More Bits and Pieces

Fragments no. 2

Fragments no.3

Fragments no.4

Fragments no.5

Fragments no.6

The Fragment series has been continuing, as you can see, and I'm having a delightful time surprising myself with the juxtaposition of little bits and pieces.  Often I hesitate to tear one of these unfinished cast-off drawing or fragments into even smaller bits, but what it there to lose, I ask myself....I mean they've already been tossed aside as fodder for other projects! Fragments no.2 is the only one listed in my shop so far, but they'll be added throughout the week.

In my last post I mentioned taking a wire bending class up in Sioux Falls, which I did on Thursday evening at The Bead Co., a store where one could easily while away the hours of an entire day. I'll have to go back for an outing very soon.  This was just a two hour class and as I knew, I'm pretty clumsy and kind of slow to learn these maneuvers in space, handling new kinds of tools and making my hands do what I want them to.  This will take practice for me!  The focus was on making jewelry, but  I find what I'm really interested in is making small objects...mixed media objects that combine things like sticks, wire, beads, found objects, mementos, etc. I'm slowly working in that direction and somehow I think these fragment pieces are moving me along.  Right now the fragments are sewn to a sheet of paper....the world I'm most comfortable with, but I have begun to have glimpses of these tiny collages being their own thing, existing in some other form in real space.  I don't know yet, I can't articulate it and for me this is like being poised on the edge of a diving board....I've been here before on the high dive and I've chickened out and gone back to my very comfortable two-dimensional world....but I need to stretch and I need to make the leap.  This is both exciting and frustrating, because I lack the skills to work with a whole new variety of materials and must practice being okay with clumsiness and with failure as part of the learning process.  Unfortunately, I also lack patience and want to make wonderful things right away....I've always thought of myself as one who loves the learning process, but I think that's probably not entirely true...I love having learned and I love the discovery, but I'm not so keen on the hard bits.....but isn't it true, that if we're honest with ourselves, we'd really rather avoid the hard bits of life?  Okay, so I'm telling myself to enjoy the journey and not to covet what other people make, because as I learn I'll begin making something else, the thing that is in me to make....even though I don't know what it is....but that's what it means to learn by doing.  Stay tuned!

Does anyone else have this very real struggle between working 2-d and 3-d?  Would love to hear from any one of you who have worked through this leap to thinking in three dimensions....it's not something I can really do yet!

Have a great week!