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.

Rust dyeing!

Inspired by an article in a recent copy of Quilting Arts. What fun!

You soak the PFD fabric in water first, wring it out well and then soak it in vinegar. Then you lay rusty bits and pieces on it and under it and scrunch it all up so the rusty bits are in as close contact with the fabric as possible. Then you lay it there for a while- apparantly the longer it lies, the more diffuse the colour becomes whereas laying it in the sun to fast-dry, will produce more distinct areas of rusty images. Then you soak it in an alkali like baking or washing soda and Bob's you uncle and Sally your aunt.

Now both girls and I scan the ground where-ever we are, for rusty bottle tops, pieces of rusty metal - ANYTHING with rust! The girls come home with rusty nuts and bolts and I ooh and ahh. (Mom's so easy to please these days.) I have a biggish bowl full - was telling a friend about it, and she took me around to a rusty old water tank she is about to have carted off - we broke off several pieces. She laughed at how delighted I was. Probably wise to have an up-to-date tetanus shot, if the pieces are sharp, as these were.

What I do find is that quite a lot washes out, even though it leaves the mustard colour, and only a few areas take the very distinct dark areas. I re-vinegar it and rearrange everything again about 5 times - after all it just lies there so doesn't take much time and each brown splotch is so rewarding! I don't neutralise in-between.

I have an eye on the rusty old braai grid next - can you imagine the griddy pattern? It's only vinegar after all, not any caustic stuff.

I got a blog award...

Bit by bit, piece by piece, I am catching up with neglected parts of my life after the long depression and the ensuing "completely concentration-less" period (to put it euphemistically). So today I would like to accept a blogging meme, I received in MAY this year (I did say catching up bit by bit!) called:

5 Blogs That Make Me Think or The Thinking Blogger Award

I felt very proud to have been awarded this by Jackie K of Blissfully Imperfect (doesn't the blog name alone make you feel good?) who is admirably making her way through art college in adulthood.

Thank you so much Jackie! I can't think of a prouder award!

The participation rules are simple:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote.
... and I'd like to add a fourth: let your nominees know of the award.

I nominate:
1. First, and foremost, Robyn's Art Propelled. Robyn is an amazing wood carver whose very archetypal art, extensive collection and reading of art books and art-quotes never fail to inspire me.

2. Ragged Cloth Cafe, a community of artists who comment on art and textile art. Coming from an "outsider art" perspective, as I do, it is very enlightening for me to read thoughtful artistic discourse in the fibre art field.

3. Teesha Moore, whose whimsical pictures alone make me think so much, that I want to get off the computer and run to my studio and image my own thoughts! I've linked to her front page, her blog links from there, but there are several other feasts-for-the-eye links from the front page.

4. Terry Border's Bent Objects, whose most humorous and thoughtful art makes me smile and laugh and admire the thinking he applies to it. It is simply uncategorisable - he uses wire and everyday objects - and has to be seen to be appreciated.

and lastly, only because it's not art-making related:

5. Thought Leader - Roy Jobson, a medical doctor and ... vicarious observer of South African society through his association with the Khulumani Support Group -- his wife is the acting director (who, together with his wife, I feel lucky to call neighbours and friends).

Sick

Ick. I have had a "stomach bug" (euphemistic term) for the last week and have been laid very low. It seems better today, which means I only have nausea left and my diet is up to bland potatoes and rice.

I have nothing to show at all, from this week and couldn't even focus on reading a book. I had also undertaken to proofread an M.Pharm. thesis because I have SUCKER written in neon lights on my forehead (and the glare is hurting my eyes.) I gave up after 4 days and 18 pages. I was considering trying to earn a little money from proofreading (due to my very impending unemployment) but had forgotten how arduous the work is! The general rate is R5 a page, but you're lucky if you can fit four pages into an hour, especially from an English as second-language thesis, making it, at the most, R20/hour. Plus the student inevitably arrives a week or two before their handing-in deadline, and I want to have a life as well. So I'm rapidly ruling that out, other than the occasional occurrence.

Sorry about the moaning. Haven't been feeling great.

Keller

"Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it" - Helen Keller

Die Here het geskommel

"Die Here het geskommel
en die dice het verkeerd geval vi' ons,
daai's maar al" -Adam Small (1936 - )

Translated into English (help! I will not to be able to do this justice, and if by any remote chance you ever read this, Prof Small, please forgive me!)

"The Lord rolled,
and the dice fell badly for us,
that's all"

Adam Small wrote this about the "bruin mense" (mixed race folks, of whom he was one) who, despite their unique and distinct culture and beingness , got sidelined in the big black/white struggle, as they were never quite "black enough" and never quite "white enough".

I was feeling particularly bitter and "bummed" about having become unwittingly and unwillingly, wedded to this illness called bipolar, which I've likely had most of my life, just misdiagnosed over all these years (it's life-long, can be managed but not cured) that these words came to mind, and I relate so strongly to them right now - as they might apply to those of us afflicted with a mental illness, for whom the dice also just landed badly. I have to keep reminding myself that it's "not about what cards you were dealt, but how you played the hand you were given", but sometimes even that isn't quite enough, either.

We studied several of Adam Small poems at school and I was captivated by them. He is now retired from his job as a sociology lecturer. Many of his poems were written in the distinct Afrikaans dialect of his people, so that the text begged to be read out loud and came alive and very evocative when spoken. I think they played a large role in conscientising me(yes, that is a real South African word now!) back in the late 1970's, when I was in high school.

It grows!

It's green and it's growing...! I have set a deadline of 6 Nov (and seem to be steadying as far as concentration goes - each pattern piece is different, so I have to figure out how to join each piece anew) as I like to take along my most recent art to my psychologist appointments in the next big town (PE). I go only about once a month, and want this completed by then. (That little trip now costs about R300 in petrol there and back, btw, apart from the actual cost, part of the reason it's only once a month or sometimes every 6 weeks) But I find the art useful for showing what's on my mind at the time.

This was originally inspired by Windows Media Player (believe it or not, since it's ended up being quite organic) - WMP has a swirling pattern as the music plays, called "smoke or water", which competely captivated me. When I started drawing it, it evolved (a lot!) and now looks very unlike how it began, but that's fine. It's also similar to the swirling patterns I often see in my head and in dreams (you could call it artistic inspiration, or you could just say it's the cocktail of medicines firing all sorts of neurons in my brain! Either way, I am going to use it!!)

Detail shots:
I've hand-pieced this with (almost) an English paper piecing method except that I only pin around the pieces of one of each ajoining seam and don't baste. Basting is just... like stuffing a tomato - life's too short! My fingers are pricked to shreds, ouch, ouch and ouch again. Now that's suffering for your art. I'm now at work and hitting keys on the keyboard hurts (and it would be one of those silly admin data-capture days today, of all times). The next one like this WILL be sewn together by machine, if only to have some intact skin left on my fingertips...

What a challenge it has been to keep this piece flat! Ironing will help at the end and fortunately the quilting process, hides mountains and valleys of unflat flaws!

A "principle" or tip I leaned in a workshop with Sally Scott on Afro-American patchwork is to put just tiny bits of an unexpected colour in a piece, which somehow gives it a bit of "zing" and unexpectedness, that adds that "look-again-and-find-something-new-each-time-you-look" quality. I LOVE this when looking at art - that you don't just look and go "okay, I've seen it", but that you're drawn back several times.

And now I'd better get some work done.... {skulks off}

"Some say I'm a visionary, others say I'm, just seeing things..."

Words and drawing

I've been wanting to put more words on my art for quite a while now. Sometimes, when ideas are more cognitive and can be expressed in words, I like to write. At other times, words can't do the job - and shapes, colours, symbols and 3-D forms that are wordless, but communicate on a deeper level, are needed. The latter tend to be more abstract than pictorial for me. I was going to insert some writing I did recently, here, which I want to, somehow, incorporate into some work, but this post seems to want to go elsewhere, so I'll just take it where it wants to go.

To my great surprise, I learnt in hospital that I can draw! A wonderful occupational therapist brought me a pencil and paper in High Care. My first few days there went by in a drugged haze, but once I was saturated with anti-manic drug, it was decreased quite a bit and I was still very, very cheerful and bursting with energy, and this is when she brought me the paper, out of the blue, one day. I fell over it and just drew and drew. Mostly, I drew leaves I found outside, all deformed, skew or shrivelled in some way. They resonated with me - well, the symbolism was clear. They were far more interesting than the perfect ones. They were still "working" on the bushes or trees, capturing sunlight and making food, just like all the other leaves, despite their quirks. They were more challenging to draw, but they were also more dimensional and meaningful to me. (I'm hoping to buy a scanner soon, and will be able to scan in some drawings.)

I hope I can translate this recent fire into something artful, that is beautiful for its own sake, just like the leaves.

Small picture

Pic of just a small section of what I'm working on for FOUR days now!! When not at work, of course. Blast this having to earn a living, what a waste of time!