Photographing, or filming, a ball of thread making its way through the museum is no longer my first choice of format for this project. I still like the idea of the thread as path - this is connected with labyrinths in or near cathedrals that are walked by the faithful as a form of pilgrimage, and with the mazes that appear in stories as a test of perseverance in the hero's quest.
To abstract the idea - and to get away from the images that photography would produce - I started folding small pieces of paper* -
and then cutting on the folds in various ways and stitching the "path" in each of them. These can be folded to make a variety of "books".
Some of the patterns are unicursal labyrinths, with a straightforward, flowing path - in others the thread doubles back on itself in maze-like byways.
I joined the books by tying the thread ends together, then realised that with a minimum of unpicking they could be sewn together; this involved overlapping the front and back "pages".
When the entire vigorous thing is unfolded it can lie quietly in layers -
Does this remind you of a map??
*The paper comes from a small but fat, cheap pad of newsprint from Muji. It's been so useful this week for drawing on and for this folding, and is top of my "must have in the studio" list. The colour and texture are so much nicer than the bright white of printer paper!
I began to think of using the machine to make the paths, no thread but a long stitch length, it would be more like a hidden path, not so obvious unless it was suspended and the light shining through the holes would show the route taken especially if it were in a dark box with light source behind. If one needed to double back it could be done fairly close to previous stitched line. One could stick the various folded pieces together before machine work.
ReplyDeleteAs usual Margaret you stimulate my imagination with your wonderful postings.