Time to reflect upon an interesting term. A mixed set of emotions to contemplate. I am really looking forward to a restorative trip to the highlands for the festive break. In terms of Foundation: I have thrown myself into it and found it a thoroughly productive and stimulating few months since September – it is exactly what I hoped and truly a self-actualising experience long overdue! Unfortunately though, the last term has come with sadness – the loss of Jim and the emotional energy spent around supporting Carol leaves a deficit. My husband has worked away quite a lot recently which, comes with its own stresses and strains. Getting his salary paid on time is an erratic affair and causes a lot of worry but also, he hasn’t been very well. Let’s re-charge! Art wise: ‘The ‘Patron’s Legacy’ beckons again in terms of following up on the October half term research and developing outcomes for the Film Festival exhibition – I am looking forward to continuing with this over the break.
Last weekend, I made a mock-up for the book format I am going to use for the final ‘Scrap That’ artefact. I am basing my design on the gorgeous Watanabe book I discovered in my earlier research. In her case, she had used a folding box structure to represent rooms in a traditional Japanese house in which, the fusama open out as ‘pages’ bearing translations into modern Japanese of writings her father had made. I love the way the format facilitates the creation of sequences of pages (like a journey) and enclosed space (like a resting place). My intention is to build my book so that the ‘reading order’ is a journey along which I read my poem before meeting my loved ones and sharing thoughts with them before entering the final resting place by way of a walk through my home landscape and into the enclosed space of the book … the sort of flower strewn chamber of the Iam Dulcis. It is a very complicated structure.
The book leaves represented in the picture above – in green card – will support the printed images of my poem done in the Photoshop workshop. They will run through the first reading order section, sort of the zig-zag inwards, and lead to fabric covered openings in which the cream card features will be enclosed. These will be fabric covered (significant remnants) and close with the ceramic buttons I made. Within each of these fabric ‘chapters’ of the book will be pictures (from print workshop) words and mementos (collected/made ephemera as the assignment brief says) for my loved ones. The reading journey on the reverse side of the zig- zag section will be fabric covered with pieces developed since the textile workshop. All will be stitched in place with pieces of my wedding veil running along the pages to create a liminal obscurity. This will turn into the opened out enclosed space at the end of reading, to represent a shroud. The walls of the enclosed space will bear the Photoshop palimpsests of the Iam Dulcis poem. This is a huge amount of making and assembling to be getting on with. I have been in very early each morning this week and have stayed late after college to create extra studio time to plan into my work schedule. I have got everything planned down to the minute for the remainder of the project up to deadline and have even managed to squeeze in an elective life drawing session last Monday morning – a lovely relaxing interlude, quiet, away from the studio and the sense of frenzy that seems to have developed as this first, key assignment reaches deadline!
