Figurings: both in Art and Relationships

Ah Friday and Saturday you made my week.

Both days were like seeing light. A bright blinding light.

Friday and Saturday I wove, and figured out triple cloth with the help of Natalie. Saturday night was filled with good people and great music. The rest of the night I spent it with one that makes me smile the most. My smile will continue to stay and continue to grow. 

The Black Hole of Color

White is the absence of color. It is like a black hole where color goes and can never be found. Snow is like a black hole. It lands and covers everything so that the objects can no longer be recognizable. You have been sucked into a world of white. Like a coloring book. You just have to get out there and color your world again. 

old work

It is about time that I put up an image that has been inspiring me to focus on deteriorating while weaving. This is a weaving I created last semester. Looking at layers and how time can show the span of a life's story was what was intriguing. I chose a double cloth weave which naturally has layer in the structure of the weave. Breaking the threads and reconnecting them at a later point allowed the weathered look to come through the cloth. 

This small weaving has given me great vision. One that is inspiring the work for my thesis show. 

Guarding Angel

I am thanking every star, blade of grass, and person that walks by today! Somewhere my guarding angel is looking after me, and I thank everyone who has given me there all and support towards my future. I have been gratefully touched by there kindness!

Smoke means trouble

Ah what have I done this time? Talk about watching my back! ha! I didn't see this one coming. I should have expected it though. My advisor is not good at advising. Now I am choosing to do something very competitive and difficult for me in order to graduate early. It seems as if it may end up turning into smoke. Which I will then have to resort to sending smoke signals... so watch out things maybe going up in flames soon and not my read hair. 

Death card

I was looking at a blank page. Thinking about blank really. Then I decided to read my tarot cards.
The first card I pulled was the death card (Usually doen't mean a good thing or can mean a beguining) and then eight of swards (also not good). Not digging where they were going I put them away, but later went back to them. I pulled the knight of swards, ace of cups, queen of cups, and the page of wands. Now these were looking better.
Today I look after myself. Whatch what is going on around me and make sure I am ahead of the game.

1 New Text Message

You know that feeling you get when you hear bad news and your heart seems to stop beating for a moment, your blood seems to stop flowing, and you get light headed and almost faint on the spot. Yeah that feeling. Had it at 2 in the morning. All should be fine. It is the fact that she is many states away with no way of contacting her, except through her phone (which is off at all the times it shouldn't be), that makes the whole thing worse. The few words I received were scary. Although after making sure it wasn't as sever as she made it seem, it lessened the blow. 

I am still worried, but know she is a big girl and can handle what ever gets thrown at her. Yet I still worry.

Woven Braid Example

I finally got back on Patty and finished the sample that I had posted about a few weeks ago. I am satisfied with the out come. It is not perfect, but it is something completely different to all past weavings. The sample has a reforming quality (which reforming has qualities to that of deterioration). Where this sample will take me... I am unsure. For now though the sample is complete. 

Here is how I attached the separated strips

   And here is the sample off the loom

bubbles

Today I lived in such a bubble that I almost forgot to come down. Going back to work for Squidfire and then a date afterwards felt so comfortable. It was as if every worry just melted away and I was left in this fantasy world. 

I would compare it to staring at the sun for too long. You get hypnotized and continue looking.If you look the sun too long you get high (apparently it enhances the endorphins). Once you get out of the trance you realize how bad you have burned your eyes. 

Step Back

An overcoming feeling of depression hit me today. I know it has to do with the weather! There is no other reason for me to be depressed. I have not conformed to this chilled way of living, yet, but I plan on making it work. It has to, because if not then I have to move to a warm climate where my phobia of lizards reside. I have never seen a winter as hard as this, and if I see another snow flake in the following months I will put up with the sight of a lizard and fly to be in a warm climate. 

Today is anti-white. Well more the evening. When I had to go home all bundled up in the cold. I hate the cold today and I hate the snow. I hate being "the pale kid" as my brother would call it. I miss color, I miss sand, and I miss home, but where is home? Home is where the heart is, so where is my heart today?

Fast as Light

Today I finished a sample weaving. It was only on the loom for a total of 24 hours (that is just it being on the loom, not me working on the loom. The amount of time that I was working was about 8 hours). It may just be a sample, but I was not thrilled at the end. It ended so quickly. The only thing I got out of the sample was the understanding of mixed material. No high, no excitement, no inspiration. Nothing.

So I was disappointed and went back to thinking about decay (actually the route DE in general). DEconstruct, DEcline, DEteriorate, Decompose... in all the DE words REmembrance came up. Making me think about the act of doing again in all the descending ideas. Thinking about opposites. Going full circle, why was I upset with finishing it quickly? When it is done fast I get a high. Maybe all there was to gain from the weaving was the understanding of time and material.  

Two Little Birds

Trying to dig to the route of why decay, overgrowth, and loss is an importance in my work I came to a halting discovery/ remembrance of the story 'Two Little Birds'. It was a poem my mom used to sing to us kids when we were little. Specifically when we were swimming. She would sit us on her lap and sing "Two little birds sitting on a hill. One named Jack. One named Jill. Fly away Jack. Fly away Jill. Come back Jack. Come back Jill," and we would swim off her lap and back to her for hours in the pool. 

(picture: my roommates memory of 'Two Little Birds') 

The importance of this is to this day I have a fear of being abandoned, and it may have something to do with my upbringing. I relied on others. I did not speak for the first few years of my life, because my brother would do all the talking for me. He knew what I wanted and would either ask or get it for me. I did not have to worry about communication, until our mother put a stop to the action. 

This need to follow others is something I do not want to do. I want to be able to rely on myself, yet I feel my upbringing may have hindered my ability to do this successfully. The two little birds allowed me to see at a young age that following was ok. When it should have been leaving is ok... mom is there for you to swim, fly, or run back to. I miss interpret this though. Jack fly away and Jill must follow. Jack comes back and so must Jill.

Other important discoveries about the connection to decaying is that of my body... well in some light is decaying. I no longer can smell, I have a weak pallet for taste, and my vision is getting bad. This worries me on a level. More so it depresses me now. I feel the world has some secret code that I cannot crack about smell. I used to know the formula, but no longer do. That is what disappoints me. If I loose another sense I will soon forget what food tastes like. Just like how I have forgotten what things smell like. That is why texture is so important in food and in my art work. I can still feel. That one is not going away, not yet at least. 

The most important decaying discovery is that of my old home. It started to go down hill when drug busts would happen in the neighborhood about three times a year (and that is being generous, and it was a small block). Then, when it came time to move out we rented from the buyer (our next door neighbor), so I could finish my senior year at the high school I was attending. The decay hit home, literally. The new owner would build a home right in our back yard. Invading my safety zone. Changing the layout of my childhood memories. The tree we used to sit on and eat oranges would no longer be there. The never used picnic table would lay in some dump somewhere, never to be used. The chicken coop would no longer have the potential of housing chickens, because the new owner built a house atop all these memories and future possibilities. Now when I go home it is usually just me going home. All siblings are grown and have different schedules. Making even holidays hard for us to come together because of jobs and responsibilities.

Summery... Decay is important because it is what I know. It is what I have to try to rebuild and what I have to try to accept everyday. Decay is an ending and a beginning. Decay is subtracting and a new. Decay is my muse.

Counting Sheep

Today I had planed to spend the whole day thinking about my epiphany from yesterday. Except for I had work and when I got there we had much to catch up on (due to having to close from the snow). Little to say I didn't get to think at all about my epiphany. There was so much work to do that I tired myself out. So I napped. Then went to class.

So today I didn't get far thinking about art, or much of what white may mean or what deconstruction may mean to me, but I did get to count sheep. So today I rest, and will be ready to have a full fledge of thoughts to myself tomorrow. 

The Epiphany

On the back of my building is the exact formation of what I am talking about in visual form! I did not see it until walking home from campus (my short cut route) and I might not have seen it unless if I wasn't up for some discovery and a quicker way home. Yet heading home I knew I was going to discover something about my work. And there it was. Behind my building this entire time formulating itself into its being.

Why this intrigues me so much, or how it connects to me (beyond the white project), is that its structure is something that is  falling apart (melting), it is becoming (ice), it will no longer be what it used to (snow), yet what lies behind will soon be what it once was (a brick wall), but not for sometime because it is snowing, again. The snow will cover the skeletal structure that is holding it up allowing only a white blanket to be shown. In some cases the growth over an object can be so damaging that the growth consumes it to a degree that the core subject is no longer recognizable. It is only known to be the overgrowth. Which in time can even damage itself. Deteriorating what it is holding onto while it deteriorates itself. 

White is the New Black

So Valentines Day, riiiiiiiight. Yeah so spent the evening with my valentines, and we celebrated it. The two people who don't do "valentines day" were valentines. It was cute, he surprised me with flowers, with his twist on it (meaning the flowers were potted, LOVED) and he even wore a tie! He dressed up! so I felt bad dressing the way I did... I mean the girl should one up the man right? Well I totally slacked. He thought I looked nice anyway though. After dinner was a shot at the movies, which failed due to EVERYONE ELSE BEING THERE. It worked out for us though. We went back to his house and watched 'Peter and the Wolf.' Oh and the end of the Olympics which lead to interesting topic conversation afterwards. Good conversation of course until I fucked it up. Yeah way to kill it Mal. Way to Kill. I know that what was said wont end it though... I mean it was just misunderstandings of words, really. 

Today I would say is the clearest of all days. Everything was put into perspective. My ducks were lined so to say and then I killed it. I killed the duck, and I made it muck. I made the most cliche day turn sour. Go Me.

Finally I See him

As the weaving family may know I am back together with an ex. The snow had postponed many dates, but we were finally able to get together to spend a day of doing some random things together. Things that we have never done together before. The Book Thing, Thrift store shopping... and topped it of with what we know best, sushi!

So today I would say it is like the sushi that we had. You take a roll of something that you know you will like and a roll that is daring. Each time you know nothing can go wrong with white rice, soy sauce, and wasabi. 

New Recording Series

Just like the first weaving project I have to focus on a subject for 30 days and make a weaving based off of my gatherings of records. Last time I focused on an object, mold, this time I am focusing on a color, white. Not necessarily the object that have white, but more of the phycology behind the meaning of white. For example white can mean purity, cleanliness, new beginnings, or even in some cultures death. 

For this project I will focus on what happens during my day. Figuring what is pure or new or what is white. Each day after analyzing my tracks I will write about it and post an image if it seems necessary  for further explanation or clarity. 

As for the art I plan on taking scraps and cut offs from past weavings for the weft. Giving texture to the cloth. I also plan on taking the dyed yarn and retracting the color from it by using bleach or thiox bringing it back to a white tone.  

Experimental Weaving Leads to Places

I decided to try some new techniques on the loom recently as a resulted I found unexpected out comes. The first technique I tried was a woven shibori, which is a technique used to resist dye in a dye bath after the fabric has been woven. The resist lines are floats woven into the pattern so when everything is finished being woven the floats are pulled tight, and once the fabric is dyed the resist lines are then taken out I have not gotten to the state of dying yet, because while I was pulling the resist lines I discovered something that the cloth was doing that I had not expected it to do. The cloth started to curl. Evidence below.

I continued the process of pulling the lines while taking photos as I went. The structural aspect that it was giving me was something that I was hoping to discover within weaving. I never would have expected it to come from this process. Now that I have tapped into some possibilities I am going to go further into the sculptural aspect of this technique. The dyeing part of this exercise I have not yet forgotten. It will come in time. Now this is what I have to play with.

 

Thinking about playing with the possibilities of shape with a weaving; I took on another experiment. This time I would play with the shape while it was still on the loom. Using 10/2 bamboo I soon discovered my excitement for this weaving was not as inthralling as prior weavings. Maybe it was the size yarn, or the fact that this takes 10 times longer to weave it because it is like weaving six weavings at once. 

The idea was to separate the weaving while it was still on the loom. Once the weaving had enough inches on it I would then undo the tie up of the back beam and re-thread it so that the strips would cross one anther. Giving it a braided effect. 

This has not yet been completed, for once I got to the crossing point I ran into some technical weaving problems. Once I get over that hump the weaving will continue. In the mean time here is an in process photo.