Took this out the other day, crocheted years ago very very slowly from strands of three (artificial) hairs. Surprise, surprise, it once was a tiny dress (!) which had been bugging me for ages as it never looked quite right. It still took some effort to snip off bits and make it become, well, just some thing. Not knowing what it is or what it’s going to be stresses me and delights me in equal measure. No, to be truthful, it stresses me more, but I can take it.
For now it’s a plaything, which I can reshape anyway like. It is very malleable, I can pull it inside out and turn it around, I can prod nudge tweak crumple tear fold unfold and every time it becomes something different. I remember the son of friends, I think he was three years old at the time, sitting at the kitchen table and with full concentration shaping a piece of dough. While his little fingers were moulding the dough he mumbled a kind of running commentary to himself, "…it’s a baby, it’s a ship, it’s a sail, it’s a …". I love the way he was absorbed in the process, the way he went with the changes wrought - his creativity unfenced, unfastened as only a child’s can be. I want some of that, please!
My wonderful hairy something fits loosely into the bowl my two hands make. It is almost as light as a spider’s web and yet, when I hold it in my hands, it seems to have real substance. It’s a drawing, it's a vessel, it’s a porous stone, it’s an organ, it's a doughnut, it’s a purse, it’s a …
4 comments:
such a fragile something....things are, what we want to see in them...not more..but also not less, so it would be wrong to reduce it to something that has to be recognized. Your something is not rigid it's also a "doing", new in every moment like your impression of it.
And both, your hairy wonder and your post are beautiful.
"I want some of that, please!" But you've got it!!! :))
...it's alive, Marjojo! have been looking at these images and still cannot quite wrap my mind around that it is 3-dimensional for some reason. register more like a relief drawing, like hair on the chest and other various parts of the body. but my mind knows that it is sculptural, like a net that i could put on over my head if i wanted to, right? i love that it could become so many things but always maintaining that bit of freakishness that's often associated with hair out of context. i imagine how crazy/thrilling it feels to be walking around wearing it like a skirt, a dress, a turtleneck, a shawl, a hairy head halo...
Sometimes you make things that actually make my heart beat faster when I look at them.
This is lovely. Mouthwateringly beautiful.
What about a video of you reworking the thing and reciting a litany of names like the little child did? Your desire and stress to make this none-thing a some-thing is the work, maybe.
And how wonderful to be able to make a thing that is a 3 drawing. A drawing come to life.
Ahh, sometimes you make me so jealous!
what a really beautiful piece!
i thought of you last month when i finally got a brush right through my hair after six weeks of being to exhausted to deal with it. so much hair! the brush was filled right up.
i did my usual thing of pulling it off and wrapping the wad around my finger. i rustle it a bit to kind of felt it, and with so much hair it held together better than usual. after a few days of it laying around i chopped it with scissors into neat little rings...they are still sitting by the tv in a little bag delighting me whenever i chance upon them.
what you do goes so far beyond my child-like fiddling, it really is breathtaking and i can really imagine what the piece would be like to hold. seeing it i feel a deep need to gentle press down on the top and see how much resistance it gives, how it may or may not spring back into shape.
so glad you posted this, it was just the sort of image i needed to see today (still feeling tender and fragile, yet robust enough to manage ok).
it's good to know you are 'feeling' again. and it was lovely to get your comment the other day, thank you.
Post a Comment