fresh assimilation

welcome to my whirled of the past few days.   I've been spending a lot of time in the study-oh.  This puts me at the tree's canopy level.  It's a restorative and grounding view to hold ...

My body has been slow and pained due to electrical storms that never arrived.   As I try to learn more about the fine art of reading that body, I'm also de- and re-constructing my view of the physical world.  Sometimes that means I'm zoned on the couch with the cat prowling some edge of the space.  Sometimes it means I have a visitor who talks to me while I do something study-oh-ish that doesn't take my focus or attention from the slippery sliding rivers of conversation.

The plastic tablecloth in the foreground used to be fully unfurled in the center of the room.  I was doing various experiments with a trio of spray-on walnut inks that I received as a birthday gift.  Now it is just available for smaller experiments with the same inks:

I have been spraying lace 'stencils' in various journal pages.

I am also doing some sympathetic healing with myself.  Late last week I lost the power to sanely or sensibly process things that were happening in the larger world.  Have been forced to re-build my sense of comprehension through play/metaphorical therapy.  first the box of highly compressed fabric scrappage was dumped on the floor.  No ceremony or insight.  Just get it out of the box and onto the floor.  Spread it out with both feet and hands over the course of a few days.  Then begin the finicky work of sorting-out.

To what end I couldn't tellya.  But I can say I began with the intent to separate stuff that's loved enough to keep it and stuff I could machine stitch together into scrappy panels for donation to local quilt making charity efforts.  There is no shortage of need and I feel it's something I can reasonably expect myself to accomplish between now and the winter holidays.

Here's the rest of my fabric - some quite recently liberated from moving carton purgatory.  Once I am done sorting scraps, I am taking a walk through the pictured collection for similar culling and charity purpose.

I've also been working in slow-setting but essentially spontaneous collage work.  This is great when I'm just starting my day but haven't quite formed any (or enough) steady conclusions about the previous evening plus dreamtime. 

Have been working ever so ponderously on my altered book project.  This is an old hardbound copy of Dreaming The Dark.  I began by gluing sets of three printed pages together, using Yes paste and a good grade bookbinder's glue brush.  This took a few months because Yes takes forever to dry.  It's entirely worth the time, while I have it on hand.  Also took time inbetween gluing sessions to press the pages good and flat beneath stacks of my heaviest reference books.  The result is a smooth and sturdy page that's about a third as thick as a child's board book.  I really like having that much stability per page.

My vigorous alteration sessions have split the glued binding of the book.  It is now in four pieces.  Only two of those pieces are still attached to the cover of the book.   Everything I put into the collages has some personal significance.  The new title of the book is Sisterhood.  It includes ephemera of various kinds - all saved from women in my life who I truly do view as psychic sisters.  So there is also the backstory inherent in my arrangement of these details.  I am mapping my emotional process and life experiences with feminism as well as female-centric spirituality.

Although it feels a bit like stitcher's heresey I have been using gel medium to attach a dutch wax batik fragment and poly-cotton blend scraps that hold sisterly memories.  I didn't start out with the theme in mind and I really didn't grasp much about how meaningful the project would become.   Altering a book in a personally meaningful manner is indeed a work of alchemy; especially when the book itself has been meaningful to you in the past.  I didn't start out with anything close to that level of awareness or commitment.  I just picked up the book and started gluing pages together ...

Comments

[jude]

the little scraps look like pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle spread out like that.

[Acey]

they are puzzling all right ... and multiplying like tribbles!

[Deb G]

Laughing, your floor is more organized than my attic/storage room/studio floor. :) And I like gel medium.

[nance]

your floor looks like art. i love it. it could be a piece of land art if it were outside. what a great process to document. and i too love gel medium for a lot of things! i use it for glue, for extending drying time for paints, for photo transfers. and i like its name.
hope you are feeling better soon. i admire the way you handle the times when you are not as energetic as others. xo

[handstories]

i keep coming back and looking at your scraps. i don't think you've moved them from photo to photo, just changed your angle, but how different each image looks! i wonder if we could just stand somewhere new each day, if the everyday/ordinary would take on a whole new light. i'm going to try this today & think of you, your body and spirit. thank you.

[Acey]

in some of the pictures a few pieces have moved from the middle heap to one of the smaller piles but essentially they are all the same from different angles and at different times of day for the varied lighting. hope you blog about your discoveries about new light creating new discoveries. I still dont really know what Im doing with the scrap sorting but it did help me get some mental and emotional sorting done ...

[Acey]

Hi Nance - when I first started paying attention to creative-centric blogs I kept seeing golden gel medium mentioned and I didnt realize it was a brand name. I envisioned golden colored gel. That original association has kind of stuck for me - I would really *like* golden colored gel - well sometimes I do add gold acrylic ink to the gel medium. Your comment reminds me that I need to try some transfers. For some reason I am afraid of failing at it. Its ridiculous really, so what if I fail. How else will I learn? I dont have this sort of problem as a general rule but every once in a while I get quite skitterish and hyper-concerned.

[Acey]

well Deb its currently not as organized as it was when I took the pics! Needed to be able to roll my desk chair between my writing desk and the table at the window where I do collages, painting, etc. So for a little while they all wound up heaped in the center of the room again. So far I have sorted the scraps by color, and by varied prints that seem to look good together. This afternoon or evening Im going back in to do what I originally intended - keepers and stuff for charity quilting.

[wholly jeanne]

there is so much value in grappling on the ground. loving the book.