We all face bravery in different ways.
It isn’t always a visible show of courage
oftentimes nobody else knows quite how much it took
We all develop our ways of stepping forward, facing up.
Bright, bold, audacious.
Then what?
Then you have no choice, you gotta jump:
This week, in my little way, I faced a bravery. And I dived in to a new phase. And it’s gonna be BIG
‘Odoodem’
The idea for the final design was really concreted by a trip to the Tate Britain where I saw Leon Underwood’s Totem to the Artist. The word Totem is derived from the Algonquian word Odoodem, meaning kinship group.
The idea behind this art installation is to celebrate the mutual support and sense of kinship that develops in the National Spinal Injury Centre, between the hospital staff, therapists, patients and their families through each person’s stay in the unit.
I also want to weave together themes that are integral to the work carried out here at the centre: perseverance and determination to overcome and adjust to changed lifestyle and self-identity.
In the main foyer/waiting area there’s this brickwork column, the central support, the ‘spine’ of the building, this is where the 16 portraits will hang. Each of the collaged portraits is of someone with an inspiring story of extraordinary accomplishment living with a spinal injury. The way the portraits are displayed is intended to echo the appearance of a totem pole, which in turn echoes the appearance of a spine, a central support. And a seamlessly circular metaphor. (I like that kind best).
The images are made from hand-cut layers of silk screen prints which in turn were over-painted with repeating abstract patterns to emulate the carved designs of a traditional totem pole, and also symbolise the patience and determination required for the repetition involved physio and occupational therapies.
more photos to follow…
Following on from the More Than The Sum posts. Y’know what? this week I finally completed the project! 18 months since the initial brief, the planning, the researching, the thinking and playing began. 16 collaged portraits which will be hanging in their final home tomorrow.
Almost all art has at least one metaphor. Sometimes it’s a visual message, daft or clever, subtle or blatant. And often times it’s something that shows itself in the creative process.
This piece was always going to be heavy on the metaphor. It’s to be displayed in the reception area of the National Spinal Injury Centre at Stoke Mandeville hospital, so it will be seen by hospital staff, the patients, their families, friends and dear ones. It’ll become part of the back drop to a range of emotion – shock, fear, interminable waiting, hope, intensity, perseverance, dedication, and so much more. Purpose-wise, top level: it’s bright, colourful, and a visual distraction. Close up their road-map qualities show up and the faces almost disappear. They might be a place to get lost in for a while.
But the meaning goes deeper than that.
As you know, the collages are made from intricate screen print/drawings which was the first of the metaphors – the repeating patterns, the tiny detail – the repeated exercises of physio and occupation therapies, the gradual steps toward more independence. The incredible patience and strength of character this demands from all involved. Layer on layer of print and drawing – day after week after month of incremental progress in recovery.
The metaphor that shows up in the process: How life is so contradictory sometimes.
Wouldn’t you think you’d see something better close up. You would, though, wouldn’t you?
….apart from when looking too closely at something makes it vanish. From a distance: there it is. No doubt. Get closer and it fades out of sight. WTF? Really? Yes. Something like not being able to see the wood for the trees… perhaps.
These are some of the metaphors. Tomorrow I’ll show you the completed work, and describe the rest of the message.
manifesto ~ manifest ~ manifestation
What do I want to manifest this year? I forget now where the idea came from, but I was mulling over these words….Yes, I’m still inhabiting that whole new year, new, newy nonsense. Excuse me if it’s beginning to grate. It will wear off (perhaps) ………….. but y’know I started out 2015 with some fairly specific wants which (and this might be why I’m perpetuating the thing) are panning out pretty well so far.
Targetted, focussed, my most defined wish was to deadlift (at least) 60kg, I was doing 30kg at the end of December. This week I did 40kg. The goal posts are closer than I reckoned on. For context, at the start of October 2014 I laughed at the suggestion of doing weights. ‘I’m not sporty, I just want to be a bit stronger, and bit less, y’know… wobbly and pathetic, maybe tone up a little…’ whilst firmly fixed in my head was the knowledge that lifting weights is a thing that other people do.
And then I tried.
And then I switched over to being one of those other people.
Some amount of sweat, aches and grim determination later, I’ve progressed from someone who lifts the tiniest weights available, a bit more each time.
I’m just using this by way of illustration.
Doing something in one area of life can open the mind in all the others.
This is a lesson I learnt in art school: Separating not being able to do something from not having done that something before.
Or not being good at it, to being not good at it yet.
The same thing, but from a very slightly changed viewpoint, is not exactly the same. Subtle distinctions. Nuances.
I LOVE nuances.
So I set about listing (the power of the written word) the essence of my intentions and what I want to manifest.
My manifesto for 2015:
Then as an aside……..
I read an article recently, it was along the lines of how the physical act of writing something embues it with a power, seeing those words written in your own handwriting reinforces something at a very primal level, it is exclusively connected to the writer. Darn it I wish I remebered where this was so I could link you. But, in the small search I made for it, I found this instead. If you have any interest in the whole manifestary musings, take a mo to see this.
So my manifesto is embedded in my psyche, and sits on the opposing page to my vision board/bagua map. As I close the book they smoosh up against each other, and can embue each other with magic as the book rests. Meanwhile, watch this space for future manifestations!
Welcome to part next of the weekly unfolding of my year…
I was reading this week about Vision Boards. As my MO in life is heavily weighted toward visual inputs I leapt at this new (to me) strategy. In the words of my inner kid: Squeee I wanna make me a Vision Board!
If you’re intrigued, this is where I started out, and I can’t imagine there’s a better place. Jean Van’t Hul’s Artful Parent site is just brimming with all you could want to set you off, and then a list of books and resources to take you on from there.
I especially liked the way Jean sets out her Vision Board as a bagua map. This is a 3 x 3 grid dividing a physical space into sections representing different aspects of life. It’s origin is in feng shui, but it’s been adopted as a tool in various fields of personal development, self care, life training, newage wishy-washery, right across the board to even include more down-to-earth folks like me (ha!).
So this is the layout, the skeleton of the Vision Board, on which to hang wishes, dreams, intentions, ideas, metaphors and so forth. Jean uses magazine snippings – images and text that inspire and illustrate.
Off on a tangent here – I really love the way an act of creativity shows up so many metaphors for life, cos right off my brain is spinning out: I don’t need all those categories… some just don’t apply and some can be lumped together. (Follow that to it’s natural conclusion and yes, my bagua is just one box with a confused, homogenised version of me sat in the middle, puzzled and pissed off with the whole business. Ok, so I’ll go with the boxes…. But I wouldn’t choose those colours. So, which colours would I choose? where do I find the pictures that are the right colours for each box? or do I find B&W pics that I can colour? or should I do it all in photoshop and fuck it, I can have a digital one as a screen saver instead… <some more time passes>. FFS, brain, take what you’ve got. You can’t afford to dwell on all this not-knowing when there’s a thing to be done. Get on with it!
Life lesson: Just get on and do it. I was pretty certain in the early stages I wouldn’t know what I wanted in each box, or how I was going to set about acheiving it. Also, as it was the thing I wanted in this week’s page, and that’s a fairly rigid time limit, if it spills beyond its alotted time the whole thing will unravel and fall down the rabbit-hole of what am I doing, where am I going and a great big enormous whole what’sthepointofitall. And that’s a place I avoid at all costs.
So I left that part of my brain running round with all the I don’t know what’s going to happen while the rest of me got down to drawing the boxes, writing the words, colouring the colours, and accepting it will probably turn into something, even if I don’t know what (yet).
And, as suspected, it did.
I’ve come to find, if you let go of the wanting to know, the what it is will show up. And often in a surprisingly pleasing fashion.
The words and phrases defining the grid were down: ‘Power, Abundance’, ‘Health, Well-being’, ‘Career, Work’
Curously, just the act of writing these out – and once I let them settle – they began to spawn new words and phrases. Ones I’d already been playing with in the quest to find my Word for the Year, words that encourage possibility. Some of them cropped up again and again (Relax, Nurture, Nourish, Enjoy, Strengthen, Develop…). And magically the crossing over of categories adjusted from the chaotic blur as I had previously seen it as, into a self-supporting web.
They say you have to crack eggs to make an omlette.
Right now I’m more than a bit absorbed in strategizing, selecting which eggs to crack next.
TBH, it’s gonna get a bit eggy around here, for a little while.
But my metaphorocal omlette will be delicious, not least cos it’ll provide space for me to create, that is in every way, a very big improvement on this:
This is my not-very-big bit of floor in the loft room. Ankle deep at the shallows, its main benefits are better light than the rest of the house and the radiator immediately behind where I sit! 😉
I’m still dropping by as often as I can to catch up on your doings and makings, for the invaulable inspiration you put out there, and cos you guys make me smile like a fool (quite a lot). Just I might not have so much time for posting as I’d like.
Wish me luck, folks! X
I love metaphors.
In my world knowledge presents itself as a corrridor full of doors.
Some are locked,
Some seemingly lead nowhere.
Keep on moving, keep trying the doors.
Many lead to another corridor. All these corridors are full of doors.
But gotta keep trying…
Today’s door opened to everything there is to photography beyond low-level point-shoot-n-hope set on auto. Totally loving college!
As one day merges into another, so the theme of a page drifts through those either side. I’ve noticed this more and more as the book goes on.
(Starting in mid March I’ve probably only got about a week’s worth of pages to go. Three months have flewn!)
The past week I’ve been more than a bit preoccupied with paper cut outs. I’ve been using up some of the dyed paper
Repeating shapes unite the pages. Contrasting colors separate them.
Layers on layers, lifting edges, like leaves.
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