Stop Looking Like a Sweater,
wool, 142 x 65 x 5cm, 2013,
Celia Pym
Dear Dying of Envy,
Oh I know how you feel! You plod along for years, you think you are getting somewhere, you feel, 'yes, this little square of felt with threads through it is really saying things, this is it, I have made something relevant!'
And then. You find someone like Celia Pym and you know that you have wasted your efforts, because here is a her that is really making beautiful, poignant, elegant, expressive objects. The kind you have always wished to make.
Well, tough cookies. There is nothing you can do but try to bury your hurt and soldier on making things that are not as clearly distilled as these. A better one made by someone else is just that; a better one made by someone else, and our job here it to minimize the suffering we cause, and that includes our endless, whingeing self-suffering. So let's rewind, and re-phrase this post:
Dear Looking Out for Beauty,
Here it is, an artist and maker who is sending me over the moon with the wonderful things she has made! I know you will love them too. Let's run and get our needles right now, and start to stitch together the beautiful old broken and tattered scraps. Let's not worry about it coming out good, let's just let each stich come like a drop of rain, with only gravity to guide it where to fall. Let's just make little marks until we have daubed out a poem of plenty, an elegant pile of eraser rubbings, a page of smudges that mean that time happened here, and it was.
PS
Be sure you investigate a piece titled Blue Knitting.
