When I was going to art school one of the issues I could never resolve was how my art fit into my life. My art and my everyday life were two separate things. I was either in class or in my studio at school, or I was at work or home and the two never overlapped.
At that time, most of my art dealt with the process of creating it and the materials I used. It was only in the materials that my personal life was evident in my art. I was working in situ, site specific on my studio walls. I was making lines on my wall with yellow sprinkles, attaching them with contraceptive jelly. I was weaving used teabag strings into my carpet in giant spirals. I was tying thread onto straight pins and sticking the pins in the wall then spackling over them so it looked like the threads were growing out of the wall. I was unraveling doilies that my grandmother made and reworking the cotton yarn.
But my work never came home with me in any way.
Now my art and life are so integrated there is no boundary between them. My life informs my art, and my art is a daily part of my life. From the materials, to content to, process to writing about it and selling it.
And my Rapunzel Chair is the obvious example of how my art and life come together.
I started making the chair last winter. Each time we cut the baling twine on a bale of hay to feed the animals, I would take it and wrap it around an old seatless chair I found in the barn. During that winter we visited Blue Star Equiculture and I saw a couple of the volunteers there braiding the horses manes. Then I started braiding the bailing twine on the chair.
Once the animals could graze again, my work on the chair stopped till this September when we started feeding them hay again. Over the summer I made Jon a macrame bracelet for his birthday. After that I started using the two macrame knots I knew on the chair.
I can no longer imagine my life without art and my art not being an integral part of my life. They are woven together, not in a neat pattern, but in a daily changing jumble, like the baling twine on Rapunzel Chair.
I love the green twine you’ve added to your fiber chair.
It’s so awesome that your life and art intermingle now….what a feeling, huh? Reminds me so much of Tasha Tudor and how she lived her life as an illustrator. I’m so engrossed at how she lived….very much to the beat of her own, beautiful drum, like you.
I can’t imagine anything else now Barbara. And the dark green twine is all from this years hay. It just hasn’t faded yet. I imagine it will look different next winter.