Another year. Faster and faster they zoom by. Still breathless.
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. "
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.
The winter sun always casts awesome light. After several days of rain the sunlight adds a little extra joy to the day.
Who can resist the glow of gingko, the spark of maple and the dusky undertones in sycamore leaves?
My focus is omnivorous and indiscriminate today. Light, shadow, line, shapes they are all teasing me into running down alleys with cloth and stitch. Practice. Experimentation. Practice. There are a lot of what-ifs? What if I striate the cloth with lines and add new layers of texture with every thread color change? What happens if I add curves to line when I change colors? What if at each intersection I add a dollop of a thread knot? What if I let the threads just hang there. . .does it add meaning? The trick is to slow down enough to see. Slow down enough to let things happen. Slow down enough to make art without meaning.
It's the sphinx like shadow there on the lower right corner that made me move on with this practice cloth. What is he looking at?
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.
Final stitching done. Silent Witnesses, Paula Kovarik
