Coo,coon!

This week has been busy with other things so I haven't made much obvious progress with the project, but I have had lots more ideas and have decided that I am going to make something big, probably out of some of the clutter I have gathered in the last few years. I woke up with the idea of our possessions acting as a kind of a cocoon for us, keeping us feeling safe and protected from the world, while also possibly holding us back from achieving something more important. I'm not sure what direction it will go in yet, though I'm picturing something suspended in the air that it is possible to climb or at least stand inside, giving the feeling of being confined and surrounded by stuff, but also soothed or comforted in some way.

A bit of progress

In the last few days I finished hand stitching the lining in canvas vessel and added another layer to a painting. Some of the textured areas need a lot more work but the flatter areas are coming along ok. I also still have to decide what to put in of the vessel and have ideas for a few more which I want to get sketching and experimenting on soon. Keep an eye here and in the page tabs at the top for more updates.

New year, new ideas

I have often used black plastic bags in classes for tonal observation studies as their shiny surface means you can usually observe bright highlights and dark shadows. I never really took much notice of their form, but realised a few days ago that I could create interesting sculptural pieces based on the plastic bags that have held my clutter for the past months. The first of these started with observational sketches which exaggerated the triangular facets a bit and since then I have been developing several  ideas for how to make them. The first one started with an A2 canvas sheet which had been painted to use up the remaining acrylic paint on my palette recently. I wanted the outside to look rough and uninviting as we normally associate black bags with rubbish. I decided to keep the sheet in one piece and sketched a plan for cutting the sides, but let it develop its own form as I pinched, pulled and folded the sides together. The stitching was haphazard and irregular as I want to contrast the rough exterior with the inside which may contain something precious. I left a hole in the side so you can look in at the contents and haven't fully decided yet if this will be the only opening. I considered painting the inside or inserting one of the embroidered pieces that I have already created, as this is painted in metallic paint and neatly stitched. I tried different fabric linings next and have decided to go with the contrasting apple green. It's still a work in progress, and others will follow, so watch this space.

The Clutter Project introduction

The clutter project started as an idea just over a year ago, soon after I moved house. I found myself surrounded by bags and boxes of mostly unsorted stuff, because no matter how organised I had tried to be before the move, and despite the fact that it probably took me longer than anyone in history to take all my belongings from one house to the other, there still came a time when everything that was left got thrown randomly into whatever container it fitted in and sat for far too long in a pile in whatever corner was free when it arrived.

There were clothes that I'd forgotten I ever owned; mountains of paper that I had intended sorting and dumping before the move; missing toy parts; old shoes; photos; books; dvds and games; art supplies; artworks, mirrors and other items that had come down from the old house walls but might not find space on the new ones; saucepans and kitchen accessories which couldn't fit in my now tiny kitchen space; lamps and lamp shades; garden tools and seeds; bedclothes, curtains and throws; jewellery and perfume; candles; ornaments; roller skates and all kinds of assorted bits and pieces which don't appear to belong any where.

Look at the photo for example. In this one small pile there's a rusted millennium 50p from 1988; a conker; a paint tester pot; an old phone; a Harry Potter Lego piece; a necklace I loved, that's at least 20 years old; never used headphones; a bead; a strange piece of metal that must be for something and a piece of fabric with sample machine stitches that I have no recollection of ever seeing before.

I've just bought my first house after years of renting and it's smaller than where we left, needs a lot of work but has a great big garden and lots of potential. The rooms seemed big enough until all our 'stuff' arrived. At first I resisted the urge to shove it all in the attic before sorting out what to keep, then I shoved it all in the attic. It all had to come down again a few months later for insulation to go in and most of it was piled in the bathroom and bedrooms. It's now some what sorted and back in the attic.

Looking at the clutter daily led me, among other things, to question the way most of us live. We spend a lot of our time amassing our personal collection of consumer items and a lot more time hiding all these away from sight, spending more money on big houses with lots of space for storage, so that we can decorate them in a minimalist style. Most people are on a constant quest to clean and declutter their homes, while they also continue to buy more and more things they don't really need.

So the clutter project started as an observation on consumerism and materialism, but it is also about celebrating the beauty in the ordinary, the things we often ignore or hide. This is my stuff, a visible reflection of my life so far.  Many of the objects have strong memories attached, others were interesting or useful enough to be kept for themselves or sometimes just in case they would be necessary for some unknown reason later. The clutter project is a means of documenting my identity expressed through the objects I've collected in life, but apart from that the random juxtaposition of colours and textures in the clutter were worth recording and so the project began with a series of photos of my clutter and is slowly developing into a collection of artworks. I want to acknowledge the bursary I received from Longford Arts Office which gave me the push I needed to get going, and more confidence in my abilities to succeed, as well as financial assistance. This blog is to record the process, and my thoughts on it as these take shape.