Crystalline

Tomorrow my project will be nearly complete. Nearly means I probably need a few more wolves, and one tapestry will need to dry before being sewn to the rest of the piece, but those things are small and easy to deal with.

I haven't written much about this part of the process- the ending of things. I've been vocal about my desire to wrap this project up for what feels like months, but the ending is a weird time in the creative process. People ask if I'm pleased with the outcome, if I like it, if it was what I had envisioned at the beginning. I have no answers. I've spent so many days staring this beast in the face that I can't see it, I don't know what it looks like. The only remedy for that blindness is to put the work away for a few weeks and pull it out again later with rested hands and fresh eyes. Right now, any evaluation is impossible. 

Other things: I've cleaned out my corner of the studio, and boxed up the AIR library at home. I came here with barely anything and now there's an absurd quantity of loose fibre, dyed yarn, and miscellaneous fabrics clogging up my suitcases. I'm disgusted by my ability to acquire art supplies. Where did all of this COME FROM? It's ridiculous. I could make:

4 rag rugs

1 decently large weft-faced rug 

4-5 pairs of socks

8 or more scarves

AND I have a bag of cochineal, several small jars of mordants, a little bit of madder, a rusty nail, copper bits, and a jar of rotting walnuts, not to mention books... There's no way I can drag all this around with me. 

Dreading a summer of moving, temporary unemployment, and possible homelessness, decluttering is just one overwhelming task on my list of overwhelming things to do right now. Ugh. 

I leave you with a pretty picture of various gypsums. 

If I was a rock, I wouldn't have to deal with yarns and moving. I could just sit in the earth all day and grow. 

Explanations

It's a new month and that means LONG OVERDUE UPDATES ARE BEING COMPOSED AND SOON YOU'LL KNOW WHAT I'VE BEEN DOING!


Have I been locked in a creative frenzy with barely enough time to eat or sleep? Have I been struck down by some horrible illness? Did I take a road trip to some place gorgeous?


The answer is "no" to all three wild speculations, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing. You see, it's March and I've got a month left of my residency to pull together ideas and materials into some cohesively marvelous objet d'art. There's two tapestries that need finishing, books to find and purchase, dolls to find, applications to fill out... Plus apartment and job hunting, planning for the next year, etc. There's a little stress there. 


There's a necessary and bad retail job to tolerate. 


And there's a whole tonne of brain chemistry that's been making all of this incredibly difficult to sort out and push through. 


I've been trying to find a way to tactfully say circumstances and chemistry beyond my control are adversely affecting my ability to be creative and happy. That's why this post took so long to birth. How much to my theoretical readers need to know? How much do I WANT my theoretical readers to know? Should I be honest, or ignore my hardship and focus on the few things I've done recently? And what if all the important work I've done recently is inextricable from the hardship? What do I say to you then?


This is my creative journey, my life journey, and all of these things are tied together into some messy weird knot of existence... 


So... Well, living here has forced me to take action against my struggle with anxiety and depression. It's the greatest and most difficult gift this town has given me. I've railed against nearly every aspect of this town, but I think a lot of that was me deflecting anger at the internal stuff, you know? Back home there were enough distractions to make living with the black dog doable, but here, with those familiar things stripped away, it was just me, the dog, and a town full of strangers. Easier to blame external factors than to sit down and take a good hard look at my own behaviours and thoughts. 


I'm in treatment now, and while it's still too early to feel changes in thought patterns and habits, I will say it's put a lot of things into perspective for me, and I feel more connected to my friends and loved ones as a result. I have hope that I'll finish this residency and summer in good health, with the tools I need to put my good constructive thoughts into action, and to live a happy creative life, and to finally make all of these things I currently don't have the energy and motivation to make. 


Depression's a terrible, ugly, insidious motherfucker. It's something I'm dealing with, and for now, it's an unavoidable part of the context of my actions and artwork. I don't want it, one tiny aspect of who I am, to be so prominent in my journey, but we don't get to choose when to learn Important Life Lessons. They come up and we deal with them or not. I'm dealing with this one. No more black dog and all the energy-sucking, motivation crumbling, cry-face emptiness that goes with it. I'm sick of it. And I hope that in writing this, and by being a more vocal advocate for mental health illnesses and issues, someone feels a connection and seeks help for their own problems. It's hard to admit you need help, but it'll be worth it. 


I will finish up these projects and this residency on time, and there'll be posts later this week filling you in on February's progress. 


A la prochaine...

Semi-Conscious

rain driving Allosaurus cinnamon hugs light-up suits fashion dancing Nuit Blanche train rides I love you bike rave truck metal heart art art art frozen fingers cold core




Need I say more? Word soup is about the only thing my sick brain can produce right now. It's actually my tonsils that are afflicted, but the chills and general malaise that accompanies a sore throat are a body-wide phenomenon. Where are you, nyquil martini recipe...


Aside from feeling sick, I have two overwhelming concerns (three, if you count my lack of warm clothing and the onset of winter). I have yet to land a job. Cash is a finite resource and I need a job very soon if I am to survive and repay loans. 


The second thing I worry about is... well, it's October, and this weaving project needs to GET GOING. Laying in bed for hours has given me some time to reflect upon my actions and goals, and I think I've spent the first month of this residency unwinding from summer and school and all of that jazz. I've been setting my own pace and trying to figure out how to live in this new territory.  


And that train of thought just ceased to exist. I'm going back to bed to sleep for another 12 hours. 

A Big Sack of Bugs

I haven't written much in the past couple of days, both for the blog and to friends and family, because I've been terribly homesick and lonely. Every time I tried to sit down and peck out anything the tears would start and then it would all go downhill from there. 


Having a migraine kind of stops you from feeling sorry for yourself and just makes you wish you were dead, so while it may only be a lateral move, I can at least say I'm not sobbing. 


Today was actually okay. Instead of sleeping in until the glorious late morning hours and prancing around dusting things and drinking tea at home, I hauled my cold and miserable ass out of bed and went in to the studio for a colour theory workshop taught by the fabulous William Hodge. 


You can never take too many colour theory classes. It's fascinating and invaluable and you always learn something new. William is, in a way, responsible for my residency. He's also blunt and hilarious and knows colour inside and out. TAKE ANY COURSE HE OFFERS BECAUSE HE IS AMAZING. Did I mention I like him? 


So I got a brutal migraine about an hour and a half into the class. Someone gave me some advil and it helped take the edge off, but it's pretty hard to work with colour when light itself is trying to kill you. There were some upsides:


1. William Hodge is awesome for a lot of reasons. One of them being he gave me a god damned bag of cochineal. Just picked it up on a trip to a cochineal plantation during a vacation, heard I liked natural dyes and thought I might like half a pound. No big deal. 


2. Spending at least half an hour in the solarium's tropical plant-filtered air does a body a world of good. Two goldfish live there whom I will name, befriend, and consider pets for the duration of my time here. 


3. Due to my raging migraine, three people took pity on me and offered to drive me home. 


Let's get back to the cochineal. I had planned on using natural dyestuffs from the neighbourhood for my colour duing this residency, but let's be honest here. When life gives you free cochineal, you grind up those bugs and dye things red. I've got unlimited access to cochineal, walnuts, horse chestnuts, rose hips, osage orange, and a number of other potential dye plants. Obviously cochineal isn't a plant, but it'll satisfy my need for red and flesh (ha!) out my palette. 


Again, I wish this was a dyeing residency and not a weaving one! I made up a couple of fine cotton warps yesterday to get the ball rolling with the weaving thing. The Christmas sale is coming up and I want to weave some scarves and colour them with natural dyes and eco-printing. I've barely done anything on cotton, so I'm very much looking forward to testing it out. 


William mentioned one of his students made a ten-step colour triangle using natural dyes. Insane? Yes. I want to do that too. 

Get To Know It

Yesterday I was introduced to the BAC and the weaving and spinning (and rug hooking) guilds, shown around the studios, conference rooms, the shop and the solarium, introduced to many people and finally given a box of weaving books and sent on my way. 


The BAC is a beautiful place. That being said, it's always a little difficult to reconcile what you've read and imagined in your head with what's actually in front of you. The weaving studio is huge, and the dye kitchen similar in size to the one at the college (albeit without the felting table in the way), but I thought I'd be getting bigger looms... Most of the ones in the studio are 4-harness (for teaching classes and such), but the largest I saw was a 12-harness macomber. There are a couple of 8-harness jacks and an octado dobby too. 


All this means is I'll have to be okay with toning down the pattern development a little (and figure out how to make the physical labour of running a big macomber less intense). It won't matter too much for the final outcome. And as for the project itself, I've made a list of materials and have already ordered a few mordants for dyeing. I'm going to be doing a lot of experimental dyeing with the plants found in my new house's spectacular garden, and Ontario's ridiculous summer (seriously? I did NOT sign up for more summer) means the dyestuff stays fresh for longer. There were a few neato dye books in the box of things I was given, and with very little money I can put together a great dye book and DYE ALL OF THE YARNS FOR THIS PROJECT WITH THINGS FROM THE YARD! 


That'll be fun. 


Also, I mentioned in an earlier post, possibly the last one, that Burlington feels very familiar. It's gotten a little sinister since I started watching the Wire, but I know that's all in my head. I've noticed something strange though, and what I've noticed in the past couple of days is this: there is nobody my age in Burlington. Where are all the young, hip twenty-somethings? Nobody said there were any to begin with, but you'd expect there to be someone kicking around. Has everyone already emigrated to Toronto for the year? Is this really just a town of middle-aged couples and retirees with dogs? Maybe my future friends are all waiting for me at Ribfest. UGH.

Burlington, day 2

After a shitstorm of packing and unpacking and moving boxes from upstairs to the car to my parents house to the sun porch to the attic and back down again and then into my suitcases and then back out, I said goodbye to my family and hopped on a plane. 


The plane landed in Hamilton and my amazing friend Allison greeted me with hugs and a mini banana loaf. We drove around Burlington, blah blah blah wild garden dream house thai food chatting, and I went to bed early. 


After one day of wandering, Burlington feels pretty comfortable already. It's still very much summer here but everything looks friendly and... well... a lot like Fredericton. Minus the friends, favourite tea shops, and 8 minute walk to the downtown area of course, but familiar just the same. It feels like I'm in some strange dream where the landmarks are the same but in new places. Old routines almost fit, but not quite. 


Maybe I expected a jarring culture shock, something to really be rocked by, and maybe it hasn't come yet. Or maybe I'm supposed to be confounded by how easy it is to pick up your life and transplant it into a new city. We'll see. It's only the end of the second day and tomorrow will bring my first trip to the BAC. 

Packrat

Landing an artist residency right after graduating is a pretty nice way to transition from student to working professional. And landing one that'll take up six months of your life is exciting for a lot of reasons. With that kind of time you can really spend the effort developing new routines and skills, getting to know the artists around you, and you can plan a massive project (or several).

That's what I imagine it'll be like. I'm going to be spending six months at an art centre in ON. In my head it'll be fabulous, but I have to move, and that's guaranteed to throw a big old rusty wrench into everything.

Moving sucks. It really, really does. By nature we hoard little bits of inspiration, art supplies, tools, whatever. Stuff. Our studios (I've yet to see a clutter-free studio) become an extension of our racing minds and then we end up with boxes of nearly-empty paint tubes, or teeny balls of yarn, or stacks of paper and feathers and other oddments. I've been in this city for four years, and this particular apartment for two. There's a lot of stuff in there.

It's not the sorting out of basic personal belongings like clothes and dishes, but it's denuding the studio that really bothers me. Taking everything is obviously out of the question. Taking nothing seems irresponsible.

Artist residencies are perfect, scary opportunities to start fresh and see what you can actually make. A wilderness survival test of sorts. I've been asking friends what they brought with them for their residencies, and the responses were mixed. One, doing a two week residency, brought her camera and watercolour set and some paper, another, doing her MFA in Chicago, brought nothing. Both learned a great deal about their creative processes and it transformed the way they worked.

When I stare at the supplies in the "to bring" pile, I have no idea if I'm on the right track or completely insane, and that "to bring" pile will probably go through innumerable iterations before the final cut has to be made.