Radical Reclamation
Playing with Prismacolor on a sunny Saturday. The list of Things To Do is long. Errands and such. A trip to the library for audiobooks to accompany me on a long drive later on. I’m procrastinating. Listening to podcasts and doodling. Have you checked out Everything Is Alive? More. Give me more of that.
A long time ago a friend cleaned out her wardrobe and gave me a few of her old shirts and dresses. Over the years I’ve ripped them to bits.
Married them to cheesecloth and strands of embroidery floss. The beaded flower was from another friend.
I like that shiny black button. I think it came from a coat I no longer own.
And that green one. A favorite color, especially when paired with bits of purple.
These were made to be worn as cuffs, wrapped around the wrist and secured by winding the embroidery floss around the button. I wore one of them once. I think it was the one with the green button.
When there’s only a little bit of time, the art gets made in little bits.
These small pieces of handmade paper all started out as larger pieces, 8 x 10 and 6 x 9. I remember the day I made them, wandering around the unfamiliar back yard of a house I’d just moved into, looking for bits of leaf and grass and flower petals to incorporate.
I love fine quality paper, the kind that’s sold by weight, 140 pound cold pressed sheets, smooth bristol and toothy vellum. This paper is nothing like those.
This paper is rough. It’s primitive. It was made from ink-stained paper towels and recycled junk mail, by unskilled hands in a dish tub on a table out back on a summer afternoon.
A sketch. I like the hefty haunches, the long torso. All wrapped up.
When I lived in Boulder I hosted a world music show on the local community radio station. It was called Musica Mundi.
I didn’t know a lot about the music I was playing, and I mixed everything together. All the continents, all the islands, all the cultures.
Why not?
Said the wondrous Ursula K. Le Guin: “In the darkness, under the water, all lands touch, and are one.”
“Put your ass in the place where your heart is. Do the work.”
~ Steven Pressfield ~
Things that become other things. Background pages. Paper scrolls. Little collages that will one day be a part of something bigger.
Do you like stitching on paper? I recently cleaned my sewing machine and now it’s zipping along like a brand new machine, so of course I’m sewing on everything. These might become little book covers. I haven’t decided. Right now I’m enjoying them in this intermediate state.
At a recent art show I sat next to a jewelry maker. We talked about the pleasure of making components before you knew how you would be using them.
I’m not a jewelry maker, but I do like to string things together. There’s something primordial and nurturing about it. Very satisfying.
