Today...

...is National Poetry Day...here's the website.  There are events all over the place, if you're quick, you might get to one!  So...I thought I'd share a poem.  The artists among us might appreciate it.  It's new, so probably subject to change, and it hasn't got a title yet.  Maybe it doesn't want one.

Please, do not ask
How many hours it took:
Think days and weeks and
Long, long years, think lifetimes
Thought and practice, reflect
On observations,
All those sketches, notes and plans,
That led us to this moment, this
Construction, this depiction.
Ask, instead, its story,
I will tell you what I know of it
It may not match your viewpoint
But it's mine.

 Quilters in particular seem to be very keen on knowing how long something took.  To me, that's irrelevant, as are the technical considerations they usually ask about.  To me, it's all about the meaning, and even that may not be shared by all.  And that, to me, is the beauty of it.  Happy National Poetry Day!

The image is 'Losing My Religion'.  It has it's own story, but I won't bore you with it now.  See what story you find in it, instead.

Distracting Myself...

...from the thought of hospital tomorrow, I picked up this book, which you read about here.    I wrote a poem for it at the time, which has been sitting in my sketchbook...today, I edited it.  So...it went from

Dreaming the landscape
a blur of colour and
movement
a rickle o' stanes
glinting in the light.

to

dreaming landscape
blur of colour
and movement
rickle o' stanes
glint in  the light.

I'm happier with that, it's more condensed, more direct.  I'm not a poet, not really.  I know bits and pieces about how things are supposed to work, but really, I just write it down, and then take away all the bits that don't seem to belong.  It's reminiscent of sculpture; the sculptor works with a whole piece, and takes away the bits that don't belong, to find the form within. 

So...what to do with it?  My original thought was to have words on every page, but that didn't seem right...plus, I was worried about the pen bleeding through to the other side, as the paper is quite thin.  It didn't, as it happens, but I'm glad I made the decision I did, a word on the first and every second page.  I've spread out the first few pages (just as well they're not attached yet), to let you see what that looks like.

Looking at that second image, it would be interesting to make a stepped book like this, showing the whole poem at a glance...one for the sketchbook...  But I digress.  I had intended to stitch this piece: looking at it now, I don't think it needs it.  I only stitch when stitch would add something to the work.  I know that's not the fashion, and probably hasn't ever been...but it's right for this piece.  The other book I made at the same time will, I suspect, need stitch, as well as a poem.  First, though it needs a good trim; looking at it, I realise that some of the pages are smaller than others, and I'd rather they were the same. 

The last thing to do for this book, though, is to fasten the pages together, a simple three hole binding. Not sure what yarn I'll use, or if I'll plait some threads together, so that's for another day.  Perhaps a heavy gold thread, to relate back to that last line of the poem.   Meanwhile, though,  I've made a template, a simple piece of paper cut to size and folded to work out where the holes should be.  When I'm feeling better, I'll use a hammer and nail to make the holes, using the template to show me where to put them.  For now, though, it'll need to wait.

Writing It Out.

You might remember this book...I wrote about it here

I said I needed a poem, which I would write on the reverse. And lo and behold, in my sketchbook...

I know, it's not easy to read on there... here's the final text...

random
marks
embedded
in stone
lifetime's work
to grasp
that process
make those
rune-like
forms
both with
and without
meaning

That seems to express everything I intended.  The challenge, of course, is to write it on the back of the book in a reasonably regular manner.  I started by writing it again, removing a few words, just looking to see how many lines there are...fourteen, it turns out...

Next stage...measure the book itself, which, it turns out, is the length of an A4 sheet of paper.  So I folded an old letter (yup, we recycle...) to the correct width, then folded it in half, and added the words.  On reflection, should have folded it in quarters, but hey... this isn't about perfection, it's solely about distributing the words in a fairly even manner, without huge gaps...

So...it's possible.  Basically, I added the words on line seven, worked downwards, then upwards.  Looking at it, I decided that capital letters were out.  And then wrote the words again, on the book, this time.

Unfortunately a couple of stray capital letters got in there...a sign I was thinking about too much at once. I can't correct it, so it stays that way.  What happens now, is machine stitch on the other side, which will, of course. obscure the words to some extent.  I like the thought of that; it's not easy to 'read' the marks on stone, either, so it's consistent with the original inspiration.  That may not happen for some time; hospital op on Wednesday, which, while minor, may cause a flare up of the ME, which has been pretty bad recently, so I'm not planning anything.  If I get to work, it will be a bonus.  I am going to take my watercolour crayons and pencils upstairs, so that I have something to play with.  Might as well make the most of the down time, if I can.

High Exposure.

I'm in bed again today; other than reading a trashy novel and playing the occasional silly game on FB, I'm not doing anything, other than think.  So...what to write today...?   Well...the closest I've come to work is a bit of light editing.  I found some poems I wrote several years ago, and have been rereading and amending, somewhat.  Most of them focus on my childhood.  I make no secret that I had the childhood from hell, but I rarely share the details.  These poems, though, look at that.  I've been debating in my head whether or not to share any of them.  I have a profound dislike of work that pretends to be art, when what it really is, is therapy. That said, I think that I have enough distance now, that I can look back on my childhood and see it for what it was, and hopefully, to describe it without histrionics.  So, today's creative act is a poem.

Remembrance.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.  Omar Khayyam

The worst of it is hidden in the dark,

Where nobody at all can ever find it;

The bad things, (like the fights, the slaps, the sobbing

On the bedspread til I slept still sitting up,

Chastised for some infringement

That I cannot now remember, and would not have been

That much), all those bad things I have brought into the open, understood, accepted,

Shrunk to their proper size.    The randomness of it all

Is like my childhood, rule today,  reverse tomorrow,

Punishment inevitable as Mister Frost in winter, icing

up the windows from inside.  At the time, my sister

was so sure that he was real, wanted to make him pay

For every sharp waking, frozen, in the night...

But she grew out of it.  Eventually, I learned

That every pleasant moment had its darkness,

A word, a slap, a scratch, until I cried,

Then, 'something to be cried about'...so

I grew up convinced that all the good things

Do not last, may be stripped away by anyone

At any given moment,  while happiness,

Like Jack Frost, lived in books.

Pleasant moments rarely come to mind:

So linked to darkness, little is remembered.

Snippets of my past, all coalescing. Adam

And his pandrops, Auntie Bell, high tea (with more

than one bit of cake).  More pandrops in the kirk

From Auntie Ebbie on a Sunday, purloined

From her brother, a surreptitious sharing, with

No crunching.  I really don't remember

Any more.  There must be something.  Surely

There must be something.  Clouds have silver linings,

Sun with rain brings rainbows: surely there were more?

I think every artist aims to share something of themselves with every piece of work. This feels like the ultimate in exposure in comparison with visual art, where meanings are cloaked in metaphor and subtlety. Words are much harder to work with for just that reason; give me a paintbrush any time.

Today's Blog...

...is brought to you from the sofa.  Robin's out, and we're expecting a couple of parcels.  Doubtless they'll arrive once he's back again. but if not, by the time I get downstairs, there's a real risk that the delivery man will have disappeared again.  So here I am.  It's more difficult to rest on the sofa; too much stuff that ought to be done, or wants to be made.  I'm resisting.  That said, I'm also contemplating this piece, which you'll remember from Saturday's blog on printing.  It said it wanted to be a book: I agreed.

It looks quite different in 3D, than it did lain flat...

The orientation change makes a huge difference, while the folds encourage us to read both the whole thing and the individual page.  I did contemplate hand stitch, but I really do think that machine stitch is preferable (really do have to ring the engineer this week, I NEED my machine back). 

And talking of needs, the piece needs a poem.  Of course it does, I hear you holler.  The poem will be written on the other side of the book, this time, before the stitch is added.  I think the effect of the stitch will be interesting; it should break up the text, even the individual letters, making the poem act like a piece of visual art.  Which is, I suppose, the whole idea. 

The poem is about interpreting visual marks.  I've got a thing about that...I talk about it here, to some extent.  I stitch, print and paint in this way, making marks, and to me, that reflects the natural world, where the elements create marks in and on, for example, stone, which our minds then attempt to interpret.  'Natural Graffiti', a quilt I donated to a cancer charity, reflects that them (see it here), but I've been stitching rune-like and other abstract and semi abstract forms into quilts since I started making, over thirty years ago (cough).

No, it's not written yet; I'm going to lie on the sofa for the rest of the morning, and see what we can come up with, my unconscious and me.  Seems infinitely reasonable.

Slowly, Slowly...

...may well catchee monkey, but when it's the only speed you've got, it's a pain in the bahookie.  I want to make another book,  a series of books, really, and decided it would be interesting to do it in lutradur.  The semi transparent nature of the cloth, and its natural stiffness in the heavier weights, make it an interesting choice.  And as luck would have it, I found some precut pieces in the lutradur box (this is lutradur 100), offcuts from the kits I used to sell. A bit of judicious trimming, and they were ready to take some background colour.

I chose Naples Yellow acrylic, in the end, a slightly dusky yellow that provides a good contrast to browns, but not overly dark.  I watered the paint to a watercolour consistency because whilst I want the colour, I don't want the semi transparent nature of the cloth to be hampered by the solid nature of undiluted acrylic paint; that will come with the prints I will add to the pages later.  And that's pretty much the extent of my activity today.  Fortunately, however, whilst I doubt I'll be able to do much more, I can at least think (well, for a while, anyway).

My process has always been to turn up at the empty page, or piece of cloth, and do what seemed necessary according to my inner artist, unconscious mind or whatever's in charge when I work.  That doesn't seem to work well with a book.  The writers among you (hi, Ann) will not be surprised by this, given the amount of planning, writing, rewriting and editing necessary to produce either a novel or a piece of non fiction (and don't start me on poetry...).  With a visual book, it's even more important that one's intention, at least, is clear, because, unlike a novel, the sequencing is not clear.  My intention for this particular book, is to use the spear/tree, shield/leaf motifs that I've been cutting from the lino (here's the one I'm working on just now)

And that's as far as I've got.  Because whilst I know these motifs are important to me, I'm not sure exactly why...and the why is the core of the art, both visual and poetic .  I'm not stuck, exactly.  I can poddle along with the mechanics of the making, the carving, the printing, the assembly.  I know what the centre of the book will look like, though not the cover (apparently this one needs a cover, who knew...) or the sequence of images before and after it.  And it needs a poem.  I think.  Or maybe it doesn't.  Maybe it needs random words, for now, and the poem will emerge over time.  I suspect that it's not one of these very short pieces I've been writing for the books, but rather a longer piece, that will extend across several books.  And perhaps those books will need their own case.  Or bag.  Yeah, bag.

And this is how my creativity works (you may have noticed).  It doesn't really matter if I can start with nothing, or not.  What's important, is that I keep asking myself the questions, and make, in response to the answers. 

Done And Dusted.

This morning, I finished off the maze book I showed you here, by writing and adding the poem. 

Unless you look closely, you may not see the difference.  Here's the book laid flat :

I didn't want to make it too easy to find the poem so the words are scattered over the pages in different places.  The poem reads:

stone trickle
spread wide
across the barren land.

I'm contemplating adding a couple of lines of stitch to hold the book in place, although it's doing better than I thought it would with standing upright.  Books made from paper have crisp folds; I've been trying to match that, but actually, it's foolish.  Textile books will never have that crisp effect; it's not possible with layers of fabric, and with the nature of fabric itself.  The folds are rounded, and that's okay. 

This was a genuine experimental piece, made to answer the question, 'is it possible?'.  Turns out it was.  Often, with experimental pieces, I find that they fit into one of my themes.  This is a landscape piece, certainly, possibly even an inner landscape piece, a theme I followed for a while in paint and mixed media.  I don't think I ever know for sure what I'm making, and what it's about, until it is finished, even when I start out with the intention of making something that fits into an existing series.  The work, and my unconscious, usually have plans of their own, and they don't always consult me about them.  I like it that way.  Ultimately, it's all about process....trust the process and you won't go wrong. 

Small Things And Coincidences.

often lead our minds to remember significant things, and by that, I mean things that are significant to us.  We have no garden in this new house; the garden space is under dispute, and we can't do anything with it until that is resolved.  There are no plants to admire, and I had not been aware of how much I rely on plants for inspiration.  Given that this is a new estate, there are no established gardens to enjoy, either, just a couple of cherry trees that have been planted either side of our house by the builders.  To my surprise, though, I found this leaf the other day.  I have no idea where it came from, blown in on the high winds we had last week, no doubt.

I find it beautiful.  A small thing, but it carries the memory of the plant it came from.  I'm not a gardener, so I have no idea what that might be, but it doesn't really matter.  It reminded me, though, of a poem I found while looking for something else (which is the way of these things, really).

The Vine Leaf
I know these lovely yellows and these greens,
These blues and all the moments in between;
Summer is full of them.  This, though, is the tipping point
Where green begins to turn to browns and golds, crimsons,
Aubergines, all the rich and fruitful tones of autumn. I find them
In a single leaf, a newly gifted vine, growing
Fair and unfettered in my Norfolk garden.  No grapes this year
(the plant is far too new); its tender leaves suffice
To capture this single brightly balanced moment
Between burgeoning and the slow slide into sleep.
For now it is enough, for both of us.

And when I read it, I remembered standing by that vine, admiring the colour of the leaves as they turned, taking photographs (I'm pretty sure I probably still have them somewhere), feeling that change in the weather that presages the shift to autumn.  Here's an image of the vine taken a couple of years later, in the early summer.

I'm not much of a poet, really: I'll never be published, certainly.  I don't write often enough, and I'm not terribly disciplined about it, either, as you need to be if you take it seriously, just like any other form of art.  And I've always thought of it as completely separate from the visual art...but this poem shows just how silly that is.  It is full of visual imagery.  In some ways, it is a better aide memoire than any photograph could be.  A photograph is a record of the way something looked in a particular moment; a good photograph suggests emotion.  This poem, though, contains a miniature universe of emotions, sights, smells, textures.  There's at least one textile book in there...perhaps an entire series.  All that, from a moment, a leaf and a handful of words.  Isn't that wonderful?

Sometimes...

things just work out.  That book I showed you yesterday is now complete, though I had thought it would take a while to work out what to do with it.  I sat down to add some more stitch to the single line that was already there.  After  three lines on each side, I wondered if I did indeed want to continue to stitch that area, which was my original intention.  I was stitching in that colour to link the respective areas to the colours of the rust in the middle, 'secret' section.  It didn't seem to be right.  So what would?  This piece is about disintegration, and indirectly, about suicide and death.  What could I put in the four areas demarcated by the stitch, that would suggest disintegration?  Lutradur lace.

And as luck would have it (pure luck, definitely not judgement), I had a piece of lutradur already stitched, ready to be burned out.  For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about... here's the lutradur, complete with stitch.

And here it is after heating it with a heat gun....

Disintegration?  Hell, yes.

And then there's the poem.  Again, wanting to link the poem to the colours of the rust, I used a Posca marker pen in a light brown colour, on the reverse of a yellowish paper bag with grey stripes.  I had originally intended to use the front, but it just didn't seem to work, but the reverse was reasonable.  And I wrote a second poem for the reverse side ;

Consuming itself
through a change of condition;
a natural death.

So...here's what it looks like.

The white blobs have disappeared now; they were wet glue in the lace, which has now dried.  Overall, I'm pleased with the piece, and will make more books using this construction method.

Working Things Out.

I'm currently working on a book (surprise, surprise).  It's a folded book, made from a single piece of material, and it has a secret.  Here's an image.

The paper is quite highly textured; here's a close up...

Interesting, isn't it?  I'll be adding more stitch, I suspect, to the two side areas, more horizontal lines, probably.  I like the loose ends of the thread.  I remember submitting a quilt to Hever (I think it was),  many years ago.  I had deliberately not trimmed away excess thread in several specific areas, because it represented broken connections between people; apparently, I was told later, two women had stood in front of the quilt and loudly discussed it in critical terms, including the line 'these art quilters are so lazy, they can't even be bothered trimming the thread...'.  Sigh.  The thread ends here have no particular meaning; I just like that way it looks.  I know I could add beads (for instance), but that would give the whole thing way more significance than it actually has, or than I want it to have.  

So... can you see from the image, what the book's secret might be?  Here it is.

That central section opens out, and contains rust dyed silk.  In texture terms, it both complements and contrasts with the texture of the paper.  I like rust....but of course, it can't really be neutralised, and will continue to work on the fabric.  I have had some rust dyed fabric for over ten years, and see no deterioration in it, but it's not archival in the true sense of the word.  That doesn't bother me in the slightest.  I make to create meaning; sometimes that meaning is fleeting, and the use of rust dyed fabric is important in work that explores impermanence or uncertainty.

I've written a poem as part of this book.

Metal ourubos

Consuming its host

Til nothing remains

That, to me, is the nature of rust.  It consumes and consumes, until the host is gone, and nothing remains but dust.  The poem reflects the nature of the rust, and by extension, the nature of the piece.  It is made to self destruct; it's really only a matter of time.

The question I'm debating internally is what to do with the text.  Same poem on both sides?  Or write another poem on the same theme?  Or spread the words over both sides, and make the viewer piece the poem together?  Write them, stitch them or applique them?  Write them on a luggage label and attach it somewhere (I like that one)? The jury's out.  And it may stay out for quite a while.  It's unusual for me to have no idea how to progress, but here we are...so I'll put it aside and let my unconscious do its work.  

I think the issue I have is that the book is not for the poem, or the poem for the book; they have equal weight, with the fabric, in terms of expressing meaning.  I don't want the poem to dominate the materials, or vice versa.  It's a question of finding an appropriate balance, and that may take time.

Reverting To Words...

,,,because sometimes, only words will do.  This week is ME awareness week; read more about it here.  There are a lot of events happening across the country, across the world, in fact, including Millions Missing, where shoes are set out, labelled with their owners' stories, to indicate the way in which they are missing from the event, and indeed, to some extent, from their own lives.  I can't go to the Edinburgh event (at the Mound, if you want to go along), so I thought I'd mark it with a poem.

Wasting My Energy : A Poem For ME Awareness

You. Yes, you. You who can dance

Whenever you want.  Stroll

Unconcerned wherever you

Wish, run for a mile, or a

Bus without thinking.  Work, laugh or play

Without consequence.  

You really don’t get it, now do you?

Here sit I, wheels for feet,

Buses a distant memory.  Oh yes,

My legs work, and the rest of me: I can

Stand up, point a toe, take a few

Careful steps, then sit down hard

Gasping for breath.

And that will make me

A fraud in your eyes;  that is,

If you see me at all.  Invisible,

That’s me.  (It’s got something to do

With the chair).

Humour me, just for a moment.

Imagine a world filled with pain,

Every action carefully planned, consequences

Weighed up and measured, that is

If just rising from bed can be managed..

Imagine your life without action,

Interaction, meaning: you’re imagining

Mine.  Nobody asks for ME; it just

Happens one day, irreversible,

Misunderstood.  No testing,

Diagnosis or cure.  No treatment.

No sympathy.  Just judgement,

And the shaking of heads. It’s no

Way to live. It’s all there is.

You still don’t get it, do you?

I really tried.

Meditation : The Next Steps.

After the red herring, I was a bit cautious about where I went next; this piece is tiny, 4" square.

meditation in blue and purple 

Making this one was particularly interesting...I discovered some of my own assumptions were absolute nonsense!  I've worked at small scales before, notably in the ACEO format of 2.5 by 3.5.  I assumed that small stitches would be 'right'; they weren't.  And that a lighter colour of stitch would be A Good Thing; it wasn't (see below).

This is the piece in the early stages of stitching, with a gold coloured thread.  It doesn't look too bad in the photograph; it looked dreadful in real life.  I discovered that part of the point of these quilts, is that the stitch is purple. Being tempted away into gold disrupted the flow of the quilts.  I wanted the stitching to be an inherent part of the piece as a whole, rather than an entity that attracts attention to itself at the cost of the rest of the piece (if that makes sense?).   Reader, I unpicked it.

However, I did replace the purple metallic thread I had been using with a variegated purple Decora thread, and made the stitches uneven, but large.  I think that the small stitches allowed the strong gold stripes running down the centre of the piece to dominate too much.  And finally, adding two small pieces of the purple and gold fabric running horizontally across the piece, restored the balance completely.

I'm beginning to realise that I could work in this format almost indefinitely.  And I am reminded of a poem, entitled Piecing, by Robin Morgan, the first section of which seems to sum it up nicely...

"Frugality is not the point.  Nor waste.
It’s just that very little is discarded
in any honest spending of the self,
and what remains is used and used
again, worn thin by use, softened
to the pliancy and the translucence
of old linen, patched, mended, reinforced,
and saved.  So I discover how
I am rejoicing slowly into a woman
who grows older daring to write
the same poem over and over, not merely
rearranged, revised, reworded, but one poem
hundreds of times anew."

This is my work.  Similarly, this is who I am.  On a good day, I can't tell the difference between them.  Both series and life continue..  It is amazing, what art does.