According To Rozsika Parker (The Subversive Stitch), Since The Victorians Associated (or Re-associated?)

According to Rozsika Parker (The Subversive Stitch), since the Victorians associated (or re-associated?) embroidery with women and femininity we have had to argue that what we do is art rather than craft. Women were arguing that embroidery was art in the 17th century. We’re still having to argue for it now. 

Men don’t have to argue anywhere near as hard when they engage in textile work to have it presented as art, because ultimately it is still the case that in much of western society, the same piece of work is primarily considered art or craft depending on the gender of the maker. 

Timaeus 1: tetrahedron prototype.

I’m the kind of person who’s too impatient to wait for there to be good daylight and make sure there’s no crap in the background for me to take photos and post them, so here are some photos taken at night, under artificial light, with some bags in the background (my office is my studio is my lounge. Mess is inevitable).

Anyway, somewhat delightfully ironic to call this a prototype, since prototype can mean both the first thing you make which you then go on to perfect, or the thing from which all future models are derived: almost like a platonic form. The form which is to be perfected in future models and the perfect form from which all later (imperfect) models will be derived are represented by the same word.

Why is that ironic? Because a tetrahedron is one of five Platonic solids (tetrahedron, hexahedron [more commonly known as a cube], octohedron, dodecahedron, icosahedron): it's a platonic form. It's the prototype for all tetrahedrons. Except I'm hoping that the next ones I make will be more perfect that this. My prototype/Platonic form is imperfect and rough. But it is still the first manifestation of the basic concept from which all the others will be built.

I will (hopefully) explain more about the Timaeus (A Platonic dialogue where these solids are mentioned) as I make more and expand/explore/refine.

Don’t tell me embroidery is relaxing.

“By the eighteenth century embroidery was beginning to signify a leisured, aristocratic life style — not working was becoming the hallmark of femininity.” (The Subversive Stitch, Rozsika Parker, 1984: 11)

Women’s work as an oxymoron: if women do it, it cannot be work. Women cannot work, so anything a woman does cannot be work. Therefore, embroidery, actually called ‘work’ by women, cannot be classified as work. It is instead, a leisure pursuit – assuming one is not paid for it. And one cannot be paid for it because it is not work, cannot be work if it is produced by an upperclass woman. To try and pay her for it – for her to try and sell it would be to undermine her husband’s fragile masculinity by implying he cannot support her. But all of this is to say nothing of the women who did do embroidery as work, as a living, who did sell their labour. 

I think this is one of the reasons I get irritated by people telling me it must be so relaxing to sew. I don’t find it relaxing. It is work. It is labour and it is my job. I don’t tell other people that their work, their job, the thing they do everyday must be ‘so relaxing’ because that would be an absurd assumption to make. Maybe they do find it relaxing. Or maybe they enjoy it, but don’t find it relaxing because actually it’s hard work and concentration. But it is not my place to assume these things, and of all the questions one could ask about another’s job, whether it is ‘relaxing’ is a strange place to start. What are people implying when they tell me I must find embroidery relaxing? That it’s easy? Unskilled? Requires no concentration? That it’s not work. 

Some people find embroidery relaxing because they do it as a hobby. They do it as a thing which is not their job. Just as some people take up wood-carving as a hobby. But do people tell the professional carpenter that their job must be relaxing because it is considered by others to be a hobby? 

Don’t tell me my job is relaxing. Don’t tell me my job isn’t work. 

Right and below the needle: 8 stitches in five different threads, all in the wrong place. -____________________-

If ONE MORE PERSON says “What if they’d medicated Van Gogh!?” I think I’m permitted to set things on fire.  If they’d medicated Van Gogh, he’d either have painted twice as much, or he’d have been happy and unproductive.  And you know what? Starry Night wasn’t worth a terrible price in human misery. It’s neat. It wasn’t worth it. Sometimes I wonder if being an artist makes me jaded to ART. Because it’s not magic and it’s not mystical, it’s just paint or pixels.  And it can do amazing things! But you don’t owe humanity to be miserable just so you can move paint around in interesting shapes. Jesus.  Art is not some kind of Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas bargain where you agree to be miserable so everybody can go “oh! Neat!” for 5 minutes.

Ursula Vernon, dropping the mic.  [x] (via magdaliny)

My literature classes didn’t help. My professors stressed the importance of approaching a text with detachment, with a critical gaze rather than an emotional one. There wasn’t a place in academia for gushing or ranting. There wasn’t room to simply say, “I loved this and I don’t know why.” One had to use academic jargon. One had to be methodical and thorough. It was like listening to a song and wanting so badly to get up and dance, but instead of dancing, you have to sit there and think about why those sounds made you want to dance and consider the exact mechanics behind the formula of a danceable song. And I didn’t want to fucking do that. I just wanted to dance. I just wanted to read. I just wanted to write. I didn’t want to deconstruct lines of poetry or do a close reading of Faulkner’s usage of semicolons.

Jenny Zhang, ‘The Quiet Importance of Angst-y Art’, Rookie (via tristrapedia)

As far as I’m concerned, counteracting this kind of limited approach is one of the primary goals of the para-academic. We need to understand and teach that understanding, appreciating and celebrating an emotional engagement with a text as a valid form of approaching a text, and one that enhances intellectual approaches to it.

Sometimes in my art I actively want to throw the intellectual engagement out, to say “no, not this time, not with this piece, come at this from a different angle, your degrees and grasp of theory aren’t the most fruitful approach here.” And that’s precisely because I’m so used to, and so tired of, seeing anything non-intellectual thrown out.

But in an ideal world we would just completely deconstruct this false, exclusive binary and accept that some people will favour one approach, some another, that for some people they can be combined with different levels of each approach present, and that none of these are intrinsically better or worse than the other, they’re just the approaches that we like best.