My conversation with Christine Keller, my experience at Clare Plug's exhibition, and my report of the weekend to the Textile Lunch group on the following Friday and their feedback told me these things.
1. That I shouldn't try to make things to please others, e.g. exhibition selectors, (except perhaps in case of commission,) because I can never second-guess what others like, and I won't be happy making something I think, hope, someone else would like. I even hazard to guess this is where my detachment from my work originates?
2. By making what I like, my work will be more "authentic", another key word I take is in vogue. My work will come from within me, rather than a more calculated (?) marketing-research like manner. Though I haven't yet figured out how the "authentic" research differs from the way I've worked in the past.
3. I must experiment more, sample more, and take longer to resolve my work. The nature of weaving, the warp numbers, size/sett, threading, etc., doesn't yield as easily to spontaneous sampling as some other art/craft, but still, there are stages where I narrow down my options from knowledge/experience, or to make the sampling stage go quicker. While this may be good for gallery stock, as I only need to find the best option within a predicted/anticipated set, for exhibition pieces, I would be discarding chances for something possibly spectacular without a proper look.
4. Next step, I would like to learn about design, because a nice big design tool kit looks like necessary in including my thinking/emotion/meaning into my work; that's the stuff that's before/outside technical planning, the stuff that's supposed to come from within me.
For a few days, I felt a heavy load lifting, because I'm back to weaving what I want to weave. And authenticity sounds so much easier (at this point) than second-guessing. We'll see.
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