For better or for worse…

…I finished.

There were times over the last couple of days, I admit, that I really wanted to quit.  So who would even know if I didn’t enter this show?  The organization will survive without me, and there is no guarantee anyway I’m going to have any of the three pieces accepted.  More than likely I won’t have any  accepted, but that wasn’t the whole point really.  And there were times this week when I said to myself, “So Daryl, what is the point here?  What are you trying to prove?  Is all this really worth it?

It is rare for me to have a two week hole in my calendar, with a couple of cancelled classes, I decided to devote a week or so to doing some actual artwork, something that I always want to do, and never actually make the time to do, that nebulous concept of creating something that communicates who and what you are to the viewer of your work, and I had just the venue, three 9x9x3” boxes for an exhibit with the Textile Study Group of NY.  The  only criteria to fill the boxes was that the artwork must involve fiber materials and/or textile structures in its construction.  That’s it.  For someone who knows just about every textile technique ever imagined, and probably has the equipment to do it, this was really really broad, and where to even begin.

If you read my last blog post, you know I did try from the get go, to narrow down my focus, for no particular reason other than the new acquisition of my motorized drum carder, to felt.  I already had the dyed fleece, and it seemed doable.  So I started to play.  Which is what one does when one is creating from nothing.  Playing with materials, seeing how they interact, contemplating a direction, a voice, a thought, a thread.  It can be really vague and unfocused and not at all the way I like to work.  I felt like I have so little to show for the last two weeks worth of work, yet somehow I learned so much about myself and what I love to do, and actually what I don’t love to do.  So many times in the last few days I nearly chucked the boxes to sit down at the sewing machine or the loom.

But alas, I’m not a quitter.  I’ll stick with something even if it makes no sense, because it becomes a personal mission to finish what I’ve started.  So many of you my loyal readers wrote comments that were so helpful, and many of you bypassed the comments and wrote to me directly, some very lengthy and thoughtful critique.  With a couple of you I continued the dialogue late into the night.  You know who you are…

And so this morning, after yet another rework, I finished the boxes.  I’m not sure I felt the usual elation I get from a job well done, I like the pieces, but they came with a lot of pain and frustration, and angst and sturm und drang.  (Look it up…)  And I still had to photograph them.  And I was already having an anxiety attack over what has to be done for my travel classes in the next few days.  I leave for Harrisville for the week this Sunday.

So I spent the day, the entire day, trying to photograph these little boxes.  This was not fun.  I spent eight hours trying to get perfect images and I really am not completely happy with them, but for better or for worse, this is what I’ve got, the application is filled out, burned the CD and I’ll head off to the post office first thing in the morning so it will be postmarked by tomorrow.  I’ve gone round and round on titles, and I’ve come up with Life Forms: Growth, Destruction, and Rebirth.  All of the boxes are filled with handdyed cut felt manipulated in some way.  So many of you suggested a common element, and I found three old keys in a box of detritus left from one of my mom’s recently sold homes.  I liked the metaphor…