scraps

I’m not sure what to call the things in the box I was rummaging through the other day.

Experiments? Flirtations? Fragments? Morsels? Dead Ends?

Certainly most of the them grew out of irresistible ideas. (I mean, pants portraits—what’s not to love?) ¹

But none of those ideas stuck around for long— though even now I can feel the delight of making each one.

I suppose I can only hope that they found fruitful places to land when they left,² whatever techniques and materials were involved: stitching, writing, painting (or all three at once), and gessoing on random scraps of cloth.³

But what sparked them in the first place?

Well that is unanswerable as ideas are always a mystery—though I do know it was important for each to have a textile element, even when no stitching was involved.

And I’m also pretty sure I wouldn’t have attempted (or even conjured), any of them as works on plain paper as that would not have felt like proper work.⁴ At least for me, then.

So I’m glad I don’t feel that way any more.

Or do I?

crocuses then and now

For even as I draw the same daily minutiae I once stitched, the clothness of life is still central.

And of course process is always showing up in one form or another—my relationship with a material, or that material’s relationship with me.

So perhaps I operate under the assumption that if every day cannot be physically woven into tapestry—

—then tapestry (or some kind of textile-centric something-or-other) needs to be woven into my every day—

—and that the rest of life will only be only compelling if seen through the eye of a needle, or wrapped in cloth.

Gosh—maybe I do? It’s an interesting thing to ponder at any rate.

Or ask.

So—ideas.

What were we hoping to do together?

Was it good for you too— at least while it lasted?

Group Project

Why did you slip off in the night?

And what would you think if I came to visit you this time?

Though—where do you live?

I’ll probably have to wait a while for an answer.

But that’s okay. I was mostly just curious.

And I’ve got other things to do

Like throw sticks for Beryl. And practice hanging out.

Which is plenty to go on with, don’t you think?

Sirius ‘n Me; egg tempera on hand woven linen; acrylic gesso 8” x 6.5”; 2016?

gs please do click the button below and send it to them!

1. Perhaps I didn’t make more of these because I only had two pairs of well-mended pants at that time.

2. Well, there is always the issue of idea competition, for in my world it seems that if there is a tapestry ready to be woven, its material existence will take precedence over almost everything else—which means that other ideas or techniques can provide temporary company and refreshment, but won’t be given a room of their own. I’m not sure this is entirely true, or that I even like it, but it does rather look that way— and if I were a delightful idea I can absolutely imagine being seriously offended by this, and zipping off to more receptive pastures. Elizabeth Gilbert talks about this in Big Magic—and also this article.

3. Gesso — for the pieces here I used several different kinds: synthetic commercial gesso (comes in a jar), real gesso (rabbit skin glue and chalk) or pseudo-gesso (cooked rice flour paste/glue with or without titanium white mixed in). For the thinner pieces of fabric I sometimes diluted synthetic gesso or rice flour paste so that it would penetrate and hold paint but still look like cloth. I very much look forward to Caroline Ross new book where I believe she will talks about other grounds and foraging for natural materials. And in the meantime there is her first book Found And Ground and Instagram of the same namefor some exploration right now.

4. And of course making the diaries (which involve stitching of course), probably adds a certain “legitimacy” to the practice — at least for the part of my brain that seems to have these firmly held beliefs!

Indeed of the things that kept me from spending more years with Egg Tempera (a two year obsession about twenty years ago), was that as far as I knew (and from all I read at the time), it was necessary to always paint on some kind of rigid board, which over time started to bug me. I mean you can’t even roll them up!

Years later, however, I stumbled across the wondrous work of Sue Prince, many of whose amazing Egg Tempera paintings use natural pigment paint on gesso applied to a heavy twill fabric. Naturally I had to try again using scraps my own hand woven fabric (very open plain weave so not at all like Sue’s sturdy ground cloth). And these experiments in turn led to other gesso and rice paste experiments using my friend Jodi Gear's handmade watercolors ( what I use to paint all my comics), and they in turn became a base for stitching— and so it goes. One thing leading to another.

For more on natural pigments, see footnote #3 info on Caroline Ross.