Another year. Faster and faster they zoom by. Still breathless.
One of my favorite thinkers, Brian Andreas, writes this:
"She asked me when the season of joy was supposed to end
and I said I didn't really think there was an exact date.
So we left the tree up till June that year. "
The piece I was working on last week transformed before my eyes after several hours of experimental stitching. The cloth is an old circular tablecloth that I dyed with a spray bottle filled with watered down dye. It was going to be an underskirt for my nuclear testing piece that is languishing in the corner of the studio.
I pulled it out of the experiment pile last Friday and folded it in half, then cut it into two wedge pieces so that I could try some stitching ideas I had. The stitching exercise gave me some great textures. It started with random straight lines that went across the piece higgledy piggledy to anchor the cloth.
Then at each new bobbin I changed the color of the thread to add more interest. Eventually a wonky grid emerged. As the grid grew I noticed that at the junctions of the navy blue lines there was a sense of dominance. So I decided to reinforce that by starting a new line of thread (in black) that started at the juncture and traveled on in a wavy line across the piece. Letting the thread ends hang.
As the thread ends started to accumulate I had to figure out how to handle them. Bury them? let them hang? cut them off? Tie them together? I loved the extra texture the thread was giving me but the thread ends were obscuring the texture below so I decided to nail them down with a spiral of stitches and trim them off. It was then that I realized I had created a terrain of sorts with little focus points that could represent targets.
Laying the stitched cloth over the remaining wedge of fabric made me stop in my tracks. Suddenly it all made sense. This piece is about a land ravaged, surrendering to chaos and on the edge. The stitched piece created a shoreline over the second wedge.
The edges are raw. The threads are chaotic.
And now I am hand stitching trails, individuals and groups across the void. Moving them toward the calm and away from the chaos.
It rained all weekend. And that's a wonderful thing. The sky is a consistent level 5 gray with no distractions. Sounds are deadened. Backyard chores ignored. Quiet, studied time is a gift. Add that to shorter days and longer darks and you have a brooding season where thought and time merge.
Cloud cover, 2015
I woke three times last night. Probably because I went to bed so early. Those restive moments while trying to calm my energy to go back to sleep will inform my day. Not sure where they will take me. I am feeling inner not outer.
Cloud cover, detail. I am using a cotton canvas in these studies. The variegated black to white thread appears and disappears with the stitching. Forcing me to give up control unless I want to make myself crazy. The stiffness of the canvas really helps tame wrinkles.
The silent witnesses on the board ask for more companions. I think I'll take out those rocks I collected last summer and let them talk to each other for a while. I love the rain.
These guys really speak to me.
While working away on the first of many ideas for the Silent Witnesses project it occurred to me that we are all voyeurs these days. Checking into social media sites to see the latest meme or birthday event, following people we like (or don't like anymore), zeroing in on the salient details of excruciating terrorist events. — The blood, the body parts, the damaged child.
Don't get me wrong, I get a lot of ideas from those folks for easy meals after hard days. Simple ways to slice a watermelon. I even enjoy the occasional splash page from Spotify to tune me into new music. The blogs and postings by This is Colossal and the American Craft Council give me sustenance and joy. Being plugged in results in a synapse symphony which probably takes my brain a bit longer to sort, study and dispose of each night in sleep.
So I admit it, I am a silent witness. Now actively so.
Silent Witnesses started with a pile of rocks with holes that I collected on a Lake Michigan beach.
I don't often speak up when political idiots test my patience. I don't rant about peace and war, women's rights, gun legislation or poverty (except to a few trusted friends over coffee). But I do process it. I do take it all in and parse it out and add it to my anxiety level. Those ripples of details fuel the ideas for my art, focus my energy toward understanding, fragment my feelings of hopeless angst. They distract, inform and poke at me each day in the silence of my studio.
We are all witnesses to horror today. The horror of hate and anger and terror. How do we change the flow to the positive? When will slicing a watermelon outweigh children carried on the backs of their frightened parents?
Silent Witnesses, Paula Kovarik, 2015
Ten days from now I will be making a presentation at The Common Thread Symposium hosted by the North Carolina State University College of Design’s Department of Art+Design (find out more here). Preparing a lecture about my artwork is always a challenge. My thoughts evolve. I see pieces in new ways, I discard others. More and more I see the collection as a series of experiments with highlights in insight.
Many people work in series. I work like a taste tester. The horizon contains a spectrum of possibilities. Those little flickering lights of ideas challenge me to focus the lens.
This may be a handicap. I'm not sure. I do know that it follows my trajectory as a designer.
Inspiration can be rocky -- a bone rattling bedevilment. Or, it can rocket me onward to new planets. It's a heady mix. Each project has a list of ingredients, insights and goals. Each requires weeding out the extraneous, simplifying the knotty and, sometimes, adding depth where no bottom can be seen.
Now, let me clean my glasses and get on with it.
