Why for?

I’ve finally completed a couple of long term projects that have occupied a frankly shocking amount of time.  I’ve long maintained that I have two special powers, and the first is that I can take just about anything simple and make it elaborate (definitely with cooking, most definitely with any sort of creative project).

The finished Drunkard’s Path, Unraveling.

These two projects, for instance, couldn’t just be sewn together, they also had to be sewn down to their substrate.  I have this thing about attaching one thing to another, how there has to be a kind of logic to the material used. As Joaquin would probably put it, my commitment to authenticity can go a little far.

Fault Lines, back and front.

Occasionally I feel a little ambivalent about this tendency (certainly it has resulted in caramelized onions, chevre, sun-dried tomatoes, and pine nuts ending up in places where they needn’t have bothered), but most of the time I don’t even notice when I’m doing it.

Using needle-nose pliers to get the tapestry needle through a particularly tight aperture.

At it’s worst, I guess the result can be to make everything into work. This is what I was thinking about as I was smoking my ponies (you’ll find out soon enough) on Monday evening.

The trick, I guess, is to follow that tendency, as far as it’s a real and important part of my process, but not to the point that it asserts itself in the work, unless of course that is actually the point. Remember clarity. And remember pleasure.

The ponies will help me articulate this point, I just know it.