pix

Hmmm… it always seems to me that Bo has a plan… He is much calmer than me with my chaotic scatter-gun/headless chicken approach.

My process appears to me to be a haphazard thing, rather than organised, and the starting point I suppose is wherever I choose to jump in…

Looking at the work I have flitted between over the last couple of weeks or so, I have 3 or 4 themes on the go, at various points in the deconstruction/reconstruction cycle.

1. The fabric I use is always reclaimed clothing so it has always already been through someone else’s selection and construction process. Once I have selected various items, they are then deconstructed into their constituent parts and put in little piles: collars, cuffs, buttons, pockets and so on. The seams are stripped out and put in another pile. Then I am left with various flat pieces of fabric to chop up into “pixels” ready to be reconstructed into the quilt. There is a layering process here too: depth, structure, purpose, there may be issues of construction, and finally the stitches that have the function of holding all those layers together are decorative and textural too. The pixels of fabric, as well as the textural stitches are directly inspired by Bo’s work.

2. Disembroidery is another angle I’m working from – I have talked about it briefly in my personal blog. I have invented this perfect word (I think). I am unpicking the previously stitched work, fraying, examining, cutting, de-layering… a sort of archaeology perhaps? I’m being careful, but not particularly respectful. It is my work, abandoned many years ago, so I can do what I like! The deconstruction of this piece has been the making of it, The craft has become art. It is images of these pieces that Bo is currently working with.

3. (or possibly 2 and a bit) Disembroidery charts: can I code the destruction, in a similar way that the creation is charted? Do I want to codify it after the destruction, to record it? Or before, in order to plan it?

4. The pixels for me, are suggesting huge variations of scale. I can stitch 28 stitches to the inch… or 32 if I get out my extra strong glasses and the swear box. At the other end of the scale, one pixel could be a square metre of fabric (or larger). The square on the chart can represent any size. The squares on the charts don’t vary much in scale. They are usually around 10-14 squares/pixels per inch, too many to the inch and they become impossible to follow clearly (even if the stitching is much smaller) too few per inch and the design appears incoherent. I have some of Bo’s pixels to play with this weekend.

The bit that I love here, is that Bo is sampling from images of my work, and I am sampling from his. The ultimate collaboration and appropriation of each other’s work. If I take a photo of the quilt I am making, inspired by him, I stand a good chance of seeing it further deconstructed and cycled back to me… then I can make something else. The concept of the cycle, the exchange, the stealing and the giving is interesting and exciting to me.

Bo talks of the space which I pursue… I’m not sure I know that yet. I’m following all these trails… I could end up anywhere… but I doubt anything I end up with will look like Bo’s work, but hopefully that little segment in the Venn diagram will be discernible.

Elena suggests that I have a plan… No!

An idea… yes… but no plan.

I start at the other end… I already have an image… created, stolen or abstract, that I deconstruct, alter or make unrecognisable. I work on iPads. I develop my own methodologies, running images through a variety of Apps to create specific effects. I replace individual pixels as well as groups of them… but critically I have no idea of the image I am trying to create until it appears on the screen… for me, this is playtime.

My target point is the humble pixel or Elena’s stitch. I’m curious about their relationship to one another; how that when you multiply them they alter, mutate into something other. I’m training myself to view the world in pixels, macro viewing the textures of the environment I occupy…

All this is the intention… I work towards making paintings, maybe some prints. I will reveal the path that this meanders along… maybe some methods…

Already started…

Elena sent me some images of her “disembroiderey”. In a sense, I wanted to continue her unpicking… reveal new layers and take the work back to its basic stitch before revealing some of those stitches as I interpret them. Colour is important so was enhanced… the odd pixel or two altered. The first image was then randomized through an App called Decim8; (Image 1). I have built my own set of filters within the App using some of the pre-made already on offer, so to a degree that part of the process is also borrowed… that’s important to me – that the only hand I have in the process is selection… everything else is adopted and stitched together as you would a collage… Elena’s starting point. The image was finished off in PS Touch after some further manipulation in other Apps. The final selection is from around 30 similar images… a sketch for a possible painting… where my hand takes over, selects the textures…re-structures.

Image 2 follows a similar process, yet strips back even further. I really like what is achieved here, yet all is accidental. A learning is taking place… I’m beginning to understand the “lock-ins” – an algorithm echoing the same function – involved in my processes and the idea is to try and avoid that repetition that so readily occurs whist using Apps.

I’m left now with a series of mechanical sketches that need my hand in them. Selection again becomes key. How I translate each mark into discernable language mirrors the ideas that I am developing alongside this in my own blog, and the resulting work will hopefully occupy a different space to that which Elena pursues… even if it is her work that I am sampling from…

The materiality of what I’m doing is a little confusing for me at the moment, I will have to crash on through it to see what becomes of it all. I’m using materials I used years ago. Old bits and pieces, offcuts of embroidery canvas and cross stitch fabric, they used to get all manner of traditional illustrative designs and folky stuff stitched onto them, now the bits half discarded are the bits I’m using. I used to construct charts on my computer…. coloured pixels, coded symbols….for publication in craft magazines, and even a book (if you are that determined you can still find it on amazon for a penny, £3 postage.)

Now, the work is unplanned, the canvas picked at… deconstructed… maybe even unpicked stitches…?

The fact I am acknowledging and revealing my crafty past, revisiting and demolishing it is I think quite interesting… “Hello, I’m Elena, I’m a cross stitcher, and after 10 years without a chart, I have picked up the canvas again. I may need help.”

It sounds like Bo has a plan though, doesn’t it? That scares the doodahs out of me. My working practice entails a fair amount of crashing about and swearing, and he’s already experienced more than two years of that! But… as always… he stops my complacency taking root. He is my insurance man. That will stop these little canvasses and large quilts being merely cute and pretty, and keep them interesting to me, him, and hopefully other people. The familiarity of the materials might lull me into a false sense of security… that needs to be guarded against, shaken off. I need to make sure I’m looking at the new drive for this, not well trodden old ground.

Although…. I do have a drawer in my studio full of rejected/abandoned embroideries from years gone by. I don’t know why they were kept really other than the reason if you spend over 100 hours stitching something, it deserves a little respect. Will chopping them up, and deconstructing them a little, further the discovery here? I’m no stranger to chopping up other people’s abandoned work, bought from charity shops, so why not my own?

And in answer to Bo’s question about blending… I don’t think that’s what I’m aiming for… more a sort of acknowledgement of points of contact… a Venn diagram even?

I have a starting point, an idea… a genesis. No set imagery… just a working methodology to construct from via deconstruction. I love to ask questions, so for this my work will take the line of an inquiry… an examination – of mine and Elena’s working practices. I will query, challenge, proposition and debate. No argument… just learning… progression… development. Building blocks… a pixel… a stitch… Elena is wrong when she states our work hasn’t overlapped until recently… We have been working together for over two years now and it amuses me that she’s not seen it… She warns that I will laugh at her… annoy her… But the conversations we have shared about her work has only informed and further advanced my own. We both alter what is already there… give new meaning. Collaboration gives me a second voice… you know… that whisper in your head… that that answers your doubts… reassures on the paths you follow… points out the errors… provides the new… teacher aiding teacher… learner supporting learner… friend informing friend… I aim to create an image each month for the conception of the show. That’ll involve a lot of prep work; research; selection and rejection; links to work and my own blog. Elena will assist me on this, ensuring that only quality will represent our partnership… she’ll surely try and keep me in check… won’t she? I won’t attach my name. I trust our styles are sufficiently different… I wonder if they’ll blend…

Elena’s first post:

We haven’t started arguing yet.

I remember, a while back in my personal blog, talking about collaboration and how when it’s not with the right artist, can be disastrous.

Well since then I have worked with quite a few other artists. These alliances of varying duration and intensity have come about far more organically than before. My previous experience had been with artists similar to me. My thought being that we’re bound to work well together and produce something good.

Wrong.

What we produced – if we ever got to the point of producing anything – was something safe, boring, unchallenging. And in hindsight, I think I didn’t have the confidence to be challenged too much then.

Which brings me here…

While doing an MA, you rub up against all sorts of people. Sparks can fly. Work is exciting, challenging, thinking about it mind-blowing – if you do it right!

Occasionally you meet someone REALLY annoying who drives you up the wall because he questions every decision you make about your work and then laughs at you when you struggle to come up with a coherent answer. That one, for me, was Bo Jones. He has sharpened me up.

His working method is completely different to mine. His output, up until very recently, had no point of contact with mine.

But…

We have certain values in common. We both teach. We have overlapping taste in music – which for me is a big plus. We have conversations that ramble all over the place. We agree on enough stuff, but not everything.

We did talk about working together, as our course drew to a close, more, I think, as a way of continuing the conversation. Recently, through that continuing conversation and exchange of images, we’ve made a material and conceptual link between our work that wasn’t there before – or if it was – we didn’t see it.

We’ve booked a space, and now we have to work towards filling it.

And I have every expectation that Bo’s first post will disagree with mine, just for the hell of it. He’s like that.