Bye Bye, Blue Eyes - The Blurb

When I was in high school and knew all the answers to life’s questions, I lived in South Minneapolis near Lake Harriet. I quickly became enamored by the beauty of the city, and took to walking (and cross country skiing) in the city’s many parks and around the lakes, with boys, my girlfriend Liz, and by myself.

In May of my sophomore (Year 10) year, I went on a stroll to Lake Harriet Rose Garden. It was an awkward time of the day; mothers and children had all left with dinners on their minds; and an awkward time of spring, a fair few weeks to go for the roses, so bushes were trimmed and rows tidied, but no blossom, not even one, to admire or smell or point at.

There was an old man walking, just as unsure of what to do as I, but still wanting to enjoy the moment, as I. We skirted around each other until it became awkward not to say hello.

I can’t remember which one of us said the first words, nor do I remember what was said. We might have agreed it was a pity it’s too early for the flowers. We might have pointed at the fattest bud. At one point, I commented he was a good looking gentleman, almost as handsome as Paul Newman in The Sting, only much, much older. The gentleman might haves smiled, or he might have said “Well, thank you, that’s a complement coming from a young lady.” I don’t remember. It might have been all of three minutes before we ran out of things to say.

That night the last item on the news reported The Most Beautiful Paul Newman was enjoying a short stay in town, before a racing weekend in Brainerd, a little further north. It was 1975, I was all of 17, Mr Newman would have been 50. All that mattered was I knew was I was living the best years of my life, and every moment was vivid and fresh.

I turned 50 this year, and I can’t remember much about my youth. I remember names and places, oh, sure, but moments don’t glitter and shine the same, and I sometimes have to calculate months and years to put important moments into “context”. And that’s just my youth; never mind that I can’t remember what I’ve done this year, who I met last week, why I rushed upstairs just now. And yet, 50 doesn’t feel that old. I’m still the same girl looking out from inside the same body, still aware that these are the good days.

* * * * *

I admit it was a bit disingenuous on my part. I wanted the last bit to be... "still waiting for the roses to bloom," but the blurb wouldn't have ended on a a high note, and I like happy endings. I wonder if that makes me a lier. Hum...

Hung - Part 2: Debriefing

I've never made a secret of the fact I'm not a technically-strong weaver. At least I hope I didn't; remember all the times I said I'd never show you pics, but I had this-and-that problem? In fact the uneven picks, iffy selvedge and making a smooth, flat hems have caused me a lot of heartaches. All the more reason the recent Verdict annoyed me, because I would have liked to have had intelligent/constructive feedback from the unnamed "excellent, experienced" weaver, but that's by the by. This latest lot really exposes all my weaknesses. Fibre Spectrum Exhibitions coordinator Susie dropped, on her bike amidst horrible rain and wind, to say hello, and we discussed ways of showing scarves while hiding weaving evils, but in the end I went for exposing all my fabulous unglory. I'm not a read-me-between-the-lines type, and like everything else, these scarves are WYSIWYG; they're not expertly woven, and that's where I'm at now. (I now see how liberating it is to get older; we really stop the pretenses, don't we?)

I urgently need to come up with a better way to wash the woven cloth as well so as not to further damage the picks. A closer sett might be the first step. I need a method to make better hems, too. I've been compiling a list of issues I need to your help with since June, particularly pertaining to weaving with fine yarns, but this list is constantly being modified and is getting longer and longer. I may need to post it in three parts.

Ben and I talked about how I can work smarter to take away some of the emotional downs from my process, as this one was particularly difficult. Besides getting started earlier on projects, to allow room for extra opportunities that pop up which may distract me, as well as unexpected hindrances, I've gotten into a bad habit of trying out new things just before projects, for the projects, and that's not smart. It just so happened I had many opportunities to participate in exhibitions last year. Which was wonderful. And because I didn't want to show the same old, same old every time, I tried new things in quick succession. Which, last year, worked for the most part.

This year, I had created heaps of empty spaces on my calendar, but I can't remember what I did with most of that. And though I'm giving myself more lead time than before, and I'm trying new structures, yarns and colors, I'm doing these too close to the deadlines. I've always known it takes me a long time to take in new things and make them mine. (Remember, I wove plain weave for five years before multiple friends said it may be high time I wove undulating twills I'd been talking about for three years?) Well, the only reasonable conclusion is I must try new things in between and well before and not directly leading on to projects, so come project time, be they commission pieces or exhibitions, these formerly new skills have had time to become my tools and I can design and plan with less unpredictable factors built into my schedule.

Sounds so obvious. I knew this before my first solo in Jan 2007; I don't know when I forgot.

On our way home, we stopped by at the Refinery to see the sculpture show. Scroll down a little to see the installation 'Fil'et Kunzea' by David Carson. These skin-like pieces of wood/bark are hung from boards laid across the glorious Refinery rafters. (Is that the right description? He put six or eight boards on top of the beams up there.) Using the rafters and doing something big is what I wanted to do last October, and in a smaller scale, it's also I wanted to do this time. I like the answering-to-myself aspect of art making, but only I can let myself down when things turn out less than spectacular. And that's one big responsibility.

Hung - Part 1

It took all of 90 minutes to hang this one; my assistant is becoming efficient. The "main show" looks a little sad; perhaps not enough pieces, very little, almost a ghostly, transparent look, even though this is the kind of fabric I intended. Though you could say summery and light. I like that we offset the scarves from the wall by about 20cm. The spot on the wall on the right is where I'll post a blurb on Monday. (I've been thinking of how to connect the left and the right walls of this exhibition, and came up with a good metaphor this morning.) On the plinth I will have business cards and a notebook for people to write in.

I think the scarves were moist; the horrible crease in the scarf second from the left was not there when I unpacked. I hung the scarves first to decide the order, with Scarf 1 (thick weft) and 4 (the most colorful warp) in the center and Scarf 2 (thin weft, same color as one of the weft) in the darkest spot. As I switched them around, Scarf 4 stayed in one position for all of 2 or 3 minutes, and that's when it got the crease. I soon rearranged them so all the pieces showed roughly the same length of fabric, but, ugh, the crease stayed.

The "sideshow" worked better; the colors, number and the density of the cloth gave this side more impact, and that I like these scarves make this side look better as an exhibition. I'll put my yellow/gold frame on the wall under the spotlight on Monday, and will ask if I can hide the small plinth. We thought of off-setting this dowel, but decided against it because a) this is the sideshow, (two of these pieces were shown at the Suter in August, all but one just returned from Westport in October, so I feel embarrassed enough about having to fluff up the exhibition in the first place,) b) because I couldn't be bothered, but most relevantly, c) it's too close to the ramp.

I took the pic above from the top of the ramp. This gallery has four rooms in a straight row; the two front rooms on street level, and the third, this, and the forth room three or four steps lower, so a big part of the exhibition room's floor is taken up by two ramps with big handrails. On the left (blue) side there is ample space between the ramp and the wall, but on the right (yellow) side the space is narrower, so if we offset the yellow scarves and brought them forward, the colors and the volume would have overpowered the room a tad, and I couldn't be bothered fine-tuning that crucial distance so the sideshow wouldn't obscure the "main" show.