It never used to be difficult to finish an image for a photographic project. Quite the contrary, if I liked what I saw - there was a sense of pride, sometimes a sense of wonder - did I really do this? If I did not like what I saw, the work ended up in the darkroom bin, or abandoned in the folder maze on my working drive. So, how to explain this feeling of loss at the end of a woven piece? Is it because the sheer amount of work filled such a big part of my time for months? Or because I can look at the finished piece and see how I changed during this time, can tell the point when I realized what I am doing: unconsciously translating the rhythms of birds song into bright colored hand-spun wool.
“Morning Song” is up on the living room wall, and me ….I miss the time working on it. Miss the process, feel the need to create. Listening to an interview with Connie Lippert led to a tiny weave that was instantly baptized “A really ugly thing” :). Then, without thinking too much, I pick up the small battered frame loom, the one with the crooked nails and a ball of hand-spun grey yarn which I had no idea what to do with (too itchy to make a wearable piece out of it) and started to improvise ‘a letter to myself’. How about adding a scrap of text? Out of the ‘papers to be used in the future’ box, a page captures my attention. On it, a line seems to be winking - “Perhaps it was because she had nothing whatever to do …..”. Maybe so …..
“Morning Song” rests on the wall in our living room
A letter to myself, May 12, 2020
