More on the Power of Limits

Anyone familiar with traditional quilting knows it originated, at least in part, from the need to use worn out clothing and scrap fabric. Sewing bits together was a functional act of making driven by the goal to produce a bed cover that would keep someone warm on a cold winter night. Who knows when the tedium of hand stitching ignited the veritable inner light bulb – the maker’s realization that the scraps could actually be sewn together to produce a pleasing pattern? A single thought possessed the power to turn an endlessly tedious chore into an exciting task charged with potential.

Welcome to another conversation about the power of limits. This week I’ve been with my sister, logging a week of chemotherapy. Sitting and thinking, or trying not to think, is part of the game. I brought along twelve pieces of a current series, each of which required hand stitching in order to be complete.

I thought I brought all the thread I needed, but in one of those last minute packing flails of omission, I never packed four of the perle cotton colors I intended to bring along. Drat. A small town. Twenty four inches of snow. What to do?

The second morning I walked to a spiffy store called Dig. In addition to the fresh home furnishings, indy craft books, and objects Dig features, there was a rack of sewing thread. Not the richly saturated perle cotton colors I prefer, but a solid selection of cotton sewing threads. I switched mental gears and selected the colors I needed, and then a few more.

As is often the case, the lighter weight thread was a better match to my art work than the perle cotton I’d brought, which was all wrong in terms of scale. Making blows my mind on a regular basis. The thing I think will be the perfect resolution is too big (and overwhelms) too small (and disappears) the wrong color (I didn’t take the colors around it seriously enough) or just plain wrong. (Get out the critique sheet and figure out what went screwy.)

But the thin, sewing thread was just right. And there were enough color choices in the stash I’d purchased to make every combination of background and thread perfect. No settling. This Goldilocks was a happy camper.

Once the immediate design decisions are made, there is plenty of sweet time to think. I thought of an exercise, which is a variation on others I’ve taught in the past:

Pick a color, or a stitch, or a thread. Or a pencil. The first part of this has to be tailored to whatever it is you do and hopefully love.

Painter? Pick painting. Poet. Pick haiku. Stitcher? Pick the Wrapped Back Stitch.

What can you do with what you’ve chosen? How will limiting what you use to one primary action or format actually free you?

This sort of experiment is perfect once a day for a few minutes. You may sit and stare at the color, or the pencil or the needle at first, but try to get past the fear and begin. When your hand is moving your brain can engage. It’s a bit like learning to drive a car with a standard transmission. You can sit and stare at the clutch for an hour, but the car won’t move until you put it in gear and hit the gas.

Practice turning off the Judgment Function in your mind. Tell yourself you are just seeing what will happen. You are curious where this could go. If it really doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, lighten up. Make it a meditation. Draw or stitch straight lines for the whole session. Cut the paper you painted up into strips or squares. Keep your hands moving. Really stuck? Switch to a material you’d never think of taking seriously. Glue black bean designs on 5” squares of cardboard. Really.

Don’t get too far ahead of yourself. Observe the ideas that flow once self-conscious awareness disappears into the activity at hand. Write those ideas down before you forget what they were. Present time thinking is fodder for future projects. Sit in the moment of making and relish the simplicity of working within limitations. Anticipate where it will lead.

And then get up and do some laundry. Or the dishes.

Message or Gimmick

It’s always something.

On Sunday I described the experience of seeing a need for change within my current Sacred Planet series. Although I love the work as it stands, I was embracing a desire to perform a defiant act - desecrating the surface of a piece by flinging paint over the existing imagery in order to underline its symbolic content.

I screwed up my courage. I felt it was right. Today you see the results. Perhaps not everyone will agree that this was a good thing to do, but I can live with that. Because the longer I make – the more I embrace the reality of making. The process is what counts. If something worth showing the public comes out of the making, it’s gravy.

But on to the next realization. There are seventeen other pieces in the series. You can see some of them in my gallery at complexcloth.com. If flinging paint defiantly worked on one, does that mean I should continue flinging?

Just between you and me, I did. And it worked on two more pieces. But then it began to get hard! It occurred to me that a defiant act is defiant partly because it spills out. It spews from an uncontrolled moment. That’s where the energy comes from.

So can defiance be thoughtful? Anyone who has studied American History 101 knows the American Revolution happened through a combination of detailed planning and reckless daring – possibly the yin and yang of defiance. See the need, plan the actions; dive into daringly executing them.

So I backed away from adding more paint, in order to think about the ramifications of my choices. The color absolutely must be part of the message. The placement? Probably counts. Is the paint flung or bombed onto the piece from the top of an eight-foot ladder? Am I moving away from defiance and toward an idea that could become a gimmick? Yikes.

There’s a paradox here. The end game visual message can spring from a moment of raw artistic courage, or it can carry power invested in the piece through careful planning. Both ways of working are valid. One thing I know for sure: continuing to fling without planning has the potential to ruin what was, up to that point, a perfectly good effort.

Now I want to find a graffiti artist and ask these questions. Is it easier to tag in the beginning when it’s a defiant act? Does it get harder to do once it isn’t as random any more – like, say, when someone gives you permission to do a really big spray paint image on the side of their building?

I suspect a tagger would agree with me. Defiance and planning both have their satisfactions. Maybe all we can hope is to know when to choose one over the other.