not a lazy suzen

Ok! Here’s a quick studio update:

I’ve started knitting buoys. Yea, yea….Again. I’ve knit buoys in the past but to be honest I haven’t really given them much thought until very recently. Last summer when I was knitting my wacky balloon buoys, I became so frustrated with them for a number of reasons I won’t really get into. And this frustration led me to packing them away and never looking at them again. Well, until I installed them in the Concordia University MFA Exhibition The Hive.

Installing Moorings like this was a real treat. I had originally made a huge felted fishing net for them to go into but unfortunately it kind of looked like a sack of boobs rather than a net of buoys. Each buoy is attached to a single piece of nautical rope, piled on top of one another like a totem pole. I’m totally digging this presentation of them because it is more reminiscent of them being underwater/strung up in a fishing shed. It has revived an interest in buoys in me that has spilled into installation. I’m talking environments of knitted buoys, people! Environments!

So, this is the first wooden buoy. It’s based on the wooden buoy that is pictured at the top of this post (a Christmas gift from my parents this year). Making a knitted buoy is not unlike knitting a handbag that is about to be felted. I start off with a square base and then pick up the stitches all along the edges of that square. At each corner I place a marker where the faux seam will be. In order to get a square-like shape with round knitting, the easiest thing is to strategically place ribbing at each corner. Just that little bit of structure provides enough definition to suggest that the entire thing is relatively square.

However, knitting the opening hole for the hanging cord was the most interesting part! (Well, if you’re a total knitting nerd like me). After all the neck decreases and right before I finished the top of the buoy, I knit with an auxiliary yarn to mark the opening on either side. Before stuffing, I removed the auxiliary yarn to pick up the free stitches on one side of the buoy so I could then knit a little mini tube about 1.5″ in length. I cast off the tube, removed the auxiliary yarn on the other side, stuffed the tube inward so it created a little tunnel for the cord to fit through, and sewed it to the free stitches on the other side. Honestly, I felt like a friggin’ genius when I thought of this. So simple! The result is a strong place for the cord to move through that will support the weight of the buoy when hung.

Viola! I am so smart! Ha!

Anyway, I’m totally strung up with buoys. They are the perfect object to articulate the theories I have brewing on local identity and place-based art practices. I’m going to continue making buoys,  a huge variety of them in different sizes and varying patterns (textural and graphic). Mostly, I’m really interested in abstracting local iconography that may only be relevant to me (and a handful of others). The buoys are objects of mapping, of locating myself within the places I have been and the places I find myself now.

Ultimately, all these buoys (the balloon Moorings and these wooden babies, plus whatever else I come up with) will find a way to work together in an installation. Like a fishing stage, maybe. Actually, exactly like a fishing stage–like a fishing stage and an artist studio all mashed up together. I think I just stumbled onto a major breakthrough here, people!

!!!

Anyway, before I get into a tangent about something else, I should tell you more about other things I’m working on. Like this fishing net that I’m making from hand spun silk. As with every other repetitive textile practice I’ve ever tried, fishing nets are highly addictive to make. While I like to think I’m pretty quick at it now, it does take a bit of precision to get the knot in the right place so the diamond openings don’t shift. And I’ve yet to try making a net straight down from a pole–I’ve only been making triangles and squares so far.

I love making nets. Did I say that already? I’ve been daydreaming about them and researching them and envisioning my own nets as large glowing things that are gigantic in mass. Unfortunately, that would require a fair bit of material but whatever! I’m thinking that my nets are going to be made completely from hand spun singles (either wool or silk) and tied with beach rocks that I’ll pick up during my residency in Newfoundland. Too bad I won’t be able to bring my wheel with me….

organized! from suzen green on Vimeo.

So, I’ve been doing quite a bit today that is completely unrelated to what I should be doing on a Sunday. I should be doing my readings for my seminar in the morning but instead I spent the entire day doing home stuff–grocery shopping, cooking, baking, cleaning, organizing. It feels like a major weight off my shoulders to have our designated studio area in the apartment spic-and-span. It took about three hours to get it under control. My main goal was to have the longest wall free of furniture so things can be hung up in progress, as well as making as much space available in the centre of the room as possible.  There is now a designated book area and a designated computer area. In the future I think the computer table will turn into a drawing table since the surface of this desk is much nicer than the other desk I normally work on. Right now though, I’m really enjoying working in a new space that isn’t the kitchen. Phew!

I’m in such a clean-up/organize-y kind of mood lately. Maybe it’s the fact that spring is here. Or maybe it’s because I have tons of other things to do that it is only natural to procrastinate by cleaning random things. Or maybe it’s totally the urge to have control over something. Who knows! I’m trying to really resist the urge to organize my studio in school because that’s a job that will take way longer than a mere three hours. I’ll have to set aside an entire day to tackle that because washing the leftover dishes and used coffee cups I have piled everywhere will probably take an hour. Yikes! I’m such a disorganized person sometimes. Every workspace is definitely a reflection of my mindset, that’s for sure.

Anyway! Let’s get into a work update:

This week I feel like I haven’t really done much. I’ve been doing a ton of reading, sketching and thinking out loud but I’ve been doing very little in the production department. I think it’s because I’ve hit a bit of a wall when it comes to thinking up new work. The hooked rugs I’ve been so obsessed with have fallen on the back burner (Right after I get the new frame, I stop hooking. Sheesh, that’s always the way!) and I’ve started thinking about other things. Mostly, I’ve been considering sculpture because right now I feel like working on such a flat image-based surface as rug hooking just isn’t doing it for me. Despite all my practical thinking, I can’t help dreaming about big installations and sculpting large scale. It’s terrible! I don’t have room for this kind of stuff! However, the more my practical mind keeps fighting against going large, the bigger and more amazing my ideas get. I am constantly setting myself up for disaster. Seriously!

Part of the large scale-ness I’ve been thinking about involves getting back on the spinning saddle to make some new yarns reminiscent of icy water. This week I spun up some single-ply bleached silk that’s pretty slubby and has already started to make itself into a fishing net.

There is something so lovely in the simplicity of silk singles. I don’t have a photograph of the net that this skein is becoming but holy moly, it’s turning into quite a beauty.

Along with the silk, I took a bundle of merino fleece I had kicking around and dyed it cram-pot-style a nice variegated blue. The result was then carded with some white icicle top (basically nylon fibres) that gave the fleece a pretty frosted appearance. I spun it into a two-ply yarn that is relatively even and pretty uniformly blue. I think I will probably card the rest of the fleece with some natural white corriedale, as well as some icicle top, so the entire skein will feel more icy.

Spinning has been a really fun exercise this week, along with being in the dye lab. It’s like easing into a swimming pool and swimming laps for the first time in years–it just feels good. However, I forgot how long it actually takes to fill a bobbin with thin, thin wool…..it is definitely not a quick procedure in the least.

This is an accurate capture of what my studio at school presently looks like. Sometimes it totally feels like I live and work in a cave. Well, maybe not so much a cave but a little den dug into the side of a hill like a fox hole. I am suffering from a lack of organization and I’m really trying to resist the urge to attempt to sort things out because I know that once I start there is no way I’m going to be able to stop. Frankly, I don’t really have time for it right now. I will be setting aside a week in April for organization and painting. Soon there will be few white walls and in their place a beautiful warmish mid-tone grey.

Anyway, I realize I haven’t updated in roughly a week despite all my intentions to keep tabs on myself. So, let me get y’all up to speed.

I’ve been toying around with new designs for some hooked mats. I took out all the Newfoundland hooked mat books from the university library and started compiling imagery. One of my favourite books (that I’ll be adding to my Amazon wishlist) is Silk Stocking Mats from the Grenfell Mission. The mats in this book are spectacular. Unlike most primitive mats popular in other parts of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Grenfell Mission hooked mats are quite narrative in their designs. One of the mats that I fell in love with is of polar bear with a series of icebergs (unfortunately I don’t have the book with me to scan the image). The icebergs in the mat are hooked in such a way that they appear immense thanks to the vertical blue stripes that make up the bottom of the berg. I did some sketches of my own referencing this design element.

I’ve taken this idea and sketched it onto a new piece of burlap to make a mat that will measure about 150cm x 50cm. While I’m really happy with the design, I’m a little hesitant to start working on it. I’m a rather impulsive person when it comes to starting projects and sometimes this impulsiveness causes me to bite off more than I can chew. There is no way I can finish this rug in time for an end-of-term review in April. So I think this guy is going to hide in my stash of things to do and I’ll come back to it in the summer while I’m in residence in Newfoundland.

Now, I’m not stepping away from the hooked berg completely. I think I’ll take a cue from some of my colleagues and churn out some small projects. Just like the house-on-a-berg that I posted last week, I think I’ll scale down this design to something a bit more manageable for my time frame. I can create a larger narrative through the installation of smaller pieces. We’ll see!

Speaking of small and quick projects, I made little baby bergs with some Fimo. There’s about six in total right now and I’m thinking I’m going to make a bunch more because they’re fun to make and quick to finish. I’ve never really worked with Fimo before now and holy smokes– it’s great! One 56g pack of Fimo at about 2.95$ each can make three baby bergs. Score! I don’t know what I’ll do with these little guys though I have been tossing around a couple of ideas like building a sea filled with little bergs or creating communities of them. The next thing I’m going to try is making a berg with holes poked through the waterline edge so I can thread thin string through to make little fishing nets that just kind of dangle from them. I’ll probably end up forming a couple holes into the back so they can mounted to the wall on small nails.

And this brings me to net making! Ooo!

So a while ago I took part in a workshop with my fellow MFA Fibres gals where we all learned how to make knotted nets. This is a skill I’ve been want to learn for ages. I’ve always had these daydreams of making nets upon nets upon nets, piled up in a giant tangled mess. The process of making a net is pretty fluid and requires few tools. I built a netting shuttle and gauge out of a piece of poplar using a template I found online as a reference. The results have been pretty effective.

I’m not sure what I’ll be doing with this but I have been spinning up some silk that I think will look pretty freaking spectacular if made into a fishing net.

Though, there are other ways to make a net. Before making the netting shuttle and gauge, I did a fairly large (but not quite large enough) test piece with crochet and bulky weight wool. While the test piece isn’t quite big enough to hold my knitted buoys, it will be big enough to keep fabric and balls of wool in for storage. I love how chunky and strange the crochet netted mesh looks when working with this gauge of wool, I just wish the net was bigger! Oh well.

Right now, however, I have to get into writing/research mode thanks to a presentation that I have to give on Monday morning. I’ll end this with a glimpse at my notes. I promise I’ll not take so long to update again.