Thursday 24 February 2011

My magnificent seven


Now that I have finished work on my changelings I'm thinking about how to present them. I'd like to see them laid out on a huge table or a low plinth, as opposed to hanging on a wall, and am trying to work out in my head what difference that might make. Would there be less distance between the viewer and the work? Might the emotional impact be stronger if one were to gaze down on them as if on real clothes in a shop? Alternatively, if I wanted to have them on the wall, I'd like each piece to have its own specially shaped coat-hanger (can't afford to have these made, alas).
I have been looking back over the work I've made these last few years, the shoes made from tissue paper, crocheted dresses, etc. and found that while my concerns are consistent my shapes have become free-er and maybe subtler too. They imagine bodies that buckle under the strain of difference, and draw their lifeblood from it, but disarm with their simple, diminutive and absurd shapes, with a combination of pathos, pain and humour.

Tuesday 15 February 2011

Changeling 6


I've got so much to write about (pair of plaits given to me by a friend, visit to Threads of Feeling at the Foundling Museum, thinking about Edith's shoes again) and even more to read and look at on your blogs, but my energy is minimal and needs prioritising and things get done slowly, if at all. Oh for a time when I don't feel I'm far behind with the most basic things! Lists grow like bandworms and hide under piles of documents or escape to gather dust under the sofa, and each unattended thing is a ghost in my brain. Struggling to sleep now, partly too with excitement about ART, ideas spilling everywhere. I want to buy wool and hooks and hair for new projects and have to stop myself as purse less than half full and in any case I can't crochet more than I do already. Calling out to myself over the clamour of pieces wanting to be made: Calm! Breathe! Patience!
This new changeling does breathe calmly, I think, at one with itself. Its somewhat absurd shape seems natural to me. It combines pathos with clarity, self-containment with abundance. The little pink thread arrived there by chance (I used it for counting) and now belongs. I've still got wool for two more and have in mind a pair outside this series of seven, one day. Taking a break from changelings now though. Something else needs to be made first.

Materials: crocheted from Jaggerspun Zephyr Wool-Silk
Dimensions: 31 cm x 36.5 cm


PS. Glory be for dappled things and snowdrops that reappear every year just by themselves. Got a small bunch here, from my garden, fresh and beautiful.