Threads

There are always connections. It all comes from me, so there must be.

Sometimes they are obvious to me. Sometimes not for ages, sometimes never… or at least, not yet.

I have conversations with people… friends and family… and this weekend during the LOAF event with complete strangers. It was while replaying one of these stranger-encounters in my head that a blinding flash of childhood came to me, and I had to sit down to deal with it. Such a vivid memory it took my breath away.

I have 3 bits of work attached to my studio wall. I felt I was feeling around for something, the connection. This flashback has linked them. They don’t quite say it, but they hold the clues.

I am shocked and stunned by the way my brain does this to me, tries to make sense of my life, episodes I thought long forgotten. It can be a bit like a dream… the sort that goes:

“we were in our house, but although it was our house it was really my childhood home, you were there, but it wasn’t you, it was someone different, but I thought of them like I do you, so it was you…”

This memory involves my Mum. My work and my dreams often involve my Mum, who I seem to have become. She died 18 years ago… I know this because my youngest son has just turned 18 yrs old. She died when he was 3 months old. I see our relationship over the years, and how it becomes more understandable as I get older, and see the reasons. I suddenly understand something I saw 40 years ago, because suddenly it has happened to me.

There have been conversations here about work being TOO personal and autobiographical. I don’t understand. I have no choice. The work that comes out of me just happens. Whether it is autobiographical or not is often invisible to me until it is too late, a done deal.

The work settles.

There is usually with me, a period of frantic activity on the edge of the new idea. I must get it done as quickly as possible, I must rush through that first stage to see if it works. Obsessive constant drawing/sewing or whatever. When I get to the point where I know that it works, I can stop, breathe, wait, look. My hands might shake a bit while I decide. The bra drawings had to be done. I did two or three a day until I had enough. I didn’t know how many enough was… more than five…. more than six…. Now I know it works I can stop for a while and review the situation.

While I’m stopped I can look back at something else too. Work with muslin, dismantled clothing and dismantled patchwork. Work with words. The words are becoming important again. I have written quite a lot lately… even these words hint at the archaeology i mentioned in the previous post:

Secret Drawer

I tucked it away in a drawer, among world war string and batteries

I thought it would be forgotten, among the falsehoods and the flatteries

I pushed it right against the back, covered it with precious rubbish

Never to see the light of day, unremembered, lonely, punished

The secret’s shut inside my head, it’s mostly disregarded

But I trip up on it now and then when moments are unguarded

I’m also not sure of connections between the made and the written. They must be there, because they both came from me. Bo and I have talked about making connections recently. Does the work we are now doing for our joint show have to be connected with each other, does it have to connect with what has gone before?

Part of me – the very small intellectual I keep above my left ear – says there must be, and insists upon me finding it to justify my work. Another part of me – a gobby student with authority issues and a flaunted cleavage – tells me to sod ‘em and get on with it.

I know which I prefer.