Flashback 2002

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

In the 1990s and 2000s I went to a lot of classes in a variety of media, usually at City Lit, and mostly loved textiles, sewing, quilting, embroidery. I spent a lot of time dreaming up and starting new projects, but had no real focus. Even in the art foundation course that I attended on retirement, and in the subsequent MA, it was the excitement of the latest bright idea that carried me along. At least I was getting better at bringing the projects to some sort of conclusion!

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 ....