One and one walked hand in hand

I'm thinking about art and narrative, story-telling. Had been crocheting this little duo for weeks, and suddenly a poem flew into my head when a friend took me to the sea-side. Don't see them as one meaning the other - look at them side by side!

Materials: crocheted from wool/acrylic mixture and cotton
Dimensions: outfit 1: 48 cm x 57 cm, outfit 2: 38 cm x 44 cm

Away

One and one walked hand in hand
an apple to share, a rag doll to tend
and much too much to say

of leering elders, God on their tongues
while fingers fondled, shadows clung.
Away, they walked, away.

They'd heard of the sea, the end of the land
followed a murmur, or was it a scent
or colours they'd never seen?

And the apple was eaten, the rag doll dropped
but no-one was beaten and the sea never stopped
to promise its clear embrace.

On and on they went. Not a word was spoken
'till one said 'I' and the other 'yes?'
and the spell was finally broken.

They tore words off their tongues no child should know
told of places where nothing but silence grows
and weariness, worn like a hole-riddled skin.

Did they walk in circles? Was the sea near?
Their steps were steady, breath fast with fear
of the elders' all-seeing eyes.

They slept in forests, slept in fields
on cool dark earth, its scent so sweet
and moon's milky light wove a blanket.

Finally, there, a salty smell
the sound of waves, soon pebbles and shells -
a lightness lapped at their hearts.

And the sun warmed their skin, but did not touch
the wind kissed their faces, but not too much
and two remembered their names.

Changeling 7

No 6 was supposed to come first but has resisted the shape I'd envisaged for it. I'm not sure how well this one works. It is diminutive not only in terms of size. A bit like the youngest of many siblings, who never quite manages to catch up with the others. I like the simplicity of its shape which seems to combine an air of completeness with an uncertainty about what to become. It has made me think about growing (up) without reference points. Or only ever being able to look into a partial mirror and focusing on that visible part of the body without, for whichever reason, being able to make sense of the body as a whole. It's about self-perception, isn't it? As a teenager I was convinced I had fat thighs. I was actually stick-thin, but took my clue from the view of squashed flesh when I was sitting down. I'm trying to remember if we had a full-length mirror at home, no, don't think we did, and glances into a shop window or a mirror at a store weren't enough to change my mind. Strangely I'm also thinking of winged seeds trailing down from a plane tree. Maybe there's a being in here that is spinning about trying to find places to put its legs, arms and head, to be whole.

Materials: crocheted from Jaggerspun Zephyr Wool-Silk
Dimensions: 19.5 cm x 34.5 cm

PS. My digital camera isn't working anymore (see white balance turning green here) and I'm looking into buying a new and better one. Would be grateful for recommendations.

Happy New Year to all!

Sibyl

She drops a mouth of pebbles
in cupped hands, each hungry year
a dun, spit-speckled stone.

And like a skein of goslings
her first words rise,
her tongue, that tired muscle,
measuring the span of wings,
trying, lala, lala,
a song of change.

Mien was here!

My cup runneth over! Not only that I've got work in an exhibition, that I can look forward to another show at Core Gallery in the new year, that so many friends came to the private view and shared my joy in seeing my work out in the world: on Monday Mien and John came to my house. That would have been glorious enough, but my bbf came bearing gifts... The paper-covered egg-shells feel warm in the palm of my hand, as if inhabited once more, with a tiny slumbering being magicked inside by Mien, when she painstakingly put the egg back together. Looking at the seams I'm thinking of a baby's fontanelles...
It was kind of weird to meet in the flesh, but also felt like the natural continuation of the long, ongoing conversation we have had through the net. My work hangs, lies, hovers everywhere in my flat - I showed it off like a mother her little children. Yes, Mien was here!

Giddy

My Five perfect maidens, last shown at the Arthouse in Wakefield, weave their magic in a new dwelling, with a very dear friend, and as the five empty pins on my wall pronounced their absence silently but fiercely I decided to crochet a new set. This one leads the way…
Otherwise I've made a tiny wedding present and am trying to prepare for the excitements of the private view on Thursday night at Core Gallery. It promises to be a very interesting exhibition - the list of artists is impressive and I can't wait to see how my work looks surrounded by art in different media. What catapults my excitement to giddy levels is that Mien will be there. Yes, Mien, my lovely blogger-friend from the US, is in England and will come to the private view! We've been visiting each other's blogs for a couple of years but have never spoken or met. Wow. Welcome, Mien and John, and can't wait to see you...

Materials: Crocheted from artificial hair,
coat-hanger made from twig and wire
Dimensions: 24 cm by 30 cm

Gym turtle

I've been thinking more about childhood memories - mine are few and far between and usually bare of dialogue or movement - not really the stuff for stories. They come as still images, but their emotional weight is considerable. I see my artwork in that vein, each piece a compressed snapshot of being. Lately I've been trying to write stories. Initially I got bogged down in a literalness that was not only restrictive but diminishing. Poetry, like art, allows a different approach, in the concentration of language, but with stories I worried about how to be truthful when I remember so little. It took me a while to understand that here too it's not about the factual recording of an event down to the smallest detail, although that has its place, but that its distillation takes you to its centre, its emotional truth. Just in time I read a conversation between Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich, where AL talks about how it has sustained her to trust her own perception at any point in life, and I realised that I am only starting to do that. The sensory details that I recall when I allow myself to fall into the stillness of a memory breathe life into it, and slowly, steadily I feel the girl I was, and she, who often seemed off, just not quite right, and oh, so silent, has a voice.

Dimensions: 23 cm x 38 cm
Materials: crocheted from black cotton and white wool/synthetics mixture, bit of fur

Between a smile and a grin

It has happened - my show at the Arthouse is up and running! The exhibition is tiny but finy and the Arthouse is something else: I've never seen a building where every last detail has been considered carefully to make access and inhabitation as easy as possible. I was given a room for the days leading up to the exhibition and after so I could rest, see my show and present my work in person - exhilarating for this artist who normally sends her work by parcel post.
I can't tell you how much help I had along the way: the art and texts are all mine but without my friend Agnes hiring a car and driving me to Wakefield and back I wouldn't have been able to go, and other friends, Anna, Lindy, Linda, Nicola, helped in all kinds of practical ways. Never mind the belief of so many people in my art and in me...
I loved presenting my work to an interested audience (about 35). It made me feel part of the world again! I wore a sumptuous red velvet jacket which I'd designed and Tessa B. made for me in exchange for one of my pieces. Actually, my 'design' was a two square inch pencil drawing and Tessa enhanced on it - just gorgeous! Of course you'll know what it was inspired by… I certainly did not have the impulse or courage for extravagance before I fell ill, but I really wanted to mark this occasion with my very own visibility cloak.

Go see if you can, the exhibition will run until 21 July 2010
________
I have recorded a presentation "Lying low and reaching high:
On practising art and living with M.E.", which will be available for viewing during the exhibition.

Changeling

If I wanted to define an overall theme for my work I'd chose 'the Changeling'. Its concept in myths and fairy-tales points towards anxieties about difference and otherness, subjects that remain ever relevant while changing over time - there is always somebody to be excluded, marked as other. But we can also become strange to ourselves, at different stages in our lives, say when our bodies change (through natural processes as well as illness). The imperfect changeling always has its perfect double, absent, imagined, but no less real for that. Or is it the other way around?

Materials: two kinds of fibre
Dimensions: 25 cm x 37 cm

Dandelion dream

smile burn, tickle turn
pleasure peal, hormone steal
yolk yawn, lemon dawn
golden chill, compass spill
free fall, summer call
spinster's song, crochet pun
eye rhyme, flying blind
hopscotch halo, cross crawl, yellow
double dose of underpants
envelope for the sun

Dimensions: 28 cm x 29 cm

Words and wings

A while ago I posted a poem, Sister of swans, and now Lesley Bricknell, whose blog and artwork I admire and feel inspired by, has used the poem as a starting point for some beautiful, haunting artwork. I feel honoured, delighted, humbled! The poem has disappeared off my blog as I'm not quite happy with it yet and may edit it at some stage, but for those who'd like to have a look: you can find it under comments to this post. Thank you, Leslie!

Leaps and bounds and belly laughs

My tired hands are refusing service with delicate thread and thin needles, with the result that a couple of minute fairytale dresses are lying around unfinished. Energy still comes by the thimble-full, but hooray, I found that my hands work with a crocheting hook thick as my little finger.
To keep costs down and to stop the overflow of wools from boxes and baskets I've introduced an embargo on buying new materials until I've worked my way through them. No thick yarns around, so I strung several colours together, first for the mittens, and now for this piece. It is fast work and gratification is almost instant: each stitch is as big as my small toe. I'm craving fun, laughter, lightness, and got some making this piece. Nothing gets your friends hooting like telling them on the phone that you're crocheting a mass of curls for armpits and other places. So here we are. Hope you enjoy them too. Oh, and writing this a German proverb came into my mind, "Langes Fädchen, faules Mädchen", which translates literally as "long thread, lazy girl". I'm sure there is an English version, but can't think of it. Any ideas?

Happy holidays!

I'm sorry I haven't been able to visit and read your blogs these last few months - I was acutely aware of missing out but had other matters to attend to and am glad I did. Steps in the dark, steps in the light, with burdens shared and friendships deepened. In-between some very good news flew my way (I will have my first solo-show in 2010!). I also crocheted a few slow rows with the most vibrant of red threads, for a new fairy tale dress.

I leave you for now with these lines by Fernando Pessoa, translated from the Portuguese by Richard Zenith:

To be great, be whole: don't exaggerate
Or leave out any part of you.
Be complete in each thing. Put all you are
Into the least of your acts.
So too in each lake, with it's lofty life,
The whole moon shines.

Waiting for gravity lull

So very tired. Mostly busy with health-appointments, a good process, but also hard. Missing my blog, your blogs, but too much for now. Decided I needed a fun art-project and started crocheting a Rapunzel-dress. Looking at it today, when I'm hugging the walls and can't resist the force of gravity for long I'm struck by her verticality and envious of it. She (I tend to see my dresses as she's) was crocheted with a very small hook (no. 2) as I wanted the crochet to be tight, almost stiff, befitting a tower. The dress can just about stand alone. She is the first of a group of three fairy-tale figures, small crochet-sculptures (i.e. not made to hang on walls), using stands, which I'd like to have made especially. For now the dress hangs on a cable needle, which adds an interesting aspect.

Materials: synthetic yarn, artificial hair, cable needle
Dimensions: 19 cm x 78 cm x 4 cm

Let's all flower!

We've had a summer of sorts, often concentrated in single golden days framed by rather longer cool and grey periods. Today the sun has been out since dawn, it is hot and the blue vastness above is like a glorious kiss goodbye to all and sundry when we know tomorrow will be autumny, as yesterday was. I sit in the garden, delighted to sweat, glistening with the blackberries, reddening with the tomatoes, and hanging in my chair much less elegantly than the garlands of passion flowers trailing in from next door. Peace and quiet would do nicely but instead we have the relentless but probably good-for-something grind of pneumatic hammers from nearby. Never mind, I console myself with Galway Kinnell's poem St Francis and the Sow - it is blissful, quiet fodder for heart and soul, and momentarily drowns those noises out:

The bud
stands for all things,
even those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing
...

I've stopped writing poetry, my brain doesn't feel thus inclined just now, crammed as it is with other stuff that really needs attention. My hands are happy - it's their time again, and I'm crocheting shaggy wings and a small, if towering dress. Feels good, so good, to be making work - hope to post something soon.

Thinking about silence (2)

Sister of swans

She hoards hush like treasure.
Her tongue lies heavy, snoozing
in its lair, stirring when thoughts
thicken. In her mouth they flutter,
wings like blades.
She blinks the world away:
in every tear a thing coils
until nothing remains but six faces.

A girl sits in a tree in the forest,
starflowers filling her lap.
Wordless she hurls her love
against the spell's wall, stitching
blossom to blossom, year to year.

(Did she eat? Did she drink?
Did she get down the tree to pee?
Did she sweat? Did she wash?
Did the flowers not wilt?
Did her first blood seep like red sap?
Was she afraid?
Was she cold? Did it snow?
How old was she when the king came?)

A famished eye trawls scripts
and scrawls, in the tapered shapes 
of petals, a beetle's forked horns,
the dart of a deer - words a flicker,
clinging, clawing. In the damp dark
of her mouth they home like bats,
winged bundles waiting
to fall into flight.

Thinking about silence

When better to rethink a poem than during the early hours when sleep unravels. Here's a difference to my artwork: once a piece is declared done it hardly ever changes again, whereas a poem niggles away at me until I return to it, over and over.

Sibyl

Last she pawns her tongue, for coins and crumbs,
belly a howling hollow; her books long gone,
a copper for thick tresses.

Scooped, scoured homeland, stony bane: her throat
sifts seeds of silence. She shades her eyes
but signs seep like tears.

For years she scrimps, heaving with voice and verse.
Folks come, unshout their woes, the loot and litter
of their souls, and ravaged faces soften.

Scalp bristling cold, she bears a bundle home.
She spreads stained cloth: out rolls a dull, brown,
shrivelled thing, with raised blue veins
and a diaphanous fin.

Her mouth's a bony lair, where nothing lives.
Tuber, muscle, earthworm, stiff as a bell's tongue -
she waits to feel it wake.

Tired, but something flows

Sunday falls

Sunday's levy is a fall and a tear:
The grit gripes and grinds with tiny teeth,
rings up its coin of scraped skin,
its mouthful of wool.
I slip a hooked finger in,
pull burry edges wide: no blood,
just the usual stings and stitches.
Under blue knit my knees are round
and hard as darning eggs.

At the instant of falling a stop
and a rush collide. Holes are my calling
and I ponder their collective names
while mum closes in: a host, a hoard,
a huddle, a spill, herd, hive,
charm, mob, throb. A cloud.
Best of all: a murmuration of holes, due
their quiet puffs, their quiet flutter in and out
the tunnel of my tights.

Mother slaps dirt off my legs,
all sighs and stringent hands.
On the way home dad photographs me
standing on a low wall. He calls: smile!
and I draw myself up
in my black patent leather shoes,
their toes well clawed,
my blue and red chequered poplin-coat
with its lustre of dust.

I give him a gap-toothed one
and that frayed blue ‘O’ stows away.

Note to self: BREATHE!

There are situations which require such notes: Agreeing to read one's poems in public is one of them. I'd put my name down simply because the opportunity came my way - I wouldn't have dared search it out. It felt like a mad and sweaty thing to start with but when the day arrived it just felt right. A beginners' event at the local library, with a small and eager audience - such a gentle start.
There's something strange, for a visual artist, about being present with one's work and not just letting it stand in/speak for you. But as with a piece of art a poem only comes full circle when it's out in the world.
As I read it took a little while to find and trust my voice, to let myself be guided by the poems' sounds and rhythms, away from fears about failing, falling short (and being heckled - are there poetic hecklers?), but once I got there I didn't want to stop.
The days after: Fatigue loomed like an ugly ogre and with grey felt hands smothered everything. Everything. It seemed almost impossible that this was me too, this exhausted uncoordinated bundle of flesh and bones and frazzled brains. Slowly emerging again, as you can see.
I had a little toe out in the world!!!

Image: Bittersweets (wrapped poems)

Offering (3)

My body is just tired, but my brain is tired and buzzing, if that makes sense. Aunt Frieda is stalking me, I guess she wants a poem that does her justice.
As I've been told a couple of times that in my poems I am often not sparing enough with my words I took my sheet to the garden, sat in the sun and crossed words out with my thickest black marker. And again and again. Didn't leave me with a new whole poem but lots of little floating poem-clouds. These are my favourites - each of them could be a whole story. They're almost like titles for pieces of art.
Oh, and Tante Frieda's sister is here too.

girls in dresses
stiff
as blotting paper

17/6/09
I realise that something different is starting to interest me here. These lines are not so much about being spoken, I want them to be read, individually, and evoke images silently.
19/7/09
left only my favourite

Offering (2)

Just not up to making work yet but editing poems and preparing to read some out in a small group. This will be my first time, terror of terrors, but feels right. Need to air my poems. The waiting game was an exercise for my poetry-course a while ago (first attempt at writing a sonnet, which I enjoyed very much); this one here is the revised version of my Tante Frieda-poem which some of you may remember. I've rewritten it heavily but feel rather adrift as my course is over, alas, and it's again rather wordy, even if 'crafted' with more attention to its sound and music. I wished TF was still around, I'd like to ask her lots of questions. A piece of crocheting will grow from this, I think, first stitches maid (made!). Feedback welcome.

Tante Frieda

The last room on the right, opposite chapel, is hers,
her last room, where she waits in state,
hatted and girdled, hair teeming with pins.
Her crumpled face crackles with mischief.
She is older than the century, erstwhile Rapunzel
who had not known to grow her hair.
Hand-me-down air clings from mother-dear -
a prayer under every breath
and her daughters' dresses stiff as blotting paper.

Frieda, five feet tall, taught and enthralled
boys in their teens. Happy times
and best of times for being out of step:
she was removed from school when she refused
to toe the Führer’s line. Much of her life though
she stowed away, homing in mothed skin,
counting beads and her heart on a string.
She sailed dreams trailing shaggy wings,
and when finally laid up, without guard or girdle,
kept her handbag in bed with her, open,
spilling regret like teeth from an old mouth.

To me she was the kindly crone from my fairytales,
born old, hands packed with plenty, ready
to grant wishes to those who dared want.
Postern to yesteryear she sank in her downy bed,
eyes logged with sorrow
that she’d never been kissed.