Good afternoon, dear readers! I'm here to show you more of the unfinished work that is just so demanding of me. I've really come to realize how much space I need to work. I'm not talking about physical studio space, which thank goodness, I seem to have in great plenty. It's the space that lives inside of time...that allows the time to open up into an infinity that invites creative flow. Now that I am working part-time, the days seem to close in even more than they used to, and although I should have time "in theory" to work, I can't seem to work when I know the clock is ticking, so to speak. I take care of the many, although not all, must-dos each morning and try to leave myself enough "open space" to work, but inevitably I stall....because it's not open time and open space....it's closed and very finite. I need to know that I don't have to be anywhere but in the studio in an hour, two hours, three hours....ever. It's an illusion, a trick of the mind I realize, to try to fool oneself into falling for the ruse, but sometimes it really works. If you've never done an artist's residency, I really encourage you to apply to any one of a growing number of them available all over the world....that's where the illusion works....it works really well, when you know that you have a month where all you have to do is feed your belly and your soul with working. Amazing things happen and the creative process unfolds in ways you can't foresee when you are squeezing the work into slivers of space. All that is a way to say....these works which I want to move to completion are inching along at a snail's pace. I've just taken some shots of them in their current state because obviously it's going to be a long time before I have the space and time I need to really move them along any faster.....but I do love the way it's going, for as much as you can see, I hope you can gather a bit of what's happening.
They are all on my husband Johntimothy's handmade paper, around 15 x 11". Those extra bits are just laying there in the third shot, waiting to see if they belong anywhere on the piece or not. All the pieces will have "roof" sections attached like you see in process on the fifth shot. There is a lot of layered drawing at this point, but the pieces will all have more drawing and embroidery by the time they are finished. I just need some space.
It's interesting to see now how my morning drawings (the 10 very quick meditation drawings I do each morning) and the dailies on the teabags are all informing one another, as well as these new pieces I've shown you in process. Maybe those of you who know my work can tell, I'm not sure, but it's fun to watch it all unfold. Here's today's daily drawing posted at MissouriBendMusings.
I do hope you have a fascinating and fruitful week ahead! See you in a few days!
