Friday I felt that needed to create, to be daring and to make something with impact out of mixed materials.
It is really rainy in Madrid these days (which is a good thing, but dreary), I had had a long week and needed some color and the meditation of creating something. So I pulled out some yarn, some wool, some wool felt, and, my watercolor crayons. I cut a piece of 100% wool felt from the Fieltro store off of Calle Mayor, and got to work.
I decided to use the gray yarn this time and just make random shapes with it. To my delight as I began to fill in the shapes with complimentary colors, the piece began to remind me of a Gaudí mosaic. After I filled in the shapes I had made I put another line of gray wool on top of the first. to make the lines more distinct. The I trimmed the edges to straight and you see what I saw in the picture below.
Then it was off to the iron to steam finish the wool. Ater that (and ironing all of my clothes, I miss dryers so much) I sat down to think how to finish this piece. Framing 2D needlefelting has always been an issue for me and I have never found a solution. I decided to cut out a bigger piece of felt, cut the same size hole as the original piece in the center, and baste the original piece onto it. I got the effect that I was hoping for, a 1mm height difference between the two pieces.
OK, now I need to do the daring part and play with mixed media. I embroidered the lines radiating out of the center piece with backstitch and the same gray yarn. (I have always loved the continuity of bring the frame into a piece.) Then I got out my water color crayons, a small glass of water with vinegar in it, in the hopes that the color would be more likely to fast, and got to work.
I do not know, I still have my doubts about this piece being finished. I think deep down in my heart I do not believe that I can make art, even though I firmly believe that everyone can make art. I think part of my thought process is that art should not be easy, and if I can do it, is it too easy?
Lately I have noticed this distinction in me and I have been pushing myself more to explore outside the box. I have the fear that if I take something a step further that instead of making something better I am going to ruin it. It upsets me, this feeling, after all, what am I really losing besides me time? What if countless artist and inventors before me had thought the same? Where would we be as a speices?
The sweater from the last post was a good example of me going ahead in spite of my fear, and designing a top out of my handspun that took my countless numbers of hours to spin, and was so thin and fragile I could not rip it out more then once. The top turned out well and I am happy with it, but still I wonder, how long will it take to trust my creativity?
It has to be said that many, if not most artists are notoriously unhappy with their own work and often fail to appreciate their own talent. I know I have the same problem, which sometimes time alone does mitigate. When I drag a piece out much later, after some period of time being out of sight, it often looks a great deal better! It's hard, maybe impossible, for one's art to live up to one's imagination. My artistic reality always seems to fall short of what's pictured in my mind.
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