The idea for the project came about a few months ago. I was working on a needlelace project and needed stitch references. I started looking through my textile reference books and I could not find much on needlelace. Then I remembered my copy of the Encyclopedia of Needlework and checked it, and there was a chapter on needlelace.
As I picked up that book, I was transported back to one of my earliest memories of it, about 10 years ago when I had acquired it and remember the excitement about having the book. Coming back to the present, I was consumed by pangs of regret of barely using it in 10 years. It’s amazing how you can time travel by handling an object that’s steeped in memory.
The shutdown brought challenges for me, but it also brought time, more time that I have had in a very long time, especially for my studio practice. In the early days of the shutdown, I found myself meditating on my art practice and what I wanted it to be. Not specific projects per say, but the nature of my practice, and more specifically, time as a theme kept emerging. I thought about time as a framework for my practice. Time is what has felt constraining over the years, it’s what has frustrated me the most. I started to reorganize my practice around time. I realized that I needed projects that paced at different times.
Many of my mixed media projects take months to complete, which has led to some from frustration on my part of things taking so long. To mitigate, I have started paintings that are completed in a much shorter time frame. And finally, I am starting this project: open-ended and long term, and something I have never attempted before.
So here I begin, not sure how long it will take and where exactly it will take me, but I feel excited and light after a long a time. Hope you will join me along the way…
My copy of the Encyclopedia of Needlework