I’ll share here some drawings (lets call them drawings) that I’ve made over the last few years by cutting works on paper into strips and re-weaving them into surfaces.
It is difficult for me to admit it, but I really don’t know what these are. They are like drawings (and some are a bit closer to paintings), and they are like weavings, or fabrics.
The impulse to make these pieces might be described as compulsion as much as decision. Questions are starting to arise from this – about what I am doing and where I am going with these processes.
A book called ‘Lines’ by Tim Ingold has been helpful. He talks about the distinctions between traces and threads, both of which can be “drawn” in lines.
It seems to me that much of our structuring of the world, and of our thoughts, movements and categories, traces back to concrete movements of hands making. So for example, thinking about writing – if we look at the relatives of the word “text”, we find textiles and tissues and woven things. Weaving: the process of creating surfaces from threads. Other words that seem important to mention are “writing” (to do with scratching or cutting movements) and “drawing” (to do with pulling). As well as “perception”, which has its roots in “grasping”, also an action of the hands.
I don’t know where this takes me (yet), and I don’t even have my questions formulated. I know that I want to make more of these or things like these, but I also feel like the time has come to more carefully understand the powers that I am invoking in these kinds of making.
sian barlow 