Saturday, April 30, 2016

beauty, love and time

 
 
Beauty, love and time are invested in large hand made textiles.

Beauty held for the future.
Time caught and saved.

Friday, April 29, 2016

stitch as prayer

 
In 749, the emperor of Japan abdicated the throne to become a Buddhist monk.  When he died in 756, his wife donated his cloak (the Shino Kesa) to the temple.

Made from layers of silk scraps and donated pieces of silk,
it is covered with fine purple silk thread running stitches.
Three prayers were said with each stitch
making the stitching itself into a pious act.

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

life is lived along the path

 
My story takes place along a walking path that weaves me together with other people's paths.  We are moving threads.  I am in process.  We all are.

My life is a quilt stitched from all the cloth that has been created in this way over the many years.

Sunday, April 24, 2016

the inner self

 
 
 
What is important?
What do I like?
What am I afraid of?
What is the center?

Answer to all these questions:  The inner self.

Thursday, April 21, 2016

blue willow cloth

 
Considering mending this and finishing it.
It's her birthday today.
I made this for her wedding.

It's wrecked.

Monday, April 18, 2016

indigo checkerboard

 
 
the physicality of cloth
working on a piece for years
materials plus time plus my hand's touch

Friday, April 15, 2016

female figurine 4300 BC

female figurine
 
 female figurine

Art does for people who take the time what popular culture does for people in a hurry.

Highlight the sense of touch.

Recall myth.
Recall the quest for deep context.

Thursday, April 14, 2016

inner dialog

 
His way of loving me is to fix the dish washer, build a crate
He receives my love as if it is a glass of water
He doesn't even know he needs it
It's poured for him, but he doesn't seem to need to drink.

Monday, April 4, 2016

affordance

 
 
A new word for me to think about from Caroline Levine.  Affordance.

Glass affords transparency and brittleness, a fork affords stabbing and scooping.  Forms can be moved to new contexts, but they bring their limits with them.  Materials constrain forms . (you cannot make a poem out of soup).  There is a relationship between materiality and form.

What I am looking at here on my wall are clothes I have ordered over the internet that do not suit me in combination with some of the many black and white fabrics I have collected.  I consider making a string quilt from these fabrics.  A practical string quilt.  Those clothes don't flatter me, but their MATERIALS are so nice.

What would a string quilt made from new garments purchased with VISA and inspired by impulse, hope and dream ...mean?  Would this be a dream quilt?  A  hope quilt?

These pieces of clothing (bought without trying them on or touching them before purchase) afford natural fibres and plus sizes and trust.  Those things will stick to the fabrics even as they become transformed into unrecognizable bits of cloth artfully re-arranged.   A quilt affords nurturing, protection, domestic beauty, and is a flag for the bed that creative women have poured their hearts into for generations.  Quilts afford trust.

'Dreams' connect the original and the new form for these materials, but all raw materials have a dream factor, don't they?

It's not enough.  I don't think I'll go  through with this quilt.
I can't afford the time.

Friday, April 1, 2016