RECAP: PLAY + WRITE + MIX WORKSHOPS
October 12, 2014, Zona del Sol, Santa Fe, NM
by Bridget Green
Ten women graced the sunny table in the front room of Yarn and Coffee. We each arrived with our own thoughts, ranging from chaotic to calm, our own stories from the morning and years of mornings, and our own vision of what each of us might stitch into “Ordinary Cloth.”
With Stella Reed’s lead, we sent pens sailing and scrawling across the page in open response to single word prompts, from body parts to universal themes. What is the eye, the mouth, or loneliness, really? The group shared selected phrases, while keeping the bold shapes of other words and stanzas mollified by the page. We shifted like this time and again, from solitary moments of reflection and sculpting words to spoken moments, listening. Metaphors brought distinction to more nebulous thoughts, like a child capturing a monster by painting its portrait.
October 12, 2014, Zona del Sol, Santa Fe, NM
by Bridget Green
Ten women graced the sunny table in the front room of Yarn and Coffee. We each arrived with our own thoughts, ranging from chaotic to calm, our own stories from the morning and years of mornings, and our own vision of what each of us might stitch into “Ordinary Cloth.”
With Stella Reed’s lead, we sent pens sailing and scrawling across the page in open response to single word prompts, from body parts to universal themes. What is the eye, the mouth, or loneliness, really? The group shared selected phrases, while keeping the bold shapes of other words and stanzas mollified by the page. We shifted like this time and again, from solitary moments of reflection and sculpting words to spoken moments, listening. Metaphors brought distinction to more nebulous thoughts, like a child capturing a monster by painting its portrait.
Messages created for family members were subjected to dictionary translations that flung the counsel to the winds of alphabetic fate. Some of us cheated wildly as we skipped clusters of words away from our original text to find substitutions, creating a mishmash of plays on words we wouldn’t have been capable of doing intentionally. The coding practice reflected times in women’s lives when it’s deemed appropriate to hold the pillowcase up to shield our plans, to hold the book close to the chest, to keep secrets safe.
We arranged works, one word, one phrase and perhaps another to put in writing on cloth. We stretched ourselves on paper to invite our imaginations to play.
Stories poked through like bright colors of embroidery thread and created lines both raw and refined upon which to connect. When participants were each following threads of their artistic plan, thinking half-stolen by action opened up to associations. Free commentaries soon sprang out from behind the coyote fence of formality. Good fences make good framework for collaboration.
We arranged works, one word, one phrase and perhaps another to put in writing on cloth. We stretched ourselves on paper to invite our imaginations to play.
Stories poked through like bright colors of embroidery thread and created lines both raw and refined upon which to connect. When participants were each following threads of their artistic plan, thinking half-stolen by action opened up to associations. Free commentaries soon sprang out from behind the coyote fence of formality. Good fences make good framework for collaboration.
In our daily lives we do what we need to do, whether we skip five nouns away from what we aim to say or not, as in coding messages, or whether we forego eroding our topics with prattling paths, instead selecting a single word or phrase to encapsulate thoughts, as when curating pieces for the cloth. In a workshop such as this, we as artists, daughters, mothers, captives, clowns, lovers, readers, healers, friends, and teachers, craft as we choose.
images - Edie Tsong, Stella Reed
images - Edie Tsong, Stella Reed
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