Finishing Off.

It ain't finished 'til the fat lady sings?  Sometimes.  Other times, something feels as if it ought to be finished, but continues to niggle at you.  Over the years, I've come tor realise that the only thing to do is to put a piece like that aside, and let the unconscious work out what needs to be done.  It can take a while....or not...

You may remember this piece; I talk about it here. And it has been annoying me ever since.  Predominately because it's boring.

Not to mention that it somehow felt too wide.  Today, I worked out what to do with it.  I've been rereading 'Structure of the Visual Book' by Keith A Smith.  It was talking about folded books, and gave an image of an accordion book, not unlike the ones I've been making, except that the folds were very frequent.  So, when I glanced at the piece, I thought...I wonder if I could turn it into an accordion book... and started playing around with the necessary folds.  In reality, though, it was obvious that the section at the far end, with the starfish, really wouldn't be happy with that treatment.  The folds, though...they were interesting... soft folds, not pleats, folded so that the words are easy to see, closer together.  So I tacked them into place...and that wasn't easy; stitching through three folds of Evolon is heavy going, and involved forcing the needle through them.  And I ended up with this...

 So...not so wide... soft folds suggesting the waves at the beach... the paint treatment not so dominant...definitely better.  It's still by no means the best thing I've done, but I can live with it now.
I decided to leave the stitches in... by the time I'd got them there, I was pretty well exhausted.  The should really have been white, on reflection, and I might replace them at some point, though I did add some brown stitches at the bottom right, just to balance it out.

Is the fat lady singing?  Nah, she's going for a lie down...

In A Bind.

Reader, I finally did it.  I bound the first of the ME pieces, described here.  I used the feather fabric I found, kindly donated by a friend among some scrap she gave me from her stash. 

The binding is far from perfect, and perhaps that's not surprising; it's probably the first time in over twenty years that I've chosen to bind a piece. I don't like binding, but this piece seemed to need it.  And, imperfections apart, I don't like the binding on here, either, but it does add another layer of meaning.  It speaks of limitation, which is the core issue of ME.  I've always thought that binding on an art quilt limits the eye.  By that, I mean that it stops any movement contained in the quilt, at the edge.  I like to encourage the eye, and the mind, to wonder about what's going on outside the edges; the binding stops it dead.  How does that meaning, that movement, continue?  Does it stop, or does it continue into infinity?  I'm not all that fond of mounts and frames, either, but I think they're better than binding.  This piece, though, didn't seem to want to be framed; it's too tactile for that. 

I've said that limitation is a key element of ME: let's continue that theme.  Robin brought in a postcard-sized piece of Lutradur he found in the car...no, I have no idea how it got there.  This is what I've done with it :

It is made from some bits that were lying on my side table, left over from previous projects, plus a starfish from my bead and bit collection.  I started by stitching on the blue hand dyed silk organza, and then added the strip of fabric.  At that point, I realised what I was making.  This is a postcard from another lifetime, my pre ME lifetime, when I could do what I wanted, when I wanted.  I love the beach, and for the first time in our married life (39 years this year) we live near the sea.  In particular, I love beach combing...but I can't do it any more.  I can't walk far enough, and the number of wheelchair accessible beaches are very, very minimal (you need a special wheelchair.  Turns out there are two in Scotland).  Either way, though, I don't see myself visiting the beach any more...so this is a postcard from my previous, beach combing existence.  It's very simple; the sea, the sand, the starfish.  It was photographed on top of my laptop, so that you could see it clearly, but I need to think carefully about what I'll put behind it.  I think this is probably the first piece in a series, and unlike the quilt, it will happily take to small frames, probably box frames....the ideal would be to make frames from driftwood. 

I feel the need to say that this is not about self pity; it is about making something meaningful out of a bad experience.  The ME is unlikely to just go away, so I need to find ways to live with it that are meaningful for me...and this is it.  I have been contemplating a blog specifically 'about' ME, but the jury's still out.  There are a lot of ME blogs around, some more useful than others, and I'm not sure that I'd be adding any value.  Mind you, there's a lot of art blogs around to, but that fact has never stopped me blogging...

I'm pretty sure I have some more postcard sized bits of lutradur around, so I dare say I'll be making some more of these.  I think perhaps the frame needs to have a luggage label attached, with a personal story.  Clearly the making of books, and their associated poems, are having an effect on the rest of my work.  We'll see.