still here

what a bad blogger i have been - nothing for nearly 4 weeks. but then dear reader, there has been little to report of a tangible nature and even less of a tangible creative nature.

the closest i have come to making anything textiley has been this present wrapped in japanese indigo fabric.  and a few sketches in my special new sketch book to grab at the few tentative ideas that float through my mind.

due to the excess of Life that has been happening for the last few months, i have not actually done any textile work since october.  this is starting to become a concern but not a crisis - once the kids go back to school and we get back to something like a normal routine i think i'll be able to carve out some solitary creative time

in the meanwhilst i have been doing a lot of rearranging of the mental furniture and have decided that this will be my aim for 2011 and beyond.

and part of achieving that is a lot of this

backson

following the red thread

despite the recent angst i have started to find hope and inspiration in things - especially rediscovered things.  this is one of my favourite pieces of music and i would like it played at my funeral, preferably by the kronos quartet :)

like a lot of music it is best listened to with your eyes shut - there are shades of melancholy and hesitation with a fabulous rush of energy and light and expansion especially from minute 3 - it's full of big blue sky

other soul-feeding things i am hanging onto are:

• andy goldsworthy's sculpture

• the marine photos by richard lord that we found on the weekend. i had very strong dreams on saturday night/sunday morning and woke up with the word 'ormer' insistently in my head. i had a vague recollection that it was some sort of mollusc between a clam and a snail and after consulting the dictionary found that my hind brain was right. further consultation with uncle google took us to richard lord's amazing site where he has has the most amazingly luminous photos of marine life on the coast of guernsey. such colours and textures - bizarrely like the desert country i keep trying to render into textile art. 

• marvelling at this

• this song by my still favourite artists (to my family's increasing dismay - will is the only one who doesn't mind me playing the same music over and over again - it has become a bit of a linus blanket for me)

 

haunted - a defacto self-portrait

i was supposed to have finished a self-portrait piece from the art quilt challenge but found myself knee-capped by the piece i had envisaged. it was just too painful to work through some of that stuff at the moment - i just can't do it. it will keep and emerge at some point -  but not now.

so i have, as yet nothing to post on the challenge blog or here.  i have some ideas for a safer piece that i will make over the next few days but in the meantime i can present something of a photo essay.

yesterday, new year's day, i went back to bed and just lay there snapping away trying to see if i could scry the internal damage on my face. i think i look quite ravaged - it is me with no make-up, after a very late night and wearing the scars of my mind. i thought of the photo i took in november that is now my profile picture and also though of the famous photo of spike milligan which reveals a soul in agony.  where am i on that continuum?

clearly i am recovered/ing and not in a bad a slot as i was last week and as i have been in the past. but i am marked.