I have been thinking about containers. What it means to contain.
Contain: to have or to hold; as in someone, or something. But contain also means to control or restrain, such as oneself, or a feeling. It can mean to accommodate, to carry, to have the literal, metaphorical or emotional space for a thing. To contain could be tied to safety, or belonging; to include or embrace. Or, it can mean to repress, suppress, stifle, subdue. Contain can mean to drown within oneself.
I am making some new work, work I believe will eventually be a family of multiple pieces. Each piece acting as a container. Containers of different definitions, containers with differing effects.
More on this as we go.
Last week I spent some time noticing recurring themes, in shape and color. The curves in the lines I’m quilting, and the arc of the rainbow in last week’s photograph. The colors of all the photos I took last week, blues and dirty pinks, and the colors of the materials I am sewing with now. Color has felt omnipresent and profoundly impactful to me over the last two years, and I am watching my relationship to it change and deepen, attempting to be open and noticing of it, everywhere. Color color color, such a dissembling experience. Color is a container! Color contains. It includes, embraces, and also represses. Subdues. Which reminds me: I should dedicate a post here to vermillion.
This week I am reading about Didion, and about art. I have become suddenly very interested in learning to make tiny baskets. I am looking forward to leaving home for a few days next week. I am talking to friends close and far about the deep struggles they’re facing — financial insecurity, health crises, relationship storms. I am doing my taxes, or at least thinking about doing my taxes. I am on the hunt for the palest, dirtiest lilac linen — your recommendations welcome. I am trying mightily to resist the siren song of acid yellow (too many irons already in the fire). I am writing here one day late, but I am grateful for this new practice, and for having kept it up thus far.
Our puppy houseguest has gone home, and so after two weeks away I am back this morning for the joyful ritual that I call “7am Studio Saturday.” I am eager to get to work and so this entry will be now both late and short. But there is so much to do, and I am feeling well enough to do it.