In 2002 I tackled the many printed photos of "my work". I'd been in the habit, on getting a processed film back, of writing the date on the back - F92 for February 1992, for instance. The photos got sorted, sooner or later, into categories like travel, friends, museum objects, and my own creations. They were filed in shoeboxes - six of them, holding about a thousand prints each (sounds like a lot, and is a lot!).
Since starting creative classes in the early 90s I'd been photographing promiscuously, sending off three or four films to be processed every month. So it took a while to go through them, and I didn't go through them all before running out of steam.
For several weeks I pulled a random photo from the "my work" section of the shoebox, glued it onto a sheet of paper, and wrote down my thoughts about it. Each paper went into a binder, which was eventually organised into sections. By then it was almost bursting -
Some random pages... I didn't read what I'd written; the joy was in the making. I was trying, at the time, to "find a way forward" and yet not bar myself from other things that looked fun and needed to be engaged with or at least tried.Dense embroidery on a heart theme, and some larger works that haven't been filed yet |
Leaves sewn from squares of metallic organza... |
... and the "windblown" sculpture and "Seasons" quilts |
In progress: a wall quilt that started as drawings of objects in the V&A, photocopied and painted with transfer paints, then ironed onto fabric, which was cut up and interspersed with strips of silks |
It's rather a relief to find my making is now limited to just a few things - the fabric pots that become ceramics; drawing; the occasional bookart session; the relaxation of knitting along with a podcast or video. Sewing, quilting, embroidery are having a rest, while reading is getting more of a look-in. In the back of my mind, "one day", a bit of wood-turning ....
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