Tuesday 19 April 2016

A Shift in Thinking

A shift in thinkimg. Sometimes something in your mind just gets stuck, and that state can remain for a very long time, years or even decades. Every time you discuss the topic you use your intellect to argue your point and that belief becomes more imbedded in your brain. Then one day talking with a like-minded person, who has the same point of view as you, you hear yourself speak a sentence that changes everything. It is not immediately obvious that a long held believe has been shaken in its foundations; that your mind has taken a slight sideways shift, but as you drift of to sleep all the pieces fall into place. This happened to me this weekend; I have always maintained I am a lacemaker first and foremost and an artist second. Always. Fervently. No doubt in my mind. That is until this weekend. I was at a weekend mentored by Michael Brennand Wood, an artist working in textiles, and my friend was explaining she wanted people to understand the lace making process she had used to create her work. Michael suggested she let the work speak for itself and not worry about the fact it is made by lace. This friend and I shared a room and we were later talking about our sessions with Michael. It was during our discussion I said something like, “You could describe the process as weaving with an unfixed warp,” I was still firmly a ‘lacemaker’ at that point. As I was continuing to process the day before falling asleep it struck me, bobbin lace is just a name, a name for the process. Names change all the time for all different reasons, the name is not important. I use the bobbin lacemaking processes, sometimes it looks like lace and sometimes it doesn’t. Wikipedia says - an artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts, and/or demonstrating an art. This sounds like ‘artist’ is a very generic term, I can live with that; I guess that makes me an artist.

Stumble Upon Toolbar