Something Else Amazing I Didnt Realise I Needed In My Life.

Something else amazing I didn’t realise I needed in my life.

But yet it seems to me that translating from one tongue into another, unless it be from those queens of tongues, Greek and Latin, is like viewing Flemish tapestries from the wrong side, for although you see the pictures, they are covered with threads that obscure them so that the smoothness and the gloss of the fabric are lost.

Don Quixote, Part 2: (trans Water Starkie)

Oh, but Don Quixote, did no one teach you to marvel at the back of those tapestries, and see them as their own piece of art?

Someone just drew my attention to this, which I missed before.

And this is the point where I have to accept that I need to write out the next page of pattern. (The orange T is theta, the dark red T is Tau).

MakingLearning & the Leuven Conference

A group of which I am a part (MakingLearning) recently ran a practical, art-therapeutic workshop at the Psychology and the Classics conference in Leuven. The workshop we ran is one we have run several times before: Hanging My Heart. In this workshop, participants create ‘votives’ - small art-object treasures mimicking the kind of votive offerings found from the ancient world. Such objects could represent prayers for help with a particular issue or illness, or perhaps even a prayer of thanks for something now over or completed. Obviously, in a contemporary context we (as in, we who run this workshop) do not make these votives with the intention of leaving them in a temple as an offering to a god. In our workshops, the value must be found in the process itself rather than the dedication of a finished item. 

One of the things I struggle with most as an artist, and in general as a person, is the idea that my activities and projects could be process-oriented rather than goal-oriented. I have always worked with the latter model. I make because I want to actualise something; I have an idea in my head and I want to turn it into a physical item that can be seen, held, and shared. The first few times I was asked if I enjoy the various modes of crafting I engage in in pursuit of this goal the question baffled me. It was so irrelevant to my goals that not only had I not considered it, but the question itself confused me. 

I still can’t answer the question. I can’t tell you if I enjoy sewing or knitting (etc.) or not, but I can at least explain that enjoyment of the process is not why I continue to do these things. 

  Perhaps it is odd then, that the group I work with and in - MakingLearning - is emphatically focused on the value and quality of the process: learning should be fun. Making should be fun. The process of making can be more important than the finished item. The process is the part in which learning, self-reflection and discovery happens. Everything of value to the maker happens in the process itself - it does not magically spring into our minds when an object is finally complete. 

  You can see the struggle I have with process-oriented thinking: even when trying to think with such a model my mind immediately grasps at the non-physical outcomes of the process. Goals, goals, goals. My mind remains stubbornly outside the process. And, perhaps paradoxically, this is precisely the reason I value MakingLearning’s approach. Every workshop is another chance for me to try and understand this other mode of thinking, to try again to just enjoy the process, without thought for any sort of goal: to try and engage in a making where success or failure are as irrelevant as enjoyment is to my usual way of working. 

  So when we run the votive workshop, in which participants make votives representing fears, hopes, sadnesses, etc. mimicking the ancient practices of votive giving, what do I make votives of? 

I make votives of anything I want, of things without outside meaning, I allow myself to play, to experiment with new techniques and not worry at all about what the finished item might look like, because this time, at least, it just doesn’t matter; it is the process of making the object, not the object itself, which constitutes my votive.

Well that's not supposed to happen.