happy blogiversary to me

Oh, dear, I missed sending myself a card. Has it been a year since I first sat down to write this stuff? Jan 31 - late by 2 days, but that's ok. I forgive myself for the lapse. I've been busy. In fact, I just took a photo of a piece on my wall (here is the salient detail) and realized that I have come full circle. Or maybe I have not moved at all.

When I looked back just now at my first blog post, January 31, 2005, here is what I saw.I was talking about how obsessed I was with this picture and others of the same woman. I love this picture. Somebody asked me today at crit who she was and I asked whether it really mattered. Only to me. To everyone else, her identity is irrelevant. Here is the full piece on today's wall, which I still have to finish. But it is done. And it named itself, so that is good. The background fabric is a part of a piece I batik'd a few weeks ago. We were talking in crit group today about how difficult it can be to use the fabrics we've printed. One as busy as this is especially difficult, I think. But it spoke. Would that they would all speak! My friend Diane says that her fabrics sit on the wall and then jump up and wave their hands and shout "me! me!" Mine more or less whisper. Once in a while they sing. The next ones sang and this piece made itself in the blink of an eye.

The black and white which is in both of these pieces is fabric I batik'd with paint when I was making class samples. Obviously, the fabric will not make it to class. The red and white fabric was printed last summer when I was demonstrating how to screen print with thickened dyes and found objects. I have more of this fabric so it will undoubtedly show up in something else. Another woman. No title yet - but it will travel in a small works show that will be in Dallas, so I have to come up with something. Speaking of titles - when Helene and I went to the Rauschenberg exhibit we realized that we could see absolutely NO relationship between his titles and his work, in most cases. I've been having an ongoing discussion about naming work, with anybody who would engage. Somehow the title "Untitled I" doesn't do it for me - although I can really understand it. My friend Judy is working on a series now and they are all called "Torn Forms #1" and so on. Works for her. I know somebody else who just opens up the dictionary, closes her eyes, points, and whateve word she hits is the title for her current piece. Maybe Robert Rauschenberg did that, too. And maybe it ain't a bad idea. We were discussing this again today. If you have a piece with trees and you call it "Trees" there's no chance for the viewer to think about anything. But if you call the same piece "Regeneration" or "Square Foot", you give the viewer a chance to bring his/her own interpretation to the piece - or some thought about what meaning the piece may have. Or even a "huh??" Enough of this idle chitchat - it is already the next day and I need to get my beauty sleep so I can think of some creative titles for my work tomorrow.