Louise Bourgeois kept an extraordinary body of notes and diaries that interweave with her artwork.
Her diary embodied her relationship with the unknown
"like a lake that one knows but very little" LB
"I am passionately going somewhere, but I'm not sure where" LB
She focuses on the concept of reparation.
She repaired antique tapestries in her youth.
As an adult, she needed to repair her inner world.
The process of reparation entails finding internal 'parents' to contain and detoxify the anxiety she was feeling, and return it to the inner child in a way that it could be understood and thought about.
This "container/contained" is Louise's artwork.
She said that
art is a guaranty of sanity many times. See
here, here, and
here for examples.
Art is a guaranty of sanity "not because troubles are cast away,
but because we learn to stand more" she wrote in her journal.
"Pins are weapons" Louise said, "but needles are tools of reparation".
Images in this post are of a worn out whole cloth quilt (white cotton with blue thread)
that has been repaired. I'm not sure if it's finished but I am folding it up for a while.
The text is from
an essay I read the other day about Louise Bourgeois in
this book.
4 comments:
To mend this quilt, full of worn areas and holes, the cotton batting bunched into hard separated lumps and falling out....I sewed a layer of wool batting to one side of it, and then layered on some pieces of rayon and silk that had been dyed with avocodo and sumac drupes. These pieces of cloth were also reverse appliqued with a central circle and were basted on.
Then I quilted through all the layers from the white side with thread that had been dyed to match the pinkish fabrics. I usually have much denser stitching than what is here, but not in such a distinct pattern. The edges were finished by folding the silk and rayon fabrics right at the edges of the old quilt, and then whip stitching shut.
I am not sure whether I will add some further patching on the white side . I am not sure which way is UP on the pink side.
But I do feel much better having worked on fixing this wrecked piece.
xo
I must start reading her journals Judy
a big part of growing up is healing, for me at least, art has always helped me
Thank you, dear friend, how lovely.
i am writing a book about repairs of relationships, your remarks are so inspiring, dear Judy.
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