How does making help us develop thinking?
How does re-making help us develop re-thinking? 
These little bundles started out over 3 years ago. See here.
Each bundle is wrapped five times.
dyed cloth
embroidery threads
wool yarn
cheesecloth
red cotton thread
They seem to have reached a resting place.
Maybe they are finished.
Maybe they will continue to evolve.
Like me.
15 comments:
sad, little shrouded figures on a hillside, anonymous, boxed but carefully and transported with with no names--is this unmaking other's memories, or remaking theirs or mine?
The bundles look prepared for a journey, all lined up and waiting for the box. To what distant place will they travel? It's anyone's guess. Lovely Judy!
accumulation
repetition
wrapping
twigs of hemlock are the CORE
memory
protection
nurturing
mortality
ongoing change
concerns about our collective future
keeping safe my secret self
something so intimate in this gathering of bundles, the gathering of years of attention, and something loving too.
deep magic is evoked here Judy
one word only comes to mind when looking at this
YES
I find that the process of wrapping is healing. Inside each of the seventy four bundles that comprise this piece are four hemlock twigs collected and wrapped in 2011. I chose that number because I have four children, now grown up.
When the needles started to fall off I over wrapped those bundles with a thick wool yarn. Then, most recently I re-wrapped them for a third time, this time with cheese cloth and red cotton thread. The gentle manipulation of the cloth and threads to make tidy figures gave me a sense of inner happiness. Perhaps these little bundles are about the process of living day by day while still managing to keep my sensitive inner self intact. Perhaps they are about mourning the many victims in the daily news from natural disasters, pandemics, terrorism, or war. Probably they are about both these things
I look forward to being a witness to their evolution... And yours.. X
... and there, I am wondering .... are these bundles, so carefully nurtured, ever to be unwrapped ?
Why 74 ? Why not just 4 ? Curiosity killed the cat, I know ;)
ahh, i wondered what had become of your wrapped pieces. nicely done, and you've invited me to think. i love that.
your art seems to be evolving into some sort of performance art.
Answers for connections:
There are 74 bundles because I used up all the twigs gathered way back in 2011. There were enough for 74 - and that was all. I used everything I had.
There are more than 4 because this is not just a personal motherly protection story...it's universal. For all mothers and how they feel about their children.
I am not sure if they will be unwrapped at some stage. I am not sure if they will be wrapped again in future, with something different.
I think it is OK not to know and make my way without a map.
And Jude, your comment about my work becoming more like performance might be true. But I don't see myself as performing in front of an audience...I am just trying to make my thoughts into concrete objects that show how I think and how I react to what happens.
What can I make that shows how I feel?
I think this is important, sacred action
We dont value often our need to concretize these flashes of knowing enough.
Namaste.
Judy, you know I absolutely love your work but my reaction to your wrappings is disturbing. I have seen them before in past blogs and they remind me of death. Mummifying maybe...and to see them all laid out on the ground and then the little 'coffin' in the last shot. I don't like looking at it. It is very interesting to read others' comments including your own because they are so different from what I feel.
Sandra
Your reaction to these bundles is right on.
When I started them and laid them out outside the first time, even with the twig foliage sticking out all over, when laid in a row on the ice, they looked like the remains of humans lined up after some disaster.
They still look like that.
It's interesting for me that I need to keep working on them, not only these, but other bundles too. The reason I keep doing it is more for the feelings of safety that the process gives to me, the maker.
Thank you for your honesty and bringing your feelings of dread and fear into the conversation.
I appreciate it.
x
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