Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Landing

Last post of the day.  With most of my Japan posts done, (I'll show you my loot when I receive my parcel,) part of me wants to get stuck right into some making, part of me still wants to linger in the not-thinking state.  Then, there is the small problem of my arms not being quite right.  Still. 

As I wrote a few days ago, Group R met at the end of November while I was still away.  The minutes, kept for my benefit because we don't them any more, says the meeting was a little low-keyed/spirited:

"We were all feeling low or slow or lethargic for various reasons and the meeting started by acknowledging our low energy levels. We talked about the limitations we place on ourselves as we work at our “art”, the expectations we set, trying to control the outcome, not wanting to fail, and how these factors were negatively influencing our ability to think of creativity as play."

Ergo the homework.  And the journal to go with it. I'm still not keen on the idea, but at lunch on Thursday, everybody else was so excited about their little pieces of cloths, I can't help but join in.  So here goes; it ends, I think, on our next meeting which is scheduled for mid-January.  The other girls will have had seven weeks with their cloth; I for three, but it's worth a try.

The Cloth Homework

December 9, 2011: Received Minutes of the November 28 meeting, which included the homework.  I am so in the Mom's Real Life mode, so not in the airy-fairy, arty-f@rty mode, that I didn't want to take part and waste my life.  But I knew that eventuality I will cave.  

December 17: Discussed the homework with Mama, and that I intended to take something back from Japan.  I had in mind an old piece of cloth stained in the rain which we dyed in the leftover Pomegranate solution, but forgot.

December 22: Group R lunch; with different degrees of initial excitement, Ronnie, Jo, Pat and Maria are enthusiastic about their cloth.  I still couldn't get excited, but when asked by Ronnie whether I'll do it also, I said yes.

December 26: An idea of what to use for the homework popped up in my mind.

December 27: Cut out my square.  This is a piece of pale pink curtain fabric I bought about 18 months ago. Back then, in Ronette's drawing class, we gessoed a whole lot of paper and cloth and drew on them.  I never liked the drawing I did on this piece of fabric, so when I culled three years of drawings in October, I soaked, bleached and washed it several times to see how far back I could "reset" the cloth This is a small piece from it. 
Side A: you can still see the yellow and purple conté I used to draw the figure.  I can't tell how much gesso came off, as the cloth still feels stiff-ish, but then it's thick-ish curtain fabric dunked in water over and over again.
Side B looks closer to the original state, telling me that gesso doesn't so much as soak into the cloth, as sits on top of one side.

I was soaking some plastic kitchen utensils in bleach this afternoon, so the cloth went in there for half an hour; no visible changes. 

I can talk the talk; I'm just not sure if I'm going to learn anything from this at the moment, though don't want to let that become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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