Fibreworks application

I am now applying for membership of Fibreworks, a group of fibre artists in South Africa. I've been wanting to do this for two years, but their AGM is in October every year and I have been in depressive episodes the last two Octobers and just have not got my act together.

Putting a portfolio together has proved to be a far greater job than I had imagined!. But it's done now, at least of most of the work. Once again, the most embarrassing pile of unfinished works looms its incomplete head, the by-products of great starting enthusiasm followed by great starting enthusiasm, followed by great starting...
... and some loss of focus along the way. Just a little, you understand.

The last sentence, obscured by the flash, reads: "If my work strikes a chord with any other person, I feel heard, and it is my fervent wish that the reality of the viewer is likewise validated."

I'm nervous. The words 'portfolio' and 'artist's statement' feel pretentious, (but looking on the Web, this seems to be how it's presented). The front cover looks a bit pretentious too: Monotype Corsiva makes it look more flashy than it is! Great font, that. :)

It's also the first time I have shown many of my works to anyone else and these are very personal and revealing, so I have that scary "heart-in-my-throat" feeling of disclosure. You know, that fear that others may recoil from the dark stuff in your thoughts and mind. I see it sometimes on people's faces when I've said too much, or said something uncomfortable that we'd all rather not think about, but which stares me in the face so often.

But I suppose the worst that can happen, is that they say it's not suitable for their group. I won't die.

Still walking on sunshine

I found a photo of my other Vuleka entry, which I had taken while still working on it. It's not the finished work, but here is the work-in-progress photo for now:

Heritage (Sept 2009)
Roughly 30cm x 50cm

Fabric, beads, stones, leather, sisal twine
Hand embroidered and beaded, machine stitched

I'm working on cataloguing my works - what a JOB.

In Future I Will Catalogue As I Complete Each Work.
In Future I Will ...

I'm walking on sunshine :)

Protect Me (2008)
Fabric, yarn, beads, stones, cooldrink can metal, hair extension fibre

Detail

Here are pics of one of my entries for Vuleka. As I said previously, I didn't take any pics of the other, so that will have to wait until I get it back in early October.

Looking at the pics above evokes a curious reaction in me: "Did I make that? Where did I get that idea from?" Perhaps because it was made a couple of mood cycles ago, by a different me(?) Well, no matter, I'm intrigued with the possibilities of the new media and this is the first in a series. Never done series before, so that should be interesting.

I was standing in front of the hair extension fibres in Clicks, choosing colours, when a school friend of my daughter's came up to buy some as well. I could SEE her puzzled brain trying to process what on earth I could possibly be doing there.

I didn't explain. It just causes more bewilderment...

I think hair extensions are just too beautiful. Why don't they make the fibre in blond? But I've been told by a hairdresser that my hair is too straight and too fine, and they'd just slip out; you need curl to hold them in place and as soon as my hair reaches 5cm in length, it succumbs to gravity and falls over. :( Perhaps if I had a tight perm first(?) And people use hot irons to flatten their hair...? Hey, let's swop! :)

Gosh, we're a strange species...

I was accepted!

BOTH of my works were accepted to the Vuleka competition! :) They are currently hanging in the exhibition in Belville. I can barely believe it. I'm delirious. I get tears in my eyes every time I think of it. I cry at anything these days, my emotions are so heightened. Now, euphoria is an appropriate emotion! There is a review of the opening here. 57 entries were accepted out of 397, and I had TWO accepted, can you believe it? I feel soooo honoured. My head is now so swollen, I'm going to have to go see a shrink, oh, I forgot, I already see one... ;)

I WISH I could actually go and see the exhibition. When you see your work hanging amidst all the others, it really hits home that you are in the illustrious company of REAL artists (yeah, ok, ok, I know, each artist is as real as any other...) and that somebody who knows something about what constitutes 'good' art (whatever that is) judged your work to be arty farty enough to be there. :) I've been able to attend two openings before, both for Innovative Threads and when I saw my work on the same wall as that of (fibre) artists whose talent I am in awe of, whose work I can marvel in front of, for ages, soaking up every detail, and whose work I have followed for years and years...

... whewwwww, now that is a trip! No drugs needed. :)

Sanlam Vuleka

Spurred on a by a friend, I have entered the Sanlam Vuleka Art competition. We sent in our entries together. There are cash prizes, but I am not aiming for any of those, I am simply aiming to be juried into the exhibition, which will run for most of next month in Cape Town. Last year 48 out of 388 entries went on exhibition. Stiff competition. I had to enter in the 'Other' category; - when will Fibre become recognised as more than a Cinderella medium??

The competition aims to showcase "new work... aimed at encouraging creativity, innovation and adventurous art from all cultures". I like to think that every time we can get something fibre accepted into a mainstream art exhibition, that that it will be another step towards changing the mindset that fibre cannot be 'real' fine art. It might not be my home-grown, outsider art, which does this, but I can hope!

Following on from Robyn's comment (thanks Robyn!):
Stupidly, I didn't even take a photo of one of them. I only just completed it and my camera has been out of juice :( (I have to laugh - what a lame excuse!) This means that should it get lost in transit, I have no record of it. Since I was quite proud of it, that will be some loss. But let me not be negative.

A pic of the other entry (I sent two) is here.

Ideas, ideas

NOW the ideas are flowing again. So many things I want to do. For seven months, while I was not working and had ALL the free time I ever wanted, I didn't do a thing! I could not drag myself to be interested in anything.

Now that is just killing me! When I think what I could have accomplished in this time, the fun I could have had, the techniques I could have played with and learnt about.... boo hoo :(

Mainly the fun I could have had playing! I am doing some of that now - making paper cloth a la Beryl Taylor. Glueing paper to cloth, then painting it with any coloured medium (fabric paint, acrylics, paintstiks etc) and scribbling on it with any kind of pen, pencil, koki, crayon - anything that writes. Then you maybe add some more paper, or tissue or paint and the idea is to get a textured surface with many layers that show through at various depths.

It's great, finally, getting to use my Shiva (Markal here in South Africa) paintstiks. They're awesome! Some gel pens are good on the paint too. It's such a lot of fun. Fun. What? I can't believe I am playing and having fun. When last...?

I'm also getting tons of inspiration from the US magazines I've been subscribing to, Quilting Arts and Cloth, Paper, Scissors. They're expensive when you convert our little Rands, but I read them again and again, so I feel justified. During my last manic episode, I must've not felt I had to justify anything to anyone,(!) so I blithely renewed both subscriptions, without a twinge of caution! I remember feeling sure that the universe would provide. When the credit card statement arrived, the universe was conspicuously quiet. What happened to "leap and the net will appear"?

Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits. This new medication is pretty sedating and does slow me down, but I am confident that between the psychiatrist and I, we can tweak it so I'm alert in the day and sleepy at night. Whatever, however, I am going to make it work; just being myself again, after that long, dark winter, is a gift worth treasuring, and I am going to nurture it. Appreciate what I have.

I have yet to locate my camera. Things are in a slightly messed up state around here. Well, okay, I think a hurricane blew through while I was sleeping. My four-seater couch can narrowly fit one person on it. Both of my tables in my "studio", yeah alright, lounge, are covered with STUFF to the depth of about 20cm. But it's all such nice stuff! As a friend of mine says, my style is very... err... "organic".

You know how, when you're choosing colours, you have to pull out all the fabrics, beads, etc to see how they go together? And you know how you can't do this in one session, they have to lie there, so you can walk past them for a couple of days, and mull them over? And you know when you have about 10 ideas at the same time, and want to get things out for each one of them, so you don't lose the concept or pictures in your head? And you know how the pieces you haven't yet finished, have to lie out, so you can mull over them too, and consider how they want to be finished? Add the internet, a coffee maker, a fistful of pills, (alas, a necessary evil) and you have a little self-contained eco-system. THAT, dear friends... is "organic"...

Ahh, at times like these, 'tis a joy to live alone... :)

"I would not be convicted...

... by a jury of my peers,
Still crazy after all these years...." - Paul Simon

---- Kleenex moment coming up :) -----

Yes, I'm back, I really am. I'm me again. My wellness is sustained. I can't believe my luck; I'm grateful, tearful, awed, peaceful, jubilant and did I mention grateful?

As I wrote last time, it's phenomenal what the right combination of medications can do. The enormous pharmaceutical industry may be all about the bottom line, with less-than-ethical tricks, corruption, counterfeiting, blatant profiteering and many other dubious practices, but this aside, drug development is also about improving peoples' lives and treating "the heartache and the thousand natural shocks, that flesh is heir to". (Shakespeare) And some may say that psychiatric drugs are heavy-duty, dangerous, harm you more than they heal and are therefore 'bad'; well, all I can say is I'll take this 'bad, dangerous, whatever', over the hell of the last 8 months ANY DAY.

When you're on the receiving end of a drug that works for you, that works in such a way as to enable you to pick yourself up again, that restores you to to yourself and that literally gives you your life back, it's... well... dare I say it, miraculous. Within just a few weeks of starting to take it, I wasn't depressed any more, I could think rationally again, I could think CREATIVELY again. I'm so deeply impressed. Just a little tweaking of some neurotransmitters in my brain! And I'm not high, I'm not a zombie, I'm not crazy, I'm not anything other than just 'me'! -- {laughing}, okay, some may say the 'not crazy' is debatable, but hey, this is a craziness I can live with!

I'm back to my art. I've finished 2 of my UFOs - UnFinished Objects - and had an idea for a new 'object'. I have to find my camera and take pics, so I can show them here. I have an inordinate number of things I have to catch up with again, not least of which is to find a job! Some days I'm daunted and I have to remind myself that Rome wasn't rebuilt in a day. I just won't be posting as much, that's all.

One thing at a time, I'll get there. I have a fighting chance now... :)

I do believe

Shhhhhhh. Don't tell a soul (for fear of jinxing this), but I MAY just have finished bottoming out and be slowly on my way up again. I have not yet done any art, but I'm starting to get interested. I've been on a binge of re-reading and looking at all my art books, and bought a new one about Hundertwasser with lots of glossy colour pictures of his work. The fact that I am even able to become interested in something is a good omen. Amazing what a successful med. combination can do...

Creative Block, perhaps loss

Thank you so much to all the people who have written in support. It's been rough going and has not eased up, except for short Mixed states, where I have both mania and depression symptoms simultaneously. If that sounds confusing, believe me, it feels that way too. It's hard to hang onto who you are and what you know about yourself, when it changes constantly.

But worse has been a complete and utter creative block. I have not done anything since November last year. I have no interest or desire. I've taken out my fabrics and materials and re-read all my inspiration books, but I just look at it all and wonder why I bought it or what any of it has to do with me.

I look at the works I have done and wonder how the person who made them managed to concentrate and persist so much as to complete them. I feel nothing when I look at them, and wonder why I made them. What are they for? I'm completely detached from my own creations.

And sometimes I worry that the creativity will never come back. I feel foreign to myself. Doing trials of each medication in turn, in hopes of finding something that helps, and unemployed since 1 Jan.

If I don't have my art to express myself with, who will I be and what will be the point of being here at all? Heavens, I am gloomy.

I hope everyone out there is doing a lot better than me!

Worser and worser

I'm not currently blogging because all I would be writing about would be misery and gloom. And I'll spare you all that. My depression continues to deepen, some other big life events which have coincided, aren't helping and the future looks grim indeed. How I ever thought I had even a scrap of creativity in me, is beyond me now. Even my own blog is mocking me.

Another depressive cycle

It seems that the higher you fly, the harder you fall. And I've plunged down with all the grace of a shot pheasant. I am doing nothing art-wise, in fact doing nothing of anything, but I'll spare you the details. I will be back, when the pendulum swings again. Let's hope that's soon.

The quilt inspector

... has been hard at work, auditioning fabrics for the next project. He declares this to be suitable, if it's comfy enough to sleep on, I may go ahead.

Falling with grace

There is something about the metaphor of blossoms falling to the ground, that seems particularly apt at the moment. The blossoms and the wheels may be falling off, but in that, there is awe-inspiring beauty. The growth during spring is laying itself down before us, as if to say "look what I've been busy with" and then moving on with grace, in the natural order of life.
I'm afraid I must admit I have no idea what the name of this tree is, but it competes with the jacaranda for attention at the moment.
... and once the jacaranda moves on to its next task, the flame tree will take centrestage. It's a beautiful drizzly day today, just right to take pictures on the way to work.

And things will work out.

In the blink of an eye

... 11 days go by and you realise you have not posted. But since this blog is about fibre art and I have done no fibre art recently ... I am out of words on that topic.

I'm in that space where getting through days consumes all my energy. My job is ending at the end of the month, thankfully not because I was fired, but because the clinical side of the research unit I work for, is closing down. We're not getting new work and no work = no money = no job.

Sometimes this information flattens me and sometimes I feel it may be the start of a new life. Mostly the former. This year has been a rough one, with two hospitalisations and a rapid and prolific series of medications. Some days I'm buoyant and confident, some days I am as competent as the next person and some days I feel useless and worthless. Trying to plan a new life in the face of this inconsistency is a challenge, which I am sometimes up to, and sometimes not.

Add to this mix a number of rejections recently, some of which are perhaps only misperceptions (my judgment in that regard is not always to be trusted) and there are days when I'm somewhat adrift in a sea of uncertainty and personal unreliability.

One must persevere and be positive, say the gurus.
"I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul" says Henley.

Today is Another Good Day to Dye...

I remain seduced by sunpaints and the effects one can achieve.
I don't yet know what I'll do with these - am in bit of a creative lull as far as fabric goes.. but I guess when I get back to it, they'll be there and waiting.

The Jacaranda blooms

Popular wisdom has it that if you have not begun studying by the time the jacaranda blooms, you are not going to pass your exams...

The jacaranda blooms in October/November, when end-of-year exams are written, before the summer holidays. My tree is sometimes a bit late, but was on time this year. My daughter is writing her final high school exams and is ALMOST finished. Soon we shall both be relieved.

The blossoms all fall onto the grass in a gorgeous lilac carpet.

Last year, spring came and went without cheer; this year, at last, I can enjoy its beauty...

A Day of Sharing Words

"Clipper Ship Lightning" - Bruce Von Stetina
Copyright Bruce Von Stetina, reproduced with kind permission

Well, as so often, I missed the boat, but I am going out in my little dinghy to catch up! On 19 November there was a "Day of Sharing Words", a virtual (via blogs) poetry swop, started by LK Ludwig of The Poetic Eye. Read the original post here.

I just now read about this on Robyn's Art Propelled blog in this post. The idea was to post, on your blog, a poem that moves inside you, touches you, reaches you.

I often think of the following poem, when I feel in an "at-sea-in-a-storm" state of mind. Here it is:

INVICTUS
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.

-- William Ernest Henley, 1875
(Invictus is Latin for "unconquered")

Swirls

Something about swirls keeps coming back to me, a recurring theme. I've not yet figured out why. Fortunately, I'm doing this art intuitively, not because I have pressure to do so for any reason, so I can follow my instincts. Now if only swirls were easier to manifest in fabric! I quite literally bled from the needles and pins doing this one. Last night I got the urge to paint swirls again (there wasn't enough time to get out the paints and clear enough junk off the table) but this morning at work, I just had to scribble a small picture of swirly shapes.

A previous swirl:
When I close my eyes I can SEE swirls. No, I am not on any hallucinogens, only on meds that are designed to prevent such, ha-ha. Nor am I hallucinating - at least, I don't think I'm hallucinating? Do other people see things - pictures, patterns, colours when they close their eyes? I wonder.

Maybe I'm just very visual when intuitive and only verbal when I'm cognitive. I have study background (from school and varsity) in being verbal, but none in the visual. Perhaps that's part of why shapes, patterns, colours are such a feast for my eyes.

Same swirl in different colours:
More in the planning!

Oh, and the parcel intercepted by customs was indeed a book. A Fibre Art techniques book, I've coveted for a while, but felt was too much of a luxury. I love techniques books, as you use them again and again for reference as well as for that inspiration of "I can just see how I could use this to do X, Y or Z".

In South Africa we have import tax on books. All books, including academic books used for teaching at university. The initial idea possibly arose to discourage "foreign" books and write our own... but in a country where the brain drain is immense, illiteracy abounds and some stuff simply has not been written by anyone here and MUST be imported, the logic escapes me.

But then again, a lot of South African logic escapes me, both past and present. Perhaps all political logic ... ah well I'm getting way too philosophical and most definitely don't want to waste effort on getting frustrated over politics (will save that for when we vote next year) when I could be creating stuff!

Green, green, green, is the colour

I seem to be having a bit of a green obsession at the moment. I just can't get over what beautiful
shades and tints one can find - and above are only the brighter ones, there are still all the olive greens, hunter's greens. Anyway, these were last weeks "crumpled sun-paint method" green dyes, which lay sunning themselves on the grass in my backyard, doing their magic.

Dyed buys

Every cloud has a silver lining. Recently my manic cloud had LOTS of silver linings from a couple of somewhat rash, but very fruitful spending sprees. I got a nice laser printer, some inline skates I've had my eye on for some time, several books and magazines to do with fibre art, several other things which we'll gloss over and the above exquisite hand dyes from the Bathurst fairy lady at a local Saturday farmer's market. The photo doesn't do them justice, they have to be opened as the colours vary all across each piece. To say I got excited is an understatement. Some of them I am going to be unable to cut into, they need to be used in their entirety! Embellishment, beading, embroidering, here I come....

I am happy that even while my judgement is rather.... suspended, shall we say.... as regards to amounts spent at such times, I am thoroughly delighted afterwards by what I have bought. I got another parcel slip in the post last week. It's something I ordered from the USA, which I can't for the life of me remember. (Customs caught it - arghhh, so it's probably a book - yay! Christmas comes early!)

My pocket now has a rather dull, grey lining.