Weave Sensing in 2010
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| I’m in for Meg Nakagwa’s 2010 Weave Challenge.Above are the weave sense images I will be sending to another weaver, as yet undetermined. It doesn’t really matter why I choose these particular images as idea developers as the recipient will receive them in their own way based on their own living experiences….and how they relate this to their weave structures.They are are mixture of feelings for me and structures I am drawn to;
Mandalas or circle drawings, and even the circle in general has always interested me. The way a centre radiates an energy bubbling with growth and reaching out like a web, but sometimes contained within the line with no beginning and no end. Even when the centre is merely a point or dot, it holds an enormous potential energy. There is so much to circles. The plant is a banksia. This is an Australian plant species which combines whaky, edgy elements with elegance and sophistication. A pretty difficult act to pull off. Serrated leaves, sometimes huge powerful brush like flowers and seed pods that look like eyes…hence the story of the Banksia men. The charcoal drawing by Kathe Kollwitz I find enormously emotional. See some more drawings here. The charcoal medium lends itself to sensual and emotional responsiveness but here the subject matter does too… mother and child. It’s so wonderful and I’ve not seen any other drawings by anyone of such powerful heart expression. In my view art, and music, create a shared human language to make a physical representation of what we can’t explain in ourselves. Post update 12 March: WOOPS – apparently this isn’t motherly love at all but vampire love! who would have though. Please excuse my ignorance as I thought it was a mourning photo. How wrong can you be. Lastly, Starry Night by van Gogh. A famous and very well known painting but one that uses a very limited colour range but achieves a mood very strongly. Our challenge is to examine an image provided by another and create the design brief for a weave textile.I’m excitied about the challenge. |
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Before departing Auckland this last trip, I picked up a fictionalized biography of van Gogh – now I can’t remember the title or the author, but it made him out to be a gentle, considerate soul, whereas Gauguin was a nasty lier and cheater. I gave the book to my sister in law after I finished, but the scene where Vincent painted Starry Night was included. Supposedly he painted really quickly, all of his paintings. Do you know if it’s true?
I think the charcoal by Kathe Kollwitz is hideous…splendid, but hideous. It is not a portrait of “motherly love”, it is a portrait of a child being VAMPIRIZED by an androgynous figure, who has its mouth buried in the neck of the child. The adult figure has a beastial look about it, and it is holding the child as if the child were captured prey. Far from being a sentimental picture of “motherly love”, it is quite simply one of the most horrifying drawings of vampirism I have ever seen.
Kaz, I also loved the plant photo, and I might work on something with that at a later time. I hope. I posted my final project yesterday. (Past deadline) I hope you have time to see what I ended up with!
Take care!
Dana