life world

Much reading and thinking since my last post, primarily about these dark spaces between, where thought, image and experience meet, briefly, before we force ourselves awake.

Sometimes however, the need to make overides the quest to learn and this image above is what happens.
After creating it, intuitively, I completely forgot what it was that inspired me to puncture, rip, tear, paint and stitch some handmade paper. So, reflection on action didn't work this time.
Later though, I did see the connection between the text and the work; Husserl felt that as technology hurls us headlong into the seductive future, we tend to miss those very dimensions of experience so essential for our continuing existence.

This work is about 18 ins long, stands non too steadily on my table yet speaks to me more forcefully than any words. Maybe I just need to read more?

sketchbook conference

I keep a large sketchbook where I record my creative journey, visually but with an ever increasing desire to write carefully chosen words which add extra meaning to the images. I use these sketchbooks as teaching tools as well as for me; I forget things and at times need to remind myself who I am. I'm finding now that this sketchbook and my research journal, have met and crossed paths, at last. I've been waiting since November for this to happen of its own accord.
Now, I feel ready to start. I'm enjoying creating my own bus ticket for this journey of a lifetime. Below is an image which today appears in both books.
Silk/rock. Fragile/strong. Hard/soft. Resisting/yielding.

I'm a practitioner who thinks. There are lots of us out there with all kinds of tacit knowledge which we want to share. If we don't share, when we pop our clogs, that knowledge pops off as well, sadly. This need not happen if we value and respect where each of us as practitioners, comes from. The link below looks interesting and worth considering, if you're nearby or even if you're not. It's about sketchbooks; all kinds.

http://www.acessart.org.uk/events/?p=101

New beginnings

I've been struggling for weeks with issues of my research and finally feel a sense of another aha moment coming on. Timely, first day of a new decade. The following words expess it very eloquently;

'the search for time, for place and for a life - is necessarily a search that arises only as a consequence of the inevitable experience of loss, and, if it achieves any resolution of the distress induced by that experience, it is a resolution that is brought about through coming to better understand the densely woven unity of life as lived'. 'Only thus - in the concreteness of an embodied, bounded existence - can we come to understand that in which the value and significance of a life is to be found'.  Malpas. J. E. Place and Experience.
                                                                                  

realisation

I had one of those aha moments today. Living in isolation, be it on an island, like above, or else snowbound, as today, then introspection can lead to breakthroughs. They may be obvious to the masses, but to the individual................well...............that takes a bit longer.

Isabel Soria says,

                             'a spritual view of nature is able to meaningfully contribute to our self identity'.

While living on an island, I had a complete sense of identity; strong and visual, insular. Since leaving the island, I have no identity of self, no sense of being centred in self, no sense of 'knowing' or of 'connection'. I suspect that this research journey has emerged in order that I might acknowledge my debt to a special place through sharing my experience of creative survival.

Who else is out there?

clutch distractions

No clutch. No car. No excuse.




 Spent all day in my studio trying to bring to life something I feel in my mind's eye. It's a long drawn out process which I enjoy; the rhythm of making suits the day. Still not sure if I'm getting anywhere but keep going.

Sometimes stuggling relentlessly blinds us to what's right there in front of us. In attempting to make these silk pieces conform to another identity, I can't see them for what they already are. 




Walk away, come back, look again. It's all there.





Sometimes looking at the opposite reveals the real, like this.

cold

No images today, no time....plumbing gone wrong, cooking overdone, words unwritten. Anyone else have a bad day?

Did spend it finally with good friends though!

playing

This is something I do a lot; creative play. It's essential in my practice that I do this, otherwise, how do we grow?
The image above probably wont look like much to you, but as I endeavour to tease out of my mind what I see, this is what happens. My studio is full of such attemps. I'm actually quite happy with these :)

Today I came across some words which mean a great deal to me;
 'I understand the spiritual as a way of living the ordinary while sensing the extraordinary'
Lucy Lippard