Once again, over the past few months, I've found myself working on things uncomfortably out of my comfortable scale. My comfortable scale is small—that place where you come in close and recalibrate your eyes to focus in on individual threads and tiny pieces. Exhibitors don't like that scale. I understand. They have walls to fill. They want wow works that drag casual passersby in off the street. So I have been responding to calls for big art. Big art can be exhausting. The way I work is slow. It's a considerable investment in time and materials and often, in the time it takes to get to the final bits, I am so tired of looking at the darned thing my enthusiasm for it is gone. And when it comes to pricing big work, well, it's always a compromise between what my time is worth versus what the market will bear. So when I finished the last one on my list last week I could hardly wait to do something quickly, using things I could easily lay my hands on. A couple hours later this:
That night I dreamed of chairs and the next morning I wandered around my house snapping photos to work from and have finished these in the past few days.
I really like "drawing" with my sewing machine, which is really only effective on a small scale. And wire hangers. Something satisfying about bending and hammering wire. And something even more satisfying about finishing something before I am thoroughly sick of it!
One corner of my design wall is filling up with "small". (The light switch gives an idea of scale)
Small feels good for now.
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Love your small art. I understand completely. That why i love doing art on playing cards. Plus they fit nicely in a little pocket of my purse. Keep on drawing with your machine - they are beautiful.
ReplyDeleteI love the chairs. Beautiful.
ReplyDeleteI like small, too. I have been doing a small beaded something everyday - usually fabric bundles. I am 1/4 way into the 5th year.
Sandy in the UK
Big art is impressive, small art fits in my house and studio. I love my windows, but with a lot of window, you get no wall-space to display fun things.
ReplyDeleteKnow what you mean by finishing before you're sick of something. I gravitate toward huge projects, then get sick of them way before they're done. Hard to finish what you can't stand looking at!
Love the little chairs, and most particularly the hangars. A clever and decorative solution. I enjoy making fabric postcards, and bookmarks. With the bookmarks I get to look at my work a lot.