Things I'm Working On At The Moment: A Giant Hyperbolic Mass, In Super Bulky/chunky Yarn. This Is 12

Things I'm working on at the moment: a giant hyperbolic mass, in super bulky/chunky yarn. This is 12 balls in. (It takes about 40 minutes to get through one ball). And some geometric crochet - beginning with a simple series of Platonic Solids. Currently layering and layering fabric stiffener onto one triangle for the tetrahedron to see how many coats it's going to take to get a sturdy enough facet.

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. 

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.

Tagged: #this is a really sad p0st #because y0u have t0 have s0 much hate t0 take s0mething that is literally taught in anger management as a relaxati0n technique and make it n #0t relaxing #y0u kn0w the saying D0 what y0u l0ve and never w0rk a day in y0ur life #it apparently d0es n0t apply t0 this pers0n #n0r d0es hist0ry

Thanks for you expert insight into my psyche and all my hatred. No, I don’t make a “fucking fortune” from my job. I just don’t find it relaxing. I am allowed to not find it relaxing, because it is, unfortunately, not “literally relaxing”. If you find it relaxing: good for you! I never said you, or other people, couldn’t find it relaxing, but I am tired of people assuming that I must find it relaxing. I’m not telling you that you cannot find it relaxing, and all I ask is that other people don’t tell me that I should be finding it relaxing because it “literally is”.  Apparently this is too much to ask.

But here’s the thing: I don’t. I don’t find it relaxing. And I am very much allowed to not find it relaxing. And I will defend my right to experience embroidery as not relaxing. I shall sit here, obscenely sewing without finding it relaxing, defying science itself and the very ordering of the universe with my stubborn refusal to find my job relaxing. I shall lead the subversive revolution of people being allowed to enjoy things they don’t find relaxing, to do things they don’t find relaxing regardless of whether they enjoy it, and to get annoyed when other people tell us that we must find it relaxing. And presumably, with every non-relaxing stitch I sew, a puppy with die and a fairy will lose its wings. 

“I can’t make a living 0ff this and I actually d0 enj0y it.”

You are conflating “relaxing” and “enjoyment”, and then implying that I claimed I didn’t enjoy embroidery, and you even go so far as to later assert that I hate it. You are putting words in my mouth. “relaxing” and “enjoyment” are not the same thing and I never once claimed I didn’t enjoy embroidery. Other things I enjoy without finding relaxing: rollerskating, mountain climbing, writing academic articles, horror movies. 

“ I have n0 idea where y0u’re getting this n0ti0n that embr0dery wasn’t s0ld at high prices.”

Perhaps the reason you have no idea where I got that notion from is because that is not a notion I have, nor one that I expressed. But apart from the fact that that’s not actually a thing I said, the citation for the quote I was discussing is right there in the post. The Subversive Stitch, Rozsika Parker. 

The history of embroidery is long and complicated. When it was sold, it was sold at a high price. When. By the 18th Century it was seen by a large group of people as a leisure activity, something that women did to decorate their homes, NOT something they sold. These are the women I am talking about - I even acknowledge that this ignores other women: “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 have n0 idea h0w y0u t00k an activity specifically designed and scientifically proven to be relaxing…” (my emphasis)

Citation needed. 

“and made y0urself hate it”

Citation needed. 

The person reading hate into this is you. The person assuming I hate something that I never said I hated is you. I really don’t appreciate being so mis-represented, to have someone claim I said things I never said, and to even go so far as to make assumptions about my mental state and assert that I hate things without any evidence that that is in any way true. And to then imply I don’t know anything about history, or think that it doesn’t apply to me: It’s rude. It’s really, really, rude. 

Finally: There is a reason a whole range and variety of therapies and relaxation techniques exist: it is because different things work for different people. It is because there isn’t one universal thing that has been scientifically proven to work for everyone. And context is important. Sometimes I find cooking relaxing. Sometimes I don't. It's the differences between cooking for myself or my loved ones, cooking recipes I am familiar with or making it up as I go along, and knowing that it can take as long as it takes; and cooking to a deadline, having to strictly follow recipes I'm unfamiliar with for people I'm also unfamiliar with. Embroidery is my job and I still don't find it relaxing.

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. 

Writing a poem which you can’t read to anyone Is just like dancing in the dark.

Ovid, Epistulae ex Ponto IV.II.33-34 (via thoodleoo)

I wonder how important he thought it was that it actually be "read" in the literal sense. Would Ovid think that the stitched Iliad is like dancing in the dark? Or would he say "okay, poems that can't be seen or heard."

But I understand his pain: some people write poems or books or create art for themselves, or to express themselves and having expressed themselves, they don't care if they actually expressed themselves *to another* person or not. (Indeed, they might prefer it if they knew they hadn't). Other people do it to communicate: they do it to express themselves and they need or greatly desire that *someone* see/hear/feel what they did.

Some people see art as self-expression and as having value intrinsically as self-expression, some people see it as having value only insofar as it allows or succeeds as communication with another person: do you create art for yourself, or for others? (Of course one might argue that even if creating art to be understood by others, it's still ultimately being created *for* the artist, to satisfy their desire to communicate...)