Hodgepodge

Ronette said, "Collage!", so I did. Joanna's unfinished mechanical legs, seated.

I don't get collage, eh. I get glue on the wrong side of the paper, hands, face, clothes, and sometimes hair, and yet the pieces don't stay stuck and sometimes end up on my person. I thought I'd work mostly with analogous value variations and build up to create shapes but while trying this approach I realized I had to see/know the shapes and be dexterous enough to tear in approximately those shapes. Then glue.

But it was a small light-bulb day. You know how "they" say practicing art makes you look at the world differently; well, I had never understood it; it hadn't happened to me; I don't see things differently. Today it occurred to me that the shape of highlight on Joanna's right shoulder to upper arm looked familiar; I know that fan shape; it features a lot when I build shapes with light and shade. It took me three+ years, but still a small yay!

I also noticed something in relation to what Annabelle said last week: over the years I have developed a "physical" understanding of sizes relating to body parts. When drawing, my preference has been the A1 size paper; it's as if my subconscious (??) understanding of human figures has developed in that size frame (or slightly bigger), and my eye/hand automatically want to create figures that fit in that size. The above piece is A2 and if I had continued upwards, I would not have had her torso let alone her heed/face. But the first piece I worked on, on A3, is so disproportionate and weird.

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I'm not participating this year but Marlborough's "Weave It, Felt It" is on again this weekend, and when I was sent electronic posters I was shocked.

This is Poster 2. The scarf at top left I wove way back; it and three others were shown in a gallery on Waiheke Island near Auckland, and then in WIFI. Then in March 2011 I donated it to Handmade for Christchurch, an online fund-raising event after the second, big quake there. An old colleague from my previous incarnation bid on it but it got lost in transit. There was a bit of toing and froing between the organizers, the bidder and me, and the bidder was justifiably annoyed. The upshot of this is an approximate recreation of the piece on my To Do list since pre-Pillars days.

Last night I wondered if it mysteriously resurfaced and found a place in this year's WIFI, but no, Rose just dug up pictures form the past for the poster.

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A weaver told me to check a gallery because another weaver had copied my colors. Now, you know me to go all huffy and puffy when photos get pinched online. Strangely I don't get bothered when work is, well, similar. It goes back to my thinking that there's very little new in weaving. I don't know if/how/when I copy others; I don't do it consciously but impressions of lovely textiles do stay with me so I can't say I never do subconsciously. But now, my "thing" is changing constantly I'm not sure if there is "my" thing. 

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I wouldn't wear these socks, I don't think; I like socks to be in one color, but I love the geometric designs and the colors; some combinations are so out of the left field for me it's almost refreshing.

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I think (hope) I'm done with cosmetic changes to the blogs/websites. Next is content; I like tidying/cleaning, but I am not a woman of few words, and, oh, boy, there are a lot of posts and links to check.

Happy weekend, everybody.