Keeping It Going

The fabric/circle of life …

I’m back to painting the embroidery hoops – well, perfecting them to be precise, touching up those last minute missed bits, working indoors these past mornings where it’s a little cooler, shielding myself from the heat in the garden studio. I’ve been working from my late Nana’s table which feels very apt as I continue with this body of work that’s dedicated to her, in love and remembrance.

I can’t help thinking about the embroidery hoops as metaphors of the circle of life; I’m thinking about the numerous times I’ve been seated round this table in the past – with my Nana and with many other members of my extended family, so many of them no longer with us. But the table is – still here, with me now, as part of the next generation – the eternal cycle of life.

So, all twenty five hoops are now almost painted and ready. In the meantime, I’ve gathered together fabrics for this latest configuration of the ‘Fabric of Life’ which captures moments of my late Nana’s life – every piece sparks a memory of her: the mother of six children, widowed young and just about ‘getting by’ on a modest income – a proud woman who liked to keep herself and her children ‘looking respectable’ as she would say. The fabrics capture the essence of their time, materials from as early as 1920, through to 2010. There are many thoughts and feelings associated with the fabrics – happy memories of helping my Nana around the house – pegging out clothes, for example, swamped in an oversized apron myself, which she insisted I wear to keep my clothes clean.

On Wednesday, I made a site visit to where the hoops are going to be installed. It’s going to a challenging install but with help (and sufficient time) I’ll get there! I sense already that the venue manager and staff are experienced, positive and receptive to artists using their space. That’s not always the case, so it feels like a good start.

The work I’m going to be installing is 20/25. I’ll be suspending twenty fabric hoops, gathered from my Nana’s long-lived life and then inviting people who live in or have a current (or past) association with Deptford to bring a swatch of their own fabric to create an alternative installation, celebrating all that Deptford encompasses, with its diverse social and cultural history.

I am hoping to fill twenty five hoops, gathered from the Deptford community. You never know how participatory work will pan out and relying on an audience can be a bit nerve-wracking at times but I’ve experienced this many times before with my 10×10 project.

And so, I’ll be sitting tight, hoping for the best, hoping that the fabric swatches appear and even better, just like in 10×10, that people are happy and willing to share the stories behind them.

Recurring themes …

In the midst of change, when no actual physical work is being made, it’s sometimes hard to hold onto feeling like an artist (whatever that is!). That whole art v life/life v art dilemma – it’s so easy to feel deflated about not making work. I’ve used a quote here before from Anne Truitt’s ‘Daybook.’ Her words resonate every time I read them:

‘Experience tells me that it’s best to just give into things –-give up on plans to make any work until the proverbial storm has passed. But that’s all much more easily said than done, as so many artists know – that perpetual nagging feeling about wanting to be making work, versus the feeling that you ought to be somewhere else – a tension around what we should be doing, as opposed to what we want to do.’

Anne Truitt speaks for many artists, women artists and mothers, particularly – telling it like it is in all things associated with life and art – the effort required to find a balance between the two – to excel at both, even.

I went to make a couple of small adjustments to my website yesterday and noticed that it’s a while since I put up any ‘new’ work. I had one of those ‘moments’ – feeling a bit useless, frustrated with myself for not being more productive and so on. But then I reminded myself that emptying out my studio at the end of 2024 and finally making the break to bring my studio space into my home, was a HUGE task. And that’s without mentioning the subsequent cataloguing I undertook, compiling the most up to date record ever of just about every item I now have stored away in a garden shed – over one hundred 30 litre boxes at that!

I can’t tell you how good it feels to be able to easily access and pull out just about any item out of thousands. This theory was tested just this past week when I referred to my ‘stuff in boxes’ list, all neatly typed, and was able to easily locate a bunch of powder puffs. Well, I say easily – it still involved a lot of shunting around of boxes to get to them, but I knew where they were, which box they were in and that’s a very good start!

Now that I’m back on track and working hard on another configuration of ‘Fabric of Life’ for an upcoming show – and consequently, distracted from overthinking – l’m looking back at the sheer volume of stuff I’ve moved and reorganised and am feeling inclined to be a little less harsh on myself, cutting myself some slack and commending myself for a lot of hard, physical work. It was indeed, a momentous task – all a necessary part of my working process – and I’m finally starting to reap the rewards and feel the benefit.