letting the unknown in

This piece has been lingering on my boards for about 4 months. Every morning the sun streaks across it to spotlight the fact that it hasn't been resolved yet.

Recently someone asked me "what compels you to do this art?" and I answered in a very vague manner:

I want to let the unknown in.

Yesterday I was reading a great blog called brain pickings and they had an article about Alan Lightman and his book Sense of the Mysterious. His explanation about the mysterious state of creative inspiration compared it to planing while sailing. He says it this way:

"…every once in a while the hull lifts out of the water, and the drag goes instantly to near zero. It feels like a great hand has suddenly grabbed hold and flung you across the surface like a skimming stone."

I compare the feeling to what it must feel like to take flight, or launch into space, a sensation that takes you away from here and now consciousness.

Gathering, huddling, blind witnesses

Is that what I am after? An addictive search for otherness?

For me, answers to mysteries only come after exhaustive exploration. And still they can be mysteries. Awe paddles me forward so I tinker around the edges until I am ready to jump in. Showing up, head down with full focus, moves a piece forward. My theory is you just have to show up with intention day after day until you are free enough to feel the wave. Letting go of preconceptions rather than allowing a piece to breathe its own air is one of my many challenges.

 

Silent witness - obstruction.

Silent witness - obstruction.

i see faces

the thing about seeing rather than looking is that it can add a little jitter of recognition to life.

I see faces in inanimate objects. Somewhere I read that we are predisposed as a species to see the geometric configuration of eyes, nose and mouth. Something to do with avoiding predators I think. Face recognition software in our dna. How cool is that?

So as I am traveling through space I see faces. Some are friendly, some not so much. Once you see them they are everywhere. There are some on our driveway. They greet me every day.

There are some on the sidewalk

Some are friendly, they appear on rocks, walls, bushes and in clouds

Some are man made (who among us would dispute that a man designed this radiator panel..this car wants to OWN the road.)

I look at the faces and see messages, greetings, and witnessing. They entertain, build my visual library and keep me company while I work.

Do you see faces too?

12 months

Another year. Faster and faster they zoom by. Still breathless.

Birds_PaulaKovarik

One of my favorite thinkers, Brian Andreas, writes this:

"She asked me when the season of joy was supposed to end
and I said I didn't really think there was an exact date.
So we left the tree up till June that year. "

refuge

The piece I was working on last week transformed before my eyes after several hours of experimental stitching. The cloth is an old circular tablecloth that I dyed with a spray bottle filled with watered down dye. It was going to be an underskirt for my nuclear testing piece that is languishing in the corner of the studio.
I pulled it out of the experiment pile last Friday and folded it in half, then cut it into two wedge pieces so that I could try some stitching ideas I had. The stitching exercise gave me some great textures. It started with random straight lines that went across the piece higgledy piggledy to anchor the cloth.

Then at each new bobbin I changed the color of the thread to add more interest. Eventually a wonky grid emerged. As the grid grew I noticed that at the junctions of the navy blue lines there was a sense of dominance. So I decided to reinforce that by starting a new line of thread (in black) that started at the juncture and traveled on in a wavy line across the piece. Letting the thread ends hang.

As the thread ends started to accumulate I had to figure out how to handle them. Bury them? let them hang? cut them off? Tie them together? I loved the extra texture the thread was giving me but the thread ends were obscuring the texture below so I decided to nail them down with a spiral of stitches and trim them off. It was then that I realized I had created a terrain of sorts with little focus points that could represent targets.

Laying the stitched cloth over the remaining wedge of fabric made me stop in my tracks. Suddenly it all made sense. This piece is about a land ravaged, surrendering to chaos and on the edge. The stitched piece created a shoreline over the second wedge.

The edges are raw. The threads are chaotic.

And now I am hand stitching trails, individuals and groups across the void. Moving them toward the calm and away from the chaos.

It rained all weekend

It rained all weekend. And that's a wonderful thing. The sky is a consistent level 5 gray with no distractions. Sounds are deadened. Backyard chores ignored. Quiet, studied time is a gift. Add that to shorter days and longer darks and you have a brooding season where thought and time merge.

Cloud cover, 2015

I woke three times last night. Probably because I went to bed so early. Those restive moments while trying to calm my energy to go back to sleep will inform my day. Not sure where they will take me. I am feeling inner not outer. 

Cloud cover, detail. I am using a cotton canvas in these studies. The variegated black to white thread appears and disappears with the stitching. Forcing me to give up control unless I want to make myself crazy. The stiffness of the canvas really helps tame wrinkles.

The silent witnesses on the board ask for more companions. I think I'll take out those rocks I collected last summer and let them talk to each other for a while. I love the rain.

These guys really speak to me.