Through process, thought, talking…. The dust motes of ideas become dust bunnies… Become more tangible… Workable… Visible…
All the time, underground, the rhizomes grow and spread and make connections… And then, suddenly, under the right conditions, they sprout.
A couple of posts ago I wrote that I was showing people my sketchbook. Some people got selected, photographic highlights, and indeed I posted a few pages here. The edited highlights returned nothing. What did yield wonderful things though, was handing two current books over to Dan, for him to read, comment upon, draw things together….. Things he saw that connected… Not just in my head but his. He made connections I hadn’t seen, right under my nose. He also sent me music, made comments of his own thoughts and memories prompted. Obviously then, to make sense of anything enough to make a response, you probably need the whole lot, as a thing in your hands, not just a photo…
I had wondered when I had this idea, whether it was a bit like handing in a book to a teacher to be marked. But no, the books were treated with respect and thoughtfulness, and seriousness and honesty… And the occasional joke…
Dan apologised for keeping the books for a while, but I found that because he had them, when they did return I could look at them with fresh eyes, and look more objectively at his comments.
I had been worried that I couldn’t see a way forward. But actually, all the ingredients were there.
I recall also, a chunk of Sonia Boué’s blog The Museum of Object Research dated 6th November 2014 – wow – a year ago!
“Flann O’Brien wrote that the policeman’s bicycle seat in “The Third Policeman” had exchanged molecules over the years he had ridden it to the extent that the bicycle had become part policeman and the policeman part bicycle. The laws of physics are challenged by quantum theorist’s discovery of the slippery nature of matter that is so surprisingly empty and tenuous that the absurdity of O’Brien’s bike becomes almost believable…”
This short passage has stuck in my head. We rub off on each other, things rub off on us, and we rub off on things. We are intermingling around our edges.
The materials of my work are fabric, thread, and found objects – made objects – the hand of the maker and appropriator evident in the work. That’s how I operate.
The concept is that rubbing off and on… The memory of the effect we have on each other… The permanence or impermanence of those effects, and how they are tempered by what happened before and after.
The manner in which they come into being, my process, is that journey from “crazed frustration” (Dan’s expression) to a “State of Grace” (mine). This isn’t necessarily a total resolution, but a temporary, even fleeting, quieting of the soul.
Having redefined, restated and reorganised these three factors, what the work actually might LOOK like is easier. I don’t know what I was worried about!
Let the making begin!
