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Stitches hold everything together.

My new motto.

I can believe anything if I hold this close.

I’m still playing with the stitches. I want them to be fairly simple and stark at the moment, so the individual still shines out.

I want to look at them in different ways before I take them for granted and start building composite stitches, complex constructions.

I reconstruct carefully. It is fragile, this concept. I don’t want to run before I walk.

They are holding me together.

Strength in numbers.

Value the individual, strengthen the group.

Stitches hold everything together.


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I posted this onto my personal blog, Threads, but Bo tells me it is appropriate to post it here too… apologies for those who have a sense of deja vu…

The main reason the work with Bo for “pix” and my solo work have started to connect, is in fact, the stitch itself.

I asked the question a few posts back, “Why is a stitched line different to a drawn line?”

The stitch is a connector. It doesn’t just sit on top like a drawn line. It isn’t superficial. It is THROUGH. It becomes part of the fabric. In this process, because I choose where to make the hole, what to draw together, what to repair, or embellish… I am the connector too.

Am I the signifier?

I am the one making meaning as I stitch.

As such I am implicated in the meaning….

So am I also the signified?

The work that results has me stitched right into it.

I didn’t know whether to post this here, or in “pix” – the edges are blurred. But as the recognition of the significance of the stitch and my psyche became apparent; and in light of recent discussion; it seemed more logical to put it here.

It has implications for me, all over the place.

The philosophy and semiotics of the stitcher and the stitched…

The more I stitch things together, the deeper I become embroiled in the meaning.

If I was having trouble seeing the personality and the emotion in the joint project with Bo, I’m not any more.

(phew!)




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I feel I have talked myself hoarse today. Drunk too much Earl Grey too. All in the name of research. (Bo will be impressed, I usually can’t be arsed)

I’ve talked at length with my friend Dan Whitehouse – he is a singer songwriter and he has helped me write, record and produce the sound work I have done over the last 2 years. He has blinded me with science and software. We were talking about how I might break down a sound into the equivalent of pixels… some sort of audio building blocks. We talked of EQ and frequencies and instrumentation and filters and wah wah (I know!). I came away knowing some of what was possible, very inspired, and knowing what I had to do next. A really useful morning, thanks Dan!

As I walked across Birmingham city centre I did have a crisis of confidence though. How deep should this research go? I had lunch with a friend who is doing a fine art PhD… talking to her has helped me clarify what I want, and how this research validates my decisions. Obviously I want the work to be authentic and the connections between the audio and the visual to be real and meaningful to me. But I’m not doing a PhD, and I’m not a sound engineer, or a music producer, or even a musician! Basically I want the audio to pick out the singularity of a/the sound. I want to show a building of individual pieces that make a whole. Of course you can say every piece of music does this: every single note in itself a building block, every word of the lyrics a building block.

So my question is not about EQ, frequency or phonons (as suggested by my scientist son who frankly, needs a slap for suggesting it), but about how it looks and sounds… what can I do to the sound to show this? I feel I don’t have the vocabulary to explain what I mean. When I talk to Dan I use visual analogies and wave my arms around a lot. I don’t have the brain power to totally understand the science of it. I am totally averse to the use of shallow or fake science in art – so in deference to the scientists (including my son) I shall stick to that I do understand… I know my work. I know when it looks how I want it.

I now need to work out how to make it SOUND like I want it.

Meanwhile… I stitch like a mad woman… as fast as I can so I can see how it looks and move onto the next thing.

C’mon Bo! Keep up!


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I’ve reached a stalemate in the work and am awaiting the next moment of inspiration… writing often brings it forward… focuses my mind… sharpens…

As I mould and sculpt the paint, it draws me away from the research and I feel myself becoming immersed in the craft of making… pulling and teasing the paint across the paper with my homemade brushes.

Process becomes consuming… I’m not really thinking of anything else except trying to shape the paint the way I want it… I live in the image…

I work from numbered grids, constructed prior to painting, that in their own right interest me as pieces of work, yet the relevance of that is lost whilst engaged in the treatment… they could be more interesting than the final painted image…

The work appears abstract, yet via App manipulation had life as a colour spectrum… it does relate back, but the animal sight links need further consideration as the work progresses… colours are already selected…

Deconstruction has taken place… this is the restructuring… the making something new recycling every last part of what previously existed… the “God” complex that every artist embodies…

Photons where suggested for research… the “God particle”… what are the links?

Light… no light, no colour?.. Radiation – alternative colour? Particles of light! Can we now break down/deconstruct light? – The colour spectrum?

A photon is usually denoted by the symbol y in physics… hv in chemistry… and less commonly hf… add that to DNA lettering… another “coded” image. Coding is used in computer programming… new links begin to form… more ideas… are there links between photons and DNA… similarities?

The photon is massless!… that could be a problem…

Radiation really interests me…

Photons? Pixels? Does either really exist? To what extent do conditions control how they appear? Exist?

A second line of research is also developing from another love of mine… macro photography that for me, deconstructs the visual world around me. But in this sense, deconstruct means sharpen… sharpens the world around me. In my work so far, pixilation blurs the edges of reality, but in this new sense, everything becomes hyper-magnified and defined…

My imagery is abstract at present in the sense that Joe Bloggs wouldn’t really get the spectrum pixel explanation… do I want the work to be abstract?… it makes itself… or do I want to start shaping it into more recognizable forms? Elena’s work focuses on clothing… not material… mine at present on the invisible…

Invisible – deconstruct… visible – reconstruct! Needs shape?

Already I have plans for the next image… different sized squares… less formal… loosening further…

…thank God the show isn’t until October…


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My research is materials driven, initially, usually.

What do these thing say to me?

Why do I select them?

Will I use them whole?

Deconstruct them?

There’s always a moment of “will I regret taking it apart, ripping it, cutting it?”

(sometimes I have regretted… vintage clothing doesn’t always come cheap)

Is it going to say the same thing to other people that it says to me? Does it matter?

My sketch book is mostly written notes, with the occasional illustration.

My thoughts, often at first appear unconnected, become more linked as I work. In my personal blog “Threads” I recently talked about my work as either members of my family, or as the Deleuzian rhizome. I prefer family… more arguments.

My thoughts form as questions… as above. They may or may not be answered. It doesn’t always matter. More often than not, they give rise to more questions.

Working forward from the materials used to give me problems, as often the justification, concept, meaning behind a piece isn’t initially obvious, I feel my way to it.

It is at this point, more than at any other stage in my process, I fear the “comfort blanket”, and fear Bo mentioning it (taunting me with it), because my grasp on the conceptual at this point is fragile. But I have learned over the last couple of years to trust myself and my process more readily… because I know I will get there… eventually… but I might not end up where I expected…

Meaning arrives as I sew… it is teased through with every stitch. As I stitch laboriously the meditative repetitive process of stitching aids my brain. What I find is that I might make 1, 3, or 16 pieces of work that are unsatisfactory. But the process of making them provides a clarification that drawings in a sketch book cannot. Each piece gets me closer. Each stitch gets me closer. I don’t know at this stage whether the disembroidery pieces will make it to the final exhibition – time will tell – but I know I wouldn’t be at this point without having made them. I think with my hands.

So for me, if not for Bo, this will continue to be a descriptive process for a while yet.

I’m still thinking of people not pixels: or people as pixels; or pixels as people. I’m taking people apart, their clothing apart. I’m taking apart the foundations I stitch onto, stripping out the warp and weft, constructing the blank grid by deconstructing the fabric… filling the grid with the deconstructed pieces of everyday life. I think I’m quantifying, auditing, measuring something, checking the volume, can the whole really contain more than the sum of its parts? And if it can… what is the extra bit made from?

And also I’m starting to take apart what people say – recorded conversations, deconstructed, reconstructed onto a rhythmic grid – made into something else.

Whether the something else holds any meaning remains to be seen.


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