I am catching up with the Blog - putting in stuff that has been waiting to go in while working out how to make it. It has been a bit like preparing a warp, or spinning yarn in preperation for making the work.
This is why the dates are out of sinc at the moment
responses:Wheatfen Broad May 2006
Working at Wheatfen Broad, Norfolk, I collected the comments from MA Textile & Culture students and staff, their experiences and impressions of first visitng the place.
These were written by them on labels using my own made pastels from dried and baked clay collected from Wicken Fen UK and Barisol Bangladesh.
Hung across a dyke on nettle fibre yarn, still water with reflections; next to growing nettles. The labels became somehow more significant in their reflections. An unexpected 'reading' including the water.
I would like to have left these in place but it is a reserve where this would have needed more planning and consultaion, maybe another time.
I enjoyed working in the rain and cold, it was quiet in the morning, birds, insects and animals protect themsleves form wet. In the afdternoon I heard deer, cuckoo and saw cock pheasants fighting, blue tits, wren and blackbirds nesting and protecting their territory.
How does it affect the work having these subjective and physical experiences in making it? I'm not sure it does for the veiwer, but I do know I would feel very isolated and alien without these feelings.
Wensum yarn, drawing fibres and streams togetherMay 2006
I had the same experience working next to the Wensum, at Lyng. Working with Janette Porter on collaborative practice, we had very different responses to the place because of our complementary work practices. The place gave us each a sense of travel, journey and pace. The river there is fresh and young with a lot of wildlife, it was as if we tresapassed on a territory we had no right to, birds and frogs were our audience.
Considering where the work is in time or place and who the audience is has been a preoccupation recently. I want to make work for a gallery - but is that the same work that is made in context? Is the record the work or the action? I am beginning to resolve some of these questions, and become more certain of how to answer challenges.
