The most successful of my fabric sample projects was the bike tube, rubber bands, and staples, and of my samples had the most flexibility and possibility.
What do all the parts mean?
Bike tubes: riding a bike, travel, freedom, rhythmic, exploration, your own power, happiness, health, scenic, learning, hard, sweat, accomplishment, satisfaction, power.
Rubber bands: stretchy, colorful, widths, pliable, holds things together, close things, they get brittle, make them into a ball, slingshots.
Staples: Shiny, sharp, holds things together, fastener, metal, hard.
So on to the inner tubes - travel - bike trips... I first thought of a patchwork of tubes radiating out from a center circle, kind of like a bike wheel, putting in the sections remembrances of trips gone by. I could show Texas, the bigness, the wind, the flowers; and maybe the Gulf with it's waters in 5 shades of blue... But the empty spaces would need to be dealt with, how would the whole thing hold together? I didn't want to put it on a rectangular frame. Somehow I thought of maybe taking some inner tube circles and "chaining" them together to form a cloth background. Something didn't feel right, the more I thought the less I liked it, the "wheel" idea seemed too obvious, the "chain" structure too different from the rest, it didn't go together.
Then I came up with a big patchwork quilt idea - a story quilt. So I sketched different "vignette" of my trips and then came up with an all over block design to plan it out and work out some dimensions. I was fairly happy with the idea, it was certainly more personal than my weavings, but was it to literal? it was kind of like painting pictures with rubber bands instead of paint. Was it "The Invented Cloth" we were suppose to do?
Now the pieces are back at home, some get put back on the walls, but most get put back in boxes waiting for their time to shine. I guess that's just the way it is unless you have 50 feet of wall space. Someone told me "art not hanging in a gallery is a storage problem" I might have to agree.
I love putting my work out for people to see, all and any comments are welcome as it is usually the critical ones that help me grow. Now it's back to the studio to put the finishing touches on a couple of pieces and get ready for the next exhibit at Auburn City Hall in June.
