April 3, 2014

Frames





Metal grids found in Paris in botanical creeper supports and an excellent modernist chair frame.

From the photo collection 'In Paris'.

Suddig Ash















         
Ash, with her pompom, a tad blurry. But blurry isn't always bad.

From the photo collection In Paris

April 1, 2014

Safari hat print


On Saturday I bought a navy silk bomber jacket with a pattern of safari hats on it. Who could say no to something like that?

Att plugga

             




                                   







A portrait taken by Jane where I am slightly obscured by the ongoing, never-ending, cascading knitted fishing line project which has now taken on so many possible exhibiting forms I can't remember them all. It is like a security blanket in some ways, something to work on as a way to just to keep working. It is filled up with scores of ideas both related to the work itself and of other works, as I sit and think and knit, plugging away at it. 

In swedish 'att plugga' means to study. I like that. 

All these ideas have accumulated within this knitted mass, and have lost their original form - instead morphing into the texture of the knit, becoming transparent, a tangled mess of lines of thought and streams of consciousness. Sort of how I am writing about it now. 
Sometimes the futility of the whole thing gets me down. I don't even what it is meant to be anymore! I jokingly (not so jokingly) cry to anyone within earshot. First it was to be stretched between the floor and ceiling, then laid out like a wobbly rug on the ground, anchored by some small island like objects. Then it was a wave, a waterfall, a galaxy - a hammock, a camp bed, a curtain. Just now I think of it as a sort of wrap - like the suitcases you see at the baggage claim swaddled in Gladwrap. 

As a thing in itself it is aesthetically pleasing, and tempting to touch. And it's malleability is it's strongest asset. The longer I work at it, more manifestations will emerge. This is as much about the process as the end result. 
I fret too much about the end result. 

"To be installed in a manner which expresses the amount of ideas that were thought of during the making of this large knitted beast."
        A working title.
Or

"All of my ideas from the past 2 years are tangled up in here somewhere."

A prop. I feel an artists book in the works. The various forms of the knitted fishing line project in a long accordion book. Apropos Ed Ruscha or some such. Black and white. 

I should just let it grow as long as it needs to. The practice is being maintained, and it provides me with time to wonder about what is going on, what I want to be doing. It is relaxing. Right now it feels like I am finally admitting all I want to do is knit a seemingly endless train of fishing line, without really knowing why. 
I am constantly reminded of the Mainland Cheese ads from New Zealand - (not the one where they replace musicians with cheese, "Chubby Chedder! The Brie Gees!" but the "Good things take time" one. As in cheese.) 

I wonder why I always try to be so serious in my art practice, when in general I am really quite silly. (re: cheese ad. I spend a lot of time knitting and thinking of more cheese musicians.) A recurring thought as I knit, and one I believe more firmly in with each stitch, is that Art is too serious. 

It will be finished at some point - and the best thing will be deciding it is finished due to some occurrence in my life: an outside influence will decide its conclusion. And then, holding all my ideas, I will decide how it will be. At least in it's first incarnation. 

It is my 27th birthday on Sunday.