Seeing takes time...

Continuing along with the idea of reality being an unconscious assemblage of things known and things imagined, I wanted to intentionally try to deconstruct an image into pieces, reinterpret the smaller bits, and see how my mind reacts to the reconstructed image...will I still see it as before, or will it be transformed into something new?

I've chosen an image of a poppy that I took in my garden earlier this year. I feel a special affinity for poppies, an affinity grown from roots deep in my childhood, planted when Dorothy, after a long and difficult journey, saw the Emerald City "closer and prettier than ever", but had to first pass through the deceptively beautiful and deadly field of poppies before finally reaching it.

That Georgia O'Keefe choose the poppy as one of her floral subjects drew me to her, and my photo of my poppy is reminiscent of O'Keefe's paintings. O'Keefe felt that art should not capture photographic realism, but should express the artist's personal ideas and feelings. She is quoted, "Nobody sees a flower, really - it is so small - we haven't time, and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time".

So, I have endeavored to take my poppy and look at it closely, but by division, not dissection. I had hoped to disassociate my mind from the vision of leaf and petal, and reduce the image to shapes of light and dark colors fitted together. I am hoping to capture these shapes in a sort of non-literal translation, to see what my mind will make of the reassembled, reinterpreted pieces.

I began the work by dividing the picture into nine equal pieces. I am new to the techniques of embroidery and beading, and have felt this lack of stitching expertise in previous projects, and so I have thought this project, as conceived, would be well-suited executed as a sampler, in which I could learn new embroidery stitches. Having the goal of practicing stitches would help disconnect my mind from trying to literally represent petals and leaf.

At present, I have cut nine squares of cotton material, one for each of the nine sections of the photo of my poppy. In the photo below, I show a sample piece of fabric, which I have painted prior to stitching.

Novena, A Self-Portrait and Tree of Life

Completed Novena and Tree of Life. They're really much prettier and more striking than they appear in the photo, I think it's the reflection of light off the white silk background that makes them so hard to photograph. Although there are a couple of technical issues that I'm chalking up to "live and learn", I'm satisfied with the finished result. Here is a photo of them installed:



I rather like how the light from the window illuminates them. The Snow Angel flies in the heavens, above the trees, and she reminds me of the peaceful quiet that only a cold, heavy snow in the dead of winter brings, a quite period of hibernation and rest that precedes the new life of spring.