This season of the mind

Some fun experimenting with free motion embroidery on velvet with fancy yarns and bits of plastic orange bags added later to mitigate against the pink (I dislike pink so it's a challenge to work with it.) This is such fun and so satisfying that I started a green version, having learnt a few things from the one above - green being my favorite colour :)
Having done the background, I am now embellishing with lots of bits and pieces that I have collected and/or made over the years, and have just been squirrelled away. It's a nice feeling of consolidation - and little things are emerging from long-forgotten boxes of STUFF, which are just right for this.

I'm flitting like a butterfly on speed, from project to project, as I keep getting new ideas and want to get to capturing the idea fast. I'm accepting this phase as part of a bipolar high, which has calmed a little (with the medication) from a way-too-fast, very unfocused stage. It will subdue at some time when the pendulum swings back, so I'm making the most of it now. Then ideas will come slower and I will get to finishing.

Working fast is very hard with a medium that demands Slow! - but I remain completely seduced by fibre and what I can do with it. I am including other media more and more, and am having the most fun finding things and thinking of how to transform them into art - a lemons to lemonade thing which is also very appropriate right now.

I am also doing a mindfulness course with a friend of mine. It is proving to be very difficult, with my mind being so flighty, but ahhh, one cannot time the seasons and the course was running now, so I had to grab the opportunity. What a profound concept mindfulness is, in all its simplicity and stripped-down, honest reality. A real refuge from calamity and worry and brooding! When I get into the zone of just dispassionately watching thoughts go by without having to compulsively grasp them, just accepting them and allowing them to exist, without preference, it's just so peaceful and simple. We do make life and our thoughts much more complicated than they actually are!

Professional photographs :)

I took a bundle of quilts and other work in to have professional studio photographs taken, as I want to apply for membership into Fibreworks. So when I get them, I plan to post them to my Picasa web album, so things can get a little spruced up around here. There are cobwebs in the corners; spring has sprung, and I feel a need for renewal and some good ol' cleaning up!

There, I said it, now I have to do it! :)

A word of thanks to fellow art bloggers for their supportive comments and emails: most especially Robyn from Art Propelled, whose work and blog never fails to inspire and also Jackie from Blissfully Imperfect and Kate from Kate's Quilting.

Thank you, gentleladies. I'm getting to a sustained feeling of having regained myself, and am having a creative spurt :) so it's time to focus outwards and not inwards as I've had a long time doing. My massive oak tree has burst out in fresh green, new leaves and my grapevine is also coming back to life after the winter pruning. Isn't nature just so beautiful and inspiring? Last spring I remember posting "Spring is so beautiful, I wish I felt better" so it's been a long 16-month year of winter. I'm just so relieved and thankful for a time of rejuvenation.

More runes

This is another work I've begun (yes, I usually have about 10 on the go at one time, plus a heap of "Never-Got-Any-Furthers" - My attention wanders easily and new ideas keep coming up, that I just have to follow (and now I understand much better why it is so!) ) So, this work continues the theme of runes, this time as spells or charms such as "For balanced Joy", "For good luck in finding a new job" etc, etc. I'm continuing my theme of symbols holding buried meanings

These spells and charms are used today in neo-Paganism.

This idea for this work was conceived in front of the TV, on SABC 2! (Who says TV is only bubble gum for the mind? LOL) They were promoting an upcoming programme on San Rock Art, because Heritage Day is coming up on Wednesday. So I was thinking, hey, what about MY heritage? - which isn't the San, but the Vikings. They did some nasty things we're not proud of, (the cartoon "Hagar" refers!) but they also did a lot of art and poetry. I think I might call this "Longings". I took a close-up, but it's blurred, so as this develops, I'll take another and post it.

It's made from scraps of fabric cut off from the Melancholia work. The scraps were too good to throw away, so I began playing with them... The work is fairly small, I'll measure it and put that in here, when I get home.

Art springs eternal

Here is the next step of this work, 'melancholia' its working title - (doubt it will remain.) Yes, those really ARE holes!
I've developed a fascination with runes! I was looking for symbols to put in each square, as I didn't just want to go with ordinary letters. So I was looking for something that would symbolise what I wanted to say - of course, old alphabets! I immediately jumped to runes, as they would be my ancestry (born in Denmark) and I've seen runestones in Dk, enscribed with the runes.

It's fascinating! Sometimes the runes are used as letters, spelling out words; and sometimes they are used in charms or spells, where several runes are combined in a form that conveys the meaning of the spell.

So of course I wanted to embed a secret message into the work. Depression is deep and dark and holds secrets long buried. Hopefully if decoded they will bring some understanding.

No, I'm not going to say what it says... sorry....!

{evil grin}

On with Creating

New pictures soon. I promise! I'm feeling great, since I've been on bipolar meds and I'm working away at things I'll show soon. Struggling just a little to focus and concentrate on one thing - I flit from one to the other, then to a new idea. I can feel I'm still pretty high. I managed to flood the bathroom yesterday, as I turned on the basin tap and then got distracted and wandered out of the bathroom! I also forgot the iron on. Not Good. Quite a creative surge though, which is wonderful.

A friend of mine is having an exhibition of her quilts next week, so I'm going to ask her if I can take some pics there and post them to my blog.

Edit 1 Oct 2008: I forgot to take my camera, and I forgot to ask her. Eeks, I guess I am still VERY distractible. The exhibition was great and I left feeling very inspired!

So, there it is.

I'm bipolar. Thus spake the psychiatrist. And verily, medication was prescribed, as aforesaith psychiatrist pronouneth that I was manic and he needeth to 'cap' it, so it did not spinneth out of control. And so it came to pass, that amongst other changes, an increase of Lamictin was warranteth, aforesaith medication being the best thing since sliced bread (and much, much nicer than lithium, saith I !)

And thus, was I addeth to the company of illustrious forerunners, such as Kurt Cobain, Richard Dreyfuss, Ludwig van Beethoven, Paul Gascoigne, Sylvia Plath, Sir Isaac Newton, Edvard Munch and Vincent van Gogh. ...... Ha ha, I wish !!! - instead I joineth the modest ranks of The Common (Wo)Man, since :

"I, being poor have only my dreams.
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
tread gently, because you tread on my dreams..."
(WB Yeats)

September?

So August came and went without a single post. I'm sad and sorry about that. I AM making stuff, but taking photographs feels like an Everest. I'm better than I was, but still not well. I ought to be well, I feel, but something is still not quite right.

Oh, maybe it's me!

How weird is it when you have a hundred and one ideas for art and yet you sit and wonder why we bother at all? I'm working on about 5 things because I can't keep my concentration on one for long. My mind flits like a butterfly yet I'm very tired and not sleeping well. I see the Pdoc on Thursday in PE, so maybe he can re-evaluate this madness...

Ahhh.... weekends

I'm slowly and steadily on the mend. One of my daughters once commented that she loved waking up to the sound of the sewing machine as it meant that Mom was well and happy and things were right with the world. Alas, these days not even the sewing machine does that, as she's in her final school year and they are PILED HIGH with pressure. Apart from the academic work she has far too many other school duties to manage and is constantly exhausted. Just 6 more months to go!

I'm very ambivalent about having chosen to sew on all these roads by machine - it will hold better but trying to manoevre it under the sewing machine with all those pins is a prickly business. Yeah, I could baste.... but, really, life's too short for basting! Or at least my sewing time is too short! I also get some very cute and cuddly companions joining me, who make manoevreing the quilt even more difficult... :)

Melancholia 2

I had the next bit of inspiration for this piece, so spent the last weekend laboriously cutting out 'roads' to go around all the blue blocks, and pinning it all down. (The bottom half is a leftover piece of release paper from fusible, that I used for the pattern. I didn't fuse it (although I like to fuse stuff, I also sometimes find that it makes the fabric quite stiff and all of this stuff is raw-edge and torn, so fusible wouldn't have worked with it.)
Detail shot. I'm now busy sewing it all down, which will also constitute the quilting. Will embellish afterwards, as I want to quilt by machine.

So, as you can see, I'm working again, which feels like a good sign. I really don't want to jinx it, but I 'think' (whispering: ...the medications are working. I think maybe I'm getting better! Shhhhh.)

I bought art!

I don't usually feel I can justify buying Art, as I need the money for more mundane things. But I fell in love with this at the recent National Arts Fest. I went and looked about 5 times, and eventually I was worried that someone else would buy it! It cost R600 for both canvases. I look at it everyday and feel buoyed up - don't regret it for an instant! Isn't it beautiful? It's done by an artist in Port Alfred, Barbara Langley and I bought it directly from her.

Melancholia

Here's what I'm working on (amongst others). All the torn squares have now been sewed onto the background. I'm a little bit stuck over what to do next, so it's hanging here until I get some more inspiration. Although the concept of "things all arranged nicely moving towards disarray" is a little cliched, since everyone else got to do it, I want a turn too.

suddenly, a year older

I'm 47 today. I don't want to think about where I have been or where I am going. I'm trying just to be mindful of each moment as it is here, one moment at a time...

I switched from Cymbalta (no success) to Efexor 4 days ago. Maybe...

Latest

... and here is what I am currently laying out, without any real idea of the end product in mind. I just feel empty, flat and numb - just trying to put one foot in front of the other and plod on - so who knows what will emerge here...?

Therapy art

A painting I did, as part of my psychotherapy.
The psychologist that I'm seeing also does some art (how great is that!) so in between each session (I see him only about every third week, due to cost and distance) he gives me an art task to do for the next session.

My Place

This piece was started as my entry for the Tri-Nations challenge (South Africa, Australia and New Zealand), but it quickly became apparent that 1 ) I wasn't going to finish in time for the deadline and 2) I thought the subject matter rather too dark for the occasion.

I apologise for the poor quality of these photos. I wrote the verse that is embroidered onto it. The theme for the challenge was My Place.
"My place is cast in shadow, my destiny alone,
With darkened eyes and heavy feet, my likeness is as stone.
My cloak is cut from sorrow, the stitches worn and trite,
such is my place, since I am one, acquainted with the night."

The last 4 words "Acquainted with the night" are taken from the Robert Frost poem with this title.
The quilting is a spiral, representing spiralling down into despair, and the other three embroidered images are of death.

Pretty dark. I didn't think it would go down all that well amongst, most likely, exquisitely colourful other entries, so I withdrew from the challenge.

Endless Night

You can't read the words - but they are an extract from the poem Auguries of Innocence by William Blake:
"Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night."

The colours are not true, the flash has illuminated them much more than they are.

My burden

I did this in papier mache several years ago (in another depressive episode) but hauled it out and dusted it off the other day.

Enough Silence

I'm not really any better, but I had better learn to deal with it, because it's going to take a while to get my medication right and for therapy to "sink in".
It's been a bit of a dilemma over what to do with my blog over this time, becasue I was so determined to keep my depression out of it.. But it is something that happens periodically; I was free of it for several years, but the black dog has returned. It's part of my experience and as such, appears in my art...
I'll post a few pics of what I've done recently - as soon as I can take some decent ones. I didn't realise how difficult it is to photograph mostly black or very dark pieces. I'll keep trying.

Meanwhile...back in my head:
Apart from fibre art, I also love the art of words, of being able to put them together so they express exactly what you want to express. The next bit is dark and sad and.. well, yes... depressing, so feel free to skip it, if you want. I've tried to express how the last couple of months have been...

Melancholia

Depression, or as I prefer to call it, Melancholia, since the name 'Depression' is wholly inadequate to explain the dark despair, is an exceedingly ugly state of affairs.

It is a desolate, barren landscape, unbroken by any features or living things, save for stones that keep getting lodged in your shoes. Time becomes an endless stretch of bland emptiness crawling by, torturously slowly, provoking persecutory taunts of uselessness, time-wasting and oxygen theft. Judgment is twisted, perception distorted, every overheard comment at best a slight, more often an accusation, always finding something wanting in you.

Getting out of bed, getting dressed, making food, any movement at all, is an exercise in swimming through syrup, hardly worth the effort. Emotions swing from a numb detachment of complete indifference and meaninglessness, punctuated by falls into valleys of varying depth of cruel and torturous despair. Despair, all-consuming and overwhelming, that demands relief by whichever means possible, whether by copious tears, dependent clinging to any possible hope, sedatives or oblivion by one's own hand.

Sleep is a blissful escape, but frequently withheld as if some form of punishment for unstated crimes. When occasionally granted, it is often restless and filled with exhausting, incomprehensible dreams. Decisions are unsurmountable, thinking is slowed to that of a frame-by-frame action replay. Memory is a sieve with large holes; everything that must be accomplished must be written down, listed, or it is gone forever.

Concentration lapses mid-conversation, when the pervasive inertia takes over and staring blankly into space, as if in trance, comes naturally. Falling comes naturally, too, the feeling of involuntary free-fall into a pit of darkness, footfalls of hope whizzing by, out of reach.

Fatigue, physical, mental, emotional, accompanies every action, as the futility of all effort becomes clearer and clearer, the meaninglessness of existence more obvious, hope more elusive and obliteration more and more compelling, if only to escape the searing pain of the despair...

I'm sorry

I'm sorry if you came in here, hoping to find something. I feel like a shell of what I used to be. Just numb and blank, with the occasional tears, but I don't even know why I bother with the tears anymore.

"My life is just...

... a slow train, crawling up a hill...." - K. Melua