Putting it all together.
Ephemera and inclusions. Dad’s prose poem, wedding souvenirs, messages to loved ones, pressed blue flowers from Dad’s funeral…..
Making a Box and locking the treasures away.
And finally; Making.
Taking Shape
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!
‘What You Have To Do’ 1 contd……
Moving into the third week of the project – time for some further mind-mapping. Ideas are beginning to fall into place in terms of narrowing in on a focus for the scrap that book.
I have been considering my nearest and dearest – whether alive or dead: what are my special memories of them? What are my particular connections with them? To what do I owe them that I regard as ‘essentially me’? What would I say to them in terms of parting words or future greetings on ‘the other side’? Alongside these thoughts are considerations of home burial and my relationship with ‘the land’. I have found the old land deeds pertaining to where I live and may use them for printing on (photocopies of them that is! Some of the documents are 300 years old!!!!) I am thinking about printing the poem that is emerging out of these considerations and perhaps, developing a set of portraits in this week’s print workshop.
Workshop: Textiles – 14th-15th September.
Delighted to kick off my workshop experience with the textile rotation. Wow! What excellent machines – I want one….. free sewing is such fun! Not that I don’t appreciate my sturdy little Singer that I got in exchange for an enormous number of Tiger Tokens way back in the late 80’s! Forgive me a little nostalgia here….. they looked like this.
Workshops began with the instruction to ‘bring images relating to the theme for your brief’ – we would use them to develop pieces using applied fabric techniques. With my ‘ars moriendi’ theme in mind, I took images of poppies that had been worked in textiles … they have a remembrance connotation but more importantly, reference my late father and a poem about poppies and blue flowers that he wrote back in 1975. My idea has been to combine significant fabrics (e.g. remnants from my wedding dresses) with the poppies and blue flowers ideas to make a 3D embroidery piece – perhaps a scrap-book cover or fabric page – to commemorate the loved ones left at death …. or perhaps … loved ones lost, with whom to be re-acquainted.
