29 Aug Searching the remains for connections
” I would open my heart and carry it in my hand so that others may know also; for there is no deeper desire than the desire of being revealed. We all want that little light in us to be taken from under the bushel. The first poet must have suffered much when the cave-dwellers laughed at his mad words. He would have given his bow and arrows and lion skin, everything he possessed, just to have his fellow-men know the delight and the passion which the sunset had created in his soul. And yet, is it not this mystic pain — the pain of not being known — that gives birth to art and artists? “
Kahlil Gibran wrote this. As I spent the last 2 months scratching about my year 1 work trying to ‘make visible the the connections’, this resonates.
The work IS about the pain of not being known. Searching and building an identity through art has been my life work. Mapping self in a space. The archetype of the Labyrinth is, has become a direct experience. A symbol that creates a sacred space and place. Walking it, a metaphor for lifes journey.
Forming self through materials. Weaving historical and personal threads to things, potentially keeping them safe, and still. This is my ritual of making. I like unpredictable outcomes, work takes on its own life and it informs and influences practice.
Viewer experience is essential to complete the artwork through interaction. This is what is missing. And the year 2 emphasis will be on closing this loop.
Holding firm on Ariadne’s thread. *
*Ariadne’s thread, named for the legend of Ariadne, is the solving of a problem with multiple apparent means of proceeding – such as a physical maze, a logic puzzle, or an ethical dilemma – through an exhaustive application of logic to all available routes.