Old habits
Waiting (recently finished and photographed)
Although I filled other roles at different times, I was essentially a commissioning editor - but hands on with it. So my responsibilities covered developing coherent lists of titles, seeing them through from commission to publication and license sales, but with many books at different stages in that development at the same time, and in the meantime ever aware of how the list should develop in future.
And here I am again, with always at least two pieces of work being stitched (one big on the table of the sewing room, and one in the house which I can handle and stitch while watching tv - or take out with me), new ones accumulating for photography, and a handful in design development. Meantime my mind is out there probing possibilities for future designs and technical solutions.
I seem to need to juggle all of these stages at once, and cannot really imagine working absolutely exclusively on one stage or one piece of work at a time. I love working like my own sheepdog: always to and fro, ranging wide into the field, then coming back to nip some ankles before racing out once more.
Too much of a good thing?
At a festival of cheeses it is easy to imagine being tempted to try too many, and in the end not only not being able to distinguish one from the other - but rather feeling rather queasy about cheese altogether. So today, when I went to the Festival of Quilts, I was determined to keep my palate clear enough to appreciate the individuals I tasted.
To be honest, I really was only interested in one person's work. I have admired for many years the reproduced work of Dorothy Caldwell. I wanted to see what this work was like in reality, and how it would feel to be standing right next to it - lots of it. As well as reproductions I had read blogs - such as recently by Jeanne Raffer Beck, and longer ago by Alison Schwabe of workshops given by Dorothy Caldwell. This all fed my curiosity to meet the woman as well as see her work.
I was not disappointed.
In this work I found a power and a humility. I was fascinated, drawn to visit the stand again and again, everything else around paling in comparison. These pieces represent for me a kind of distilled notation which is akin to the earliest marks of mankind, and which I believe were also made by women. I found this work to be intellectually rigorous, and emotionally wide-ranging, accommodating - always intriguing, reflective, evocative, and demanding too.
You can see that I was rather blown away! So many folks wanted to know how it was all made, and tools and cloths were laid out in part explanation. It is of course interesting to hear and see how an artist goes about achieving their end.
I was also delighted to hear how Caldwell has the developing work on one wall, and the palette of pieces on another from which she picks and progresses. While I was there was a film made of her talking about her work too.
But at base, I am more interested in why rather than how.
I was lucky enough to chat for a few minutes: to hear how she is fascinated by how many ways we look at landscape. I could see so many views in there myself: the direct contact, the map, the satellite views, .... Such chats are invaluable personal contacts, and I can neither articulate what I gained, nor paraphrase appropriately what Dorothy Caldwell said.
Rather than being oppressed by the crowds, confused by the indigestible input of so many varieties of quilt (I did like a few of the others - but nothing could compare as art), I left feeling exhultantly thoughtful, with memories and reactions to those specific glorious works, and eager to re-examine my own output with a view to moving forward on that long but enticing road. Dorothy Caldwell really is a big cheese!
Striving for imperfection
The yellow room (design)
Striving for imperfection, but to look perfect. Striving for perfect imperfection? Or does that make it perfection nonetheless?
Anyway, whatever, I'm still not sure that I got it how I want it. I have not gone through to look at it with some distance in time from the doing.
I have been finishing pieces and putting on sleeves, and apart from a few labels I'm done (if the perfect imperfection is ok). I look forward to going back to a piece I put aside earlier in the year - the design is above. It's interesting how some pieces need to be started but require quite a bit of simmering before they are complete. While others just have to be made manifest NOW!
Never a dull moment.
Three cheers
Leap or fly? (framed) 2003
This did not work out because I find that I don't really like music straight to my head. But, BUT, the incredible joy that the ipod has brought into my life is that of podcasts!
Cheer two: for podcasts. These are just absolutely fantastic! I am a BBC Radio 4 fan - it was the really big thing I missed when we lived in the USA in the early 80s - and just cannot tell you how much I enjoy factual discussion, explanation, plays, stories, ...
So far my favourite podcasts are from the BBC (Radio 4 mostly, and R3 talk), the V&A museum (I particularly enjoy the discussions on ceramics), Tate Gallery, the Guardian newspaper (the walks round art exhibitions by Adrian Searle are wonderful - the most joyous was his description of the recent Serra exhibit at the Grand Palais, Paris), and the New Yorker.
Cheer three: for the New Yorker fiction podcasts. I am delighted to see how many of them there are. Having just finished a Malamud novel, it was also such a pleasure to listen not only to a short story by him, but also to hear it discussed. A short story is selected by a current short story writer from the magazine's archive, read - most often it's been by the selector - and then discussed.
I love short stories, and to be able to experience them while carrying out other work is just heaven! The hell of waiting rooms and queues and ironing are all suddenly magical opportunities for enjoyment! How lucky I am.
Hip, hip, hooray!
Untitled boulder
John Frankland: Untitled boulder (Portland stone)On a perfect summer's day my duodidactic friend and I went to Compton Verney to see the Fabric of Myth exhibition. It was a really good outing: good company and discussions, good food in the cafe, and an excellent exhibition. Myth is a subject area which attracts me without actually being something I have studied in great depth. It's an area I like chewing over in thought, reading examples of, and perhaps even creating within rather than making more intellectual or academic. So the exhibition sounded just what I might enjoy, and would probably give us something to talk about.
This proved to be so, and indeed much better than anticipated. The exhibition is curated in a lateral thinking kind of way. It is not restricted to depictions or illustrations of myth or mythic subjects. Included in the exhibits are examples of the threads which guide through labyrinths just like Ariadne's, and like in Penelope's story examples of ravelling and unravelling threads. There are connections woven on many levels. It is an exhibition of flavours which not only give immediate satisfaction, but which gradually reveal more of themselves when savoured.
The outstanding three pleasure hits for me were Louise Bourgeois' Needle (Fuseau) - a simple large arching curve of steel: an upholstery needle with flax threaded through it at the floor end, which gave me a jab of joy as soon as I saw it. Henry Moore's Three Fates rendered in tapestry by Pat Taylor and Fiona Abercrombie is an image I'm familiar with, but as with all of his drawings that I know, never fails to delight me.
The third immediate reward for me was the discovery of the work of Arthur Bispo Do Rosario. The pieces on show were fascinating.
In the excellent resource room at the end of the exhibition I found a big book on the artist, showing many of his works. Louise Bourgeois had written the introduction:
My mother was a tapestry weaver and restorer so I grew up around the magic of the needle and thread. I have inherited from her this idea of restoration as a part of my art. My sewing is a symbolic action against the few are of being separated and abandoned. One senses in Bispo do Rosario's work that he too is afraid of losing contact. Like Penelope and the spider, he has spent his whole life doing and undoing. He was seeking an order to the chaos, a structure and rhythm to time and thought. One might say that seeking a guarantee of sanity is the organising principle behind all of his work.
....
He was able to incorporate an object from his life of confinement and transform it into a symbolic object of self-expression, mystery, beauty and freedom.
This set off several trains of thought in my mind as I admired the visual riches of his combines. And what he made threaded in so well with the work of Ray Materson. His tiny pictures, made up of the obsessively neat stitching of thread unravelled from socks are astonishing. His work is shown in the same alcove as stitching by Queen Mary of Scotland, who occupied herself thus while imprisoned. The dog she was working on just before her head was removed by her cousin is forever without ears.
An installation by Delaine Le Bas entitled Gynaikonitides (women's quarters - pictured) at first put me off with its 'messy' hanging loose threads. But as I stopped to look properly I shuddered as I recognised the sticky web of my own family upbringing. All in all it was for me a profoundly rewarding exhibition, showing familiar - and unfamiliar examples which have then made me think again about the familiar.
Also, as is so often the case, on my shelves was a book waiting for the right time to be read: Tales from Ovid by Ted Hughes. I am enjoying that so much. His wondrous use of language enlarges on those feelings I have about the show: the familiar re-examined to additional depths.
Favoured category
Corot: Woman reading in a landscape
Anyway, that raised area was snagged further when I read Jonathan Raban's Hunting Mr Heartbreak. I found it a brilliant book on the USA, but was definitely intrigued by his deciding to settle in Seattle. After reading Snow falling on cedars and Passage to Juneau , and finding out that one of my favourite (and most exasperating) authors Michael Dibdin had moved there too, the Pacific Northwest area was well and truly one of my 'favoured categories'.
So I was primed to be brain snagged by an article in the Guardian newspaper a wee while ago - a mention by Jonathan Raban about a book set in the Pacific Northwest sent me immediately to Amazon. I have just finished reading Bernard Malamud's A new life. (I chose the edition shown in the link because of the cover illustration and the publisher as much as the price.) I really enjoyed reading the more contemplative style: written in 1960 it had a universal feel that did not date it, concerned with a man's inner life and how those inner reactions to external elements change his life. The geography plays a strong part, just as important as human characters, but seen in a light so different from the books mentioned above, or by Raban's subsequent books (such as his novels which are set in and around Seattle - oh, except his very first novel, Foreign land which is about Britain, and like the others much enjoyed). It is great to have odd recommendations come in to tempt one away from the usual fare.
I'm never clear about whether visiting for real a geographical area which is a favoured category in my mind is a good idea or not. I was not disappointed with Arizona and New Mexico, but was very let down when I saw the California coast. Swings and roundabouts, I guess.
Now that I have finished the Malamud, and returning to that original article I see a section on Turkey (where my Pontic Greek ancestors come from) by Maureen Freely (who is a brilliant translator of Orhan Pamuk's books as well as an author in her own right - I'm afraid I have only read Mother's helper which I found hilarious), ... I'm just about to explore this fascinating idea of a transvestite detective in Istanbul (where I have been, and loved it for reminding me so much of the Thessaloniki I knew as a small child) ... lights definitely gone on in more than one favoured category area of my brain!
Waiting (recently finished and photographed)
