Friday, May 30, 2008

Just in Time

What do I call myself? I still don't know. I know I'm creative, passionate and energetic. I love to push my own boundaries. The last couple of months, I've been extremely bored. During that time, I made a wedding dress for my daughter. The dress itself is beautiful, and took alterations from the pattern, but no originality. Hence, I think, the boredom. Everything I made looked ugly to me. The reality--I was bored. Bored, bored, bored.

I get cranky when I'm bored. Yeah, I know you noticed. Some of those blog posts were brutal. I also find the line between creation and obligation thins and what I'm creating no longer has that personal love behind it. I think that at times like these, the much maligned word craft is very important here. Craft (I'm not meaning toilet paper covers here, but honing of skills) speaks to me of love, intensity, stretching our abilities to perfection. It speaks of time, and labour.

I decided out of my boredom, just to make something that didn't necessarily fit inside any rules or boundaries. It doesn't really fit the May TIF as it doesn't define who I am (not that I can any way), and doesn't quite fit the colour scheme. But it does fit the idea of taking things further. I used an art theory textbook from my art school days. The problem given was: "...create four interesting line patterns. One should be composed of vertical and horizontal lines only, one of diagonal lines, one of curved lines, and one of a combination of lines in all direction. Vary the length, thickness, spacing, and colour of the lines so as to make the pattern interesting." (Art Fundamentals Theory and Practice by Ocvirk, Bone, Stinson and Wigg Third Edition)


As you can see, I didn't do three of the four patterns, and in mine, didn't add any vertical or horizontal lines, but it got me creating something again, and I enjoyed every minute of it. I've also started my piece for the Breaking Tradition challenge, signed up for a round robin group, joined a group to work through an art quilt book, signed up with stitching fingers and have been working like crazy on editing my NaNo. All the way up to chapter five in my editing, not that that is very far in the grand scheme of things, but it is progress.

I'm not feeling quite so bored now. More oh shit, what have I done? Can I do all this? But hey I always did like a challenge. As my granddaughter would say "bring it on."