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Alright everyone. I’m done moping around my house after having that darn wisdom teeth surgery, and I’m ready to get back to work after a long week of doing nothing. My brilliant plan for a website is no more; I discovered I was wholly incompetent in that arena and I should just stick to the analog and non-digital machines I know best (not including my digital camera, which is slowly starting to earn as much respect from me as my 35mm slr). Blogging should suffice for now, I suppose.
I wouldn’t say I didn’t get anything done last week, actually. I finished knitting a small panel for my dollhouse project, “tapestries for small places,” and dug out the felt I made last year in foundation’s fibers for the applique work. Lot’s of embroidery to come.
Speaking of embroidery.
While I was in Maine I got a lot more work done on my embroidery project about personal folktales; I know it doesn’t look like a lot of progress but there are a lot of slow details going on. And no matter how hard I try to make the backs of my embroidery neat, it never works out that but, but I also never complain.
I have been talking a lot with my weaving teacher about the idea of creating something and not allowing it to be seen, that is to say, in a gallery setting. For our pick-up project, one of the ideas we were supposed to consider was the use of negative and positive images that were created on either side of the cloth, and I not only chose not to display the back, but I also concealed part of the front. That idea is still pretty heavy in my mind, especially when you think about all of the work that goes into a fiber piece; every process is so time consuming and labor intensive, the idea of doing all that work and then displaying it with the intention to conceal is rather destructive in a way, and a sort of paradox in a certain sense. I’m not literally taking apart the piece, but I would be destroying the content of the piece in the context of having an by choosing to only display the back, which can sometimes be just as beautiful. I mean- look at those colors!
There are several ideas that I’m running with here. One stems from a conversation I had about weaving regarding the precision and “correctness” of the craft. Traditionally, I have heard of weaving classes consisting of mainly making yardage, and though the rigorous artistic content that was pushed in my class was far from foreign to me, it was apparently so for others. Weaving is an art. Ikat, when done to the point, is an absolutely beautiful, breathtaking form of image creation. And it all comes with rules, standards, and settings. The main point of the conversation I’m referring to was this: that weaving, in it’s purest essence as an art form, is nothing more than a medium through which an artist creates, and just like painting or drawing, the rules can only take you so far.
I am not interested in weaving a neat piece of cloth, and I never will be. Just like I am not interested in developing a perfect print (or even knowing all the darkroom steps) or drawing a perfect body, or making an imppecable piece of needlework that is as clear on the back as it is on the front. I’m not even sure I understand the appeal of making something perfect. I think the most amazing thing about weaving is that I can make a piece of cloth, but I don’t have to use any of the traditional steps to get there, and when I’m done with it I can wrap it around my neck, burn it to the ground, or hang it in a gallery, because it is not something precious.
Which is my other train of thought. As artists, we represent a certain class in society. There are the fine arts (the high arts) and the low arts, and everyone is always at war with each other, aruging and whining and trying to out-do everyone else. And whether your art is showing in the MoMA or your best friend’s basement which also happens to be the hottest spot in town, it’s still only accessible to a select group of people. And these days, with big name artists hiring other people to do their work (yeah, we saw DiVinci and the gang doing it with schools and studios – but it wasn’t really for the contemporary conecption of what art is today), the value of providing ideas versus actualy ability to create is hopelessly skewed. So what does it mean then, to see the content of the piece as it was made verus the content of the piece as it is displayed (front versus back)? Who is the real audience, and what then, is the significance of making, and being seen or unseen?
6 Comments on “Back to Business”
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trapunto January 12th, 2009 9:59 pm
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Funnily enough I was just thinking about perfection… I have deep-rooted perfectionist tendencies but I am not at all certain what would constitute perfection and whether I would know it if I achieved it. Also, quite honestly, I am rather lazy and I do tend to get bored with endless practice of the technical details. But what I definitely don’t want is to be sloppy and excuse my sloppiness as ‘artistic’.
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Rachel January 12th, 2009 10:25 pm
Trapunto: Thanks so much for such a thoughtful comment. I guess what I was trying to get at about the backs of art objects, specifically something fiber related, is that the back is the product of something else, it’s something unintended coming from something intentional. As opposed to being a part of the original intent. And you’re right about the tension, because as the back becomes the front and the front becomes the back, the reality presented is unclear, and it’s just another step up in ambiguity to get people guessing. I really like that thought.
I appreciate the craft and tradition of weaving as much as I do the art, the history is what drew me into it, but in that case I enjoy looking and appreciating, not necessarily doing the same thing and in the same fashion.
Cally: There is a definitely difference between pure sloppiness and the intent of “sloppiness”; everything comes down to intent and how well you are able to communicate your ideas from beginning to end. If “sloppiness” is part of your intent, then it needs to be able to stand without your explanation as to why. And imperfections certainly don’t mean sloppiness- happy accidents are always welcome in my work, and deserve to be embraced. The loom may be a machine, but we are not, and we are the ones controlling the machine, full of mistakes. I think part of my interest in weaving is that it can be such a calculated, perfect thing, but I can go in and break all the rules, and it’s ok, and something still happens. In some practices, if you mix chemicals wrong or miss a step, you might not get any art at all out of your work, but there’s very little I can do wrong to not get a piece of cloth out of my loom.
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fibresofbeing January 13th, 2009 5:39 am
At a conference last year Ilka White (http://www.ilka.com.au) had slides of a piece – from memory white cloth ground and hundreds of various red buttons sewed to form a teardrop or paisley shape. In the rush to finish the work for exhibition a number of people assisted Ilka with sewing on the buttons.
It was originally exhibited with the button “front” displayed – the initial concept of the artist, the handwork anonymous. But Ilka was fascinated by the back. The different hands of the sewers, their presence, could be seen in the red threads. At a later exhibition, the “back” was displayed. She has exhibited other works with both sides viewable.
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If you have been following Alice Schlein’s blog, you will remember that several people (myself included) commented on how they liked the backs of some of her pieces better than the fronts. Today I had the honor of being able actually to see some of her pieces. Aside from the fact that they are far more beautiful in reality than in photography, seeing them only reinforced my opinion about the backs of some of her pieces.
As for me, perfection would be when idea and technique come together (perfectly of course!) so that the final expression is what the artist desires. Not necessarily intended because often the end is not what the artist intended and yet is what it should be. It is the sense that this piece is and can be no other. -
If you have been following Alice Schlein’s blog, you will remember that several people (myself included) commented on how they liked the backs of some of her pieces better than the fronts. Today I had the honor of being able actually to see some of her pieces. Aside from the fact that they are far more beautiful in reality than in photography, seeing them only reinforced my opinion about the backs of some of her pieces.
As for me, perfection would be when idea and technique come together (perfectly of course!) so that the final expression is what the artist desires. Not necessarily intended because often the end is not what the artist intended and yet is what it should be. It is the sense that this piece is and can be no other.
Ah, but the back is there. And the tension between what you know it looks like, and what they imagine it might look like.
I’ve been enjoying your blog very much. I totally agree with you about weaving as an art form being a medium like any other, but since I’m equally interested in weaving as an art form and weaving as a craft, it doesn’t seem necessary to me to stress too much over the divide.
My own weaving is the of craftswoman type (my art lies elsewhere), but I’m not interested in perfection any more than you are–though I’m fascinated by mastery! I like to know what the people who *are* interested in perfection are talking about. I don’t want to miss out on any subtleties of the behavior of the medium that their misguided rigorousness may have led them to. I look at the fact that there is a body of knowledge of “correct” methods as a kind of convenience; it means I don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time I want to figure out how to get a certain effect: many people have been there before me wanting this kind of drape, that kind of airyness. Plus it’s just plain fun to dig into all the old books. And there is the guerilla/dectective element of uncovering the folk tradition. Have you encountered any of Malin Selander’s books from the 60′s?
Getting the hang of something in weaving reminds me of the time I finally figured out how to make biscuits that rose properly. Recipes always say to handle the dough “lightly”, and after making a lot of lumpen biscuits, my hand finally figured out what that meant. My biscuits aren’t perfect, but it gives me a lot of satisfaction that I can make the dough do the one thing I really want it to.
Wisdom teeth surgery is the pits! (Pun not initially intended.) The memory is still fresh for me 10 years later. Hope you got all the meds you needed.