Tuesday 22 January 2008

Orange clouds and orange arms



The sky was blue today, light light light! And just now the setting sun which has disappeared behind the row of houses opposite is illuminating the small white clouds that dot the sky and they’ve taken on the lightest of orange tints, glowing as if lit from within. What pleasure.
My mood is better too, still unsettled, but I can feel again. Have been thinking over the last week how best to reconnect with my artwork and decided to review some of my projects. This is the first one, loosely entitled octopus-girl. I love the colours (they’d go perfectly with the aforementioned clouds), that glorious fiery orange, the pumpkin-flesh-tint and the rose-tint. Bought the cotton-wool in autumn, to last me through winter and let its warm glow seep into me during grey-weather periods. It’s got its work cut out.
All my dresses, in fact all of my work, is inspired by the urge to make manifest emotional states and the experience of pressures from inside and outside, exploring them without writing them in stone. I seem to use arms/sleeves a lot to express something (see here, here, here and here again). This dress digresses however in that I’m trying to get firstly further beyond the conventional dress-shape, secondly more three-dimensional, and thirdly simply freer. I haven’t worked out yet how to make the octopus-sleeve shape, that will be a bit of a challenge, only know that I want to use the pumpkin-flesh-tint, maybe in a different yarn.
This is the dress to say goodbye to dresses (although I’ve still got the Suppenkasper-dress on the go), I need and want to move on into less-clearly subscribed shapes, still with crocheting as that is simply the best medium for me when I need to work lying down (which is a lot of the time), but I’m so-to-speak casting my net wider. More about that soon.

4 comments:

redredday said...

hey there, your comment had me smiling. and that part about being in 'sink' together. :). funny funny.
it is also sunny here but so so cold. should have worn 3 layers of pants today. j.k. 2 is good. and i want something like your octopus-girl over my head and suck in all that coziness. excited to see how the octopus sleeves will take shape. in the picture, the dress looks so delicate and tiny, and i thought the crochet hook was a small sewing needle that you are using to make it somehow.
a tinge of sorry-feeling to hear that this will be the last dress but it is time to break out, isn't it?? so very eager for you to take us to new territories that you'll be exploring!

p.s. love the little shoes/feet in the drawing. perfect on the octopus-girl.

Daniel Yuhas said...

love the octopus dress - somehow befuddled and full of possibilities at the same time - what will emerge, and from which sleeve? the form reminds me of a playground game called funnelball - I put a pic up on my blog in response to your octopus dream.

Unknown said...

Thanks for your insightful comments on my blog, they've added something to the way I am seeing what I admire. I've been reading your blog and your work seems very beautiful to me and such a powerful exploration of tensions and ambiguities.

Susan Kruse said...

Nice drawing!