. If I don’t get it I will have to raise the money some other way, as I am now determined to get me and my work to New York somehow!
We wait with baited breath, fingers crossed, touching wood and avoiding ladders etc.
Meanwhile, now it’s done I’d like a couple of days of making please. I’ve got a couple of pieces in my head that I’d like to make ready for the exhibition in Ledbury. One is a tiny little thing, that will probably only take me a morning to make. The other is somewhat bigger, and requires a little construction and forethought. And lots of quite technical stitching. Remember when I had my hand injury and said rather rashly that I might not show any stitching at all? What b*ll*cks!
What that few weeks did though, was make me consider how and why I stitch. It made me consider what was necessary. My stitching has always been my thing… and to have gone through a process of reconsideration through enforced circumstances has been more than useful. I’m sure I could make this second piece with different materials if I chose to, but why would I? It wouldn’t say it properly. I am fluent in stitch and fabric. So that’s what I’ll do.
For the show with Bo, I have stripped it all back. I have considered ONE stitch, and ONE stitch at a time, making ONE thing at a time. I’ve thought about the power of ONE or the weakness, and considered the strength in numbers, the effects that working as a group can have. Stitching is the ultimate collaboration. So stitching stands as a metaphor for the rest of me. I work best, strongest when I have someone to bounce off, laugh with, snipe at, argue with, drink tea with.
So of course I am a stitcher not a painter. Obvious isn’t it?
