At the conclusion of the second Zoom meeting when we were in lockdown level one, I asked folk to respond to questions about stress/anxiety. Overwhelmingly the colours associated were red and black, a rogue vomit brown, navy and mustard appeared also. Tentacles and lumpy masses featured in shape descriptions and the effects were felt in the column from top of head to low in the bowels. In some descriptions it was as if a being had invaded the body, receding then representing at unexpected moments. As a result of this exercise after lockdown I purchased dyes and began working with colours associated with inner turmoil, red and black. The change in energy given off by an object according to colour is not to be underestimated!
Two weeks ago, six of us had a Zoom push/pull meeting with Renee Bevan. She gave each of us time and considered critique. We spoke to each other’s work which lent an extra dynamic. I found it both confronting and revealing. It is always surprising when you become so locked into an idea that you forget other’s perceptions can be completely different, that is the power of being part of a group like this. For me making work has not been a panacea during lockdown, the reverse was true and so I have emerged blinking into the light of Handshake feeling I have lost time but also guilty about not using that time. It was a truly liminal space.
Recently I spent an hour with my mentor Iris Eichenberg via Zoom. She has an uncanny knack of stripping back the layers of not only one’s making but one’s thinking and requiring you to dig deeper into the way you view yourself, the environment you create for yourself in your thinking. She has recognised ways I work and things I avoid or simply do not see. I have been set a series of tasks that will ultimately give me a ‘dictionary’ of sorts to help me clarify what it is I am trying to understand and how my making unveils this to myself and others.
I think I need a paradigm shift in thinking.
My journey is with knots, of many kinds but ultimately those that are metaphors for our bodily and emotional knots. The magic of intent tied into the knot made by a witch that is released when the knot is undone, knots that bind, twists and turns that create an anxious convoluted spiral of tension, knots that form in confusion. It is understanding what it is that creates the knot and the energies engaged around tying/untying of many kinds of materials that I need to explore in the next few weeks. Another meeting with Iris is scheduled in a couple of weeks.