Beacon Street, looking up, last spring
It strikes me, having read so many artists’ lists about their intentions for the coming year, that reading blogs is like being in a meeting where, after six people say things you agree with, you feel that you don’t need to repeat what’s been said, or
like sharing a group dream, where a single stimulus/image becomes a shared experience of association and meaning.
So many wonderful intentions and ideas out there! And here I go.
I consecrate 2010 to–
- using tools I already have to work on myself.
- playing with the idea that there is space around everything, even around my problems… to look for it, and step into it.
- adopting the idea that I have to build in time for clean up.
- gaining mastery by consciously copying master quilters, experimenting, and making mistakes and ugly things, if need be (more on this tomorrow).
- creating avenues of access to deadlines, specs, patterns — two new basement file cabinets will help here.
- learning from teachers in my midst — like Jack the Cheese Corgi
who loves to go to the Upper Field and investigate its edges, and later, sleep on an unfinished quilt. - learning to discharge with something other than bleach.
- giving my boys food the second they walk in the house in the p.m. and letting go (more or less) concerns about what gets eaten (or liked) at meal times.
- using the real sights of my immediate neighborhood as quilt subject matter.
- drawing more.
Definitely the second one—which translated loosely, covers just about all of it:}
you’re right — do the second item and the absolutely the rest will follow…
it’s also the only new-to-me idea up there — comes from a book called “The Sedona Method” — will definitely be underlining and reading that this year.
re: writing on fabric. first… you remind me I did some drawing with script in them – illegible – in the eighties. I’ve always been intrigued with script and the visual impact of “random” words and lettered “non-sense”. I suggest studying Arabic, such a beautiful language and the script is… well, it’s deep. I only took a few weeks of Arabic a few years ago, but I’d love to seriously study it. ANYWAY… possible technical solutions for writing on fabric: use a brush and fabric paint? or write on paper and photograph it, then t-shirt transfer/iron it to fabric? write in thread? glue the thread/yarn/string to fabric then sew it…?
I remember your beautiful and abstract script works, Maggie… they had a floating, mysterious, and yes, arabic quality. The Globe had a story today about an African language which looks a bit like Arabic and is used all over the continent and has hardly been studied yet — I think I’ll look more into that as well. your ideas are good ones. I gessoed a few pieces of fabric this weekend, and yes, they then accept regular old pen and pencil very well. I tried couching threads on this piece, in cursive-like loops — that will be fun to explore, too… more later!