Random Thoughts and Work

Posted on by Sandy Webster

After returning from Australia I noticed slight changes with Lee. So started the third hand of Responsibilities. Not only helping him take the garbage out but sometimes assisting with the tying of shoes, and reminding of teeth brushing. Emptying the litter box as he just does not notice it and using the hose on the vacuum cleaner. Plus he no longer drives anywhere, so I added his car key. Some days he can have no problems, and others, just a reminder can do. Here are the other two hands.

After sewing up the Meditation Journal, I decided to patch a jacket I bought about thirty years ago. Funny how you simply do not notice how things are falling apart and then that is all you see. Well I love this jacket so decided to just patch it up. I need to attach this patch to the back, not because it wore out there, but because I need some patches in other places.

Sleeves and pocket edges are the first to go. then why not just patch over all the spills? Another thirty years for this jacket is quite possible.

And I started on the bundling of the patriarchs. This is a copy from a slide made years ago….mid 90s. He was the strangest to wrap so he went first.

Teaching Stamina

There are several of this series but I am running a bit short of wrapping. Art Group comes later today and I think some will come with them. Otherwise the recycle store for old sheets is a trip planned for this next week. Once I finish all the “boys” I think I will shellac what I have so far.

On random thinking. These are things that I wonder about. How can a channel on TV run crime stories all day and night then when you turn it on in the very early morning there is a guy with dyed brown hair preaching the merits of giving lots of money to what appears to be a complying audience? Does god know these fellows are working so hard at filling their pockets with the savings of the gullible?

And another thought….who is it that climbs those trees and telephone poles to repaint the words, “Repent” and “Jesus Saves”? I never see anyone….only fresh paint….is there a miracle involved?

These are Sunday thoughts. Other days I never think of it. And another, do the evangelical women have some stock in cosmetic companies….especially eye makeup?

Okay, that is all I have today.

On a fun note, I told Lee this morning as we passed one pasture full of white cows, then some houses and another pasture full of black cows, that one of the houses was a paint shop that they all passed through to change color. On our return from the breakfast diner we noticed some of the black cows got past the paint house and mixed with the white ones at the other end. Both of us were amused by that.

Til later.

Burial Beginnings

Posted on by Sandy Webster

I went through all the spare white fabrics that I had and tore them into strips for bundling the first of the artwork to be buried. And to be honest it was difficult in the beginning for me to wrap the first house.

But once the wrapping started, the care of each turn of a newly added length of cloth, it became easier. Explaining why to our son who came down for a few days visit was easier than I thought it would be. He felt sad about it. I asked, “What should I do with the pieces?” He only said that he wished there was a place for them to go. And I said, “There is a place and I am getting them ready.” I think he gets it now.

I used raffia to hold the wrapping cloth more tightly. It is a nod to my earlier basketry days.

House number two closed up and ready for wrapping. Here is a peek inside to the interior and the chair I left behind when escaping into the open. The interior wall papers were photographed images of inside the house Dolph Smith grew up in and copies of papers an artist friend had at the time. They reminded me of the wall coverings of my childhood. Another word for “childhood” I heard from my Indian cab driver in Victoria. He called it his “earlyhood”. I like that so much better because it does not always conjure up the idea of small children.

The last of the three.

All of them bundled.

And the goal of an empty box.

In the box was the house-shaped planning book. I could not wrap it up with the houses because I also used it to contain all my notes on a boat series that followed the houses. I really love all the thinking that went into working on how to portray what these houses meant to me…the houses of growing up. There are several quotes from Gaston Bachalard in this planning book. He had so much to say about the house in his Poetics of Space book.

What was very interesting to me was how often I changed my focus on what I wanted these houses to say. Were they only about escape? Weren’t they also about knowing there was a place to come back to? It seems that this little planning book was a great way to explore what mattered about doing this work and how it should look when finished.

At the time I made them I sure did not consider how they’d look the last time I would see them. Now it is just the shellac and a bit of rosemary tied to each piece. (The rosemary is because there have always been bushes of it outside my studio and I think it has something to do with memory.)

Shellacking won’t come until I get all the patriarchs bundled and that is going to take some time.

Til later.

 

The Starting Point of What to Bury

Posted on by Sandy Webster

The statement of these houses when they appeared in an exhibition titled, “Evidence of Experience” is as below. I think the year of the exhibition was 2000 at a local gallery where I filled the entire space with words and works that depicted my “evidence”.

Where I Once Belonged

“It was a patriarchal system where men managed the means of acquisition and made the decisions which determined our lives. The woman’s obligation (and usually desire) was to ease those determinations into existence.  As children we knew our place, our value, and our limitations.  We also knew that we were not necessarily needed and therefore easily excused to wander and explore our natural world in complete safety and with wild abandon.”

Those were certainly different times.

It was a series of houses replicating the one of my childhood and my desire to escape to the outside, to be free of being a part of the family. I was a child who needed elbow room. So the houses show my escape routes. Escape from that linoleum flooring of squares in brown and beige, that old fashioned wall paper, those curtained windows, the feeling of being closed in. I am sure I was a happy child, just a private one.

A book pulled out from another house with memories written and bundled into the attic.

The writing came from a paper I wrote in graduate school titled, “Observations on the Familiar and How They Determine Our Sense of Place”. 

Note: I really loved graduate school. Maybe not at the times I had to defend my work, but it made me really think about what mattered enough to make art about.

Anyway, these pieces will be the first to be wrapped and shellacked for the eventual burial. And because I mention the patriarchal system I was raised in, the patriarchs will be buried with them.

There are several more of those dear old patriarchs in the series….old men teaching the next generation how to be mindful of their responsibilities.

It is a whole lot of wrapping to get this section ready to go down first and I will have to find a designated area to pile the bundles. I might miss their company in the studio but it is time to let these things go.

The next layer after that will likely be the personal works about being a woman and the insecurities of all that entails. Not as large a group of bundles but sure do wish I had taken care of that a long time ago. So I am looking forward to a tight wrap on that work.

Then maybe the war works. Next the Expedition pieces which is the largest grouping I think.

Anyway, I am sorting out my thoughts and the pieces as I look for fabrics to strip and check my shellac supply.

Til later.

New Way to Work

Posted on by Sandy Webster

 

Art Group met yesterday. They each had accomplished so much with exhibitions coming up to results from in depth studies to a simple compulsion to make stuff. I had more words than work. But they inspired me to try to forget the soaked ceiling, worrying so much about what Lee might be up to, what more I can stuff into a suitcase for Australia……..and make an honest attempt to not be quite so scattered and pick up a sensible practice that I could address each day.

 

Submit to a daily practice.
Your loyalty to that
is a ring on the door.
Keep knocking, and the joy inside
will eventually open a window
and look out to see who’s there.
– Rumi

This appeared the other day in a post by Robyn Gordon…..collector and presenter of words and images on facebook.

Here are the images that went with that quote by Rumi.

Work by Roxanne Evans Stout

Artist Anne Grete Laenkholm

And Ellie Beck

These were the ones that really caught my eye from Robyn’s post. It was the colors, the size and the look of quiet meditation about them.

Here was my response to her.

Sandy Webster Thank you for this group of images and words Robyn, there is a reparation of clutteredness that appeals and demands no excuses for not threading a needle, with the tiniest bit of random threads, to make the beginning marks of a healing narrative. I will send you a picture of the small satchel with bits of cloth, paper, and threads and needle that will stay close at hand ready to hold the marks of respite.

It is the “reparation of clutteredness” that will be the function of the satchel that will hold the necessary pieces. I want it to be mobile, easy to handle. I want it to be writings one day and stitching the next….or a combination of both. I don’t want the small worked on pieces to be any more than places to rest and work out a feeling, a grievance, whatever that will make me feel that I am doing something for just me in the moment.

And when I looked at these pieces in Robyn’s post they were so familiar to me.

 

 

It seems that I always put odd bits together. The problem was that each part was to be a contributing factor to a much larger whole. I am going to work smaller. Just busy work in my hands.

So now I am off to the studio to find small amounts of the necessary pieces…short pieces of threads, no spools!, two needles, two pins, small scissors, scraps of cloth preferably from my old clothing, a small blank book for the days I just need to write it down, a pencil, a pen, and patience. Lots of patience to take my time and make sure that what I hold in my hand at the end is a visual interpretation of what was on my mind and in my heart. And all of it must keep me company and be ready to cooperate….it is going to be the perfect container for all my hopes in finding a new way to work.

Soon I will show you what the container looks like. For now I am going to forage for parts.

Til later.