The Chronicle Project Artwork

24 hours. 1,440 minutes. Or 86,400 seconds.

The Chronicle Project challenged artists to document a single day in their lives and share it with the Art House Co Op community. I had to sign up and choose to create a visual record, describe a day in narrative form or depict my path as a chart or map and limit my focus to a single 24-hour span. Participants were asked to keep track of something specific, like every sound heard, or attempt to capture an overall impression of a day. The only restriction was that the work had to fold down to a size of 4" x 6". The Chronicle needed to be postmarked no later than May 15th and Art House Co Op will be staging an exhibition of the resulting chronicles in the Brooklyn Art Library, in order to collapse 1,000 unique days into one.

I am flying very close to the wire, I've spent the week planning work, writing applications and trying to make some time to make some work. It's now late in the day and tomorrow we're off to explore Derbyshire. I am supposed to be relaxed, I am supposed to have packed, I am the boring woman who keeps peering up from the computer to say "yep, nearly finished, I just have to do one more thing". This goes on for hours and by 3am there is no one awake but me and I'm just about running with regular infusions of liquorice tea. 

Work changes as you make it, I had planned to use arial views of four significant locations visited during my chronicled 24 hours but in the end I just used one from Kidsgrove as the visit there was the true heart of the day. The image below contains words, numbers and images which not only sum up the kind of 24 hours it had been but capture the feelings I'm having during the making process, Whirl being the most significant! I had intended to use this image to cover the whole of one side of the paper but then got myself in a stew about the toners sticking to each other and the image losing definition once folded. 

I then decided to make it smaller put it on one quarter of the page. Because the moon is hiding inside two of the images I went back to a diagram of Newtons Law and gravity as the pull of family is very strong. There are two diagrams and each has 12 small circular digital images representing an hour. These were taken from an earlier complete image called Love. I'm not totally satisfied with the paper or the surface, I would have preferred to output it on a watercolour paper, but time and ink supplies were against me. 

I do like it when it is folded. It's a bit like a coded diary that could be carried in a pocket, kept close and pondered about. I enjoy the scientific diagrammatic look as well. If you found it on a street, would you wonder what it meant? 

Because some parts are upside down when unfolded I sent two versions, one that reads the right way up when opened out. Friday morning packing bags, whirling round, trying to relax, artwork and applications in the post, me in the car and off to Derbyshire!

Day Five - Frantic Activity

On the final stretch now that the magnetic poetry stamps have arrived - although the words I wanted aren't all there, but  I did find two sets of alphabet stamps hidden away in 'safe places'. I wanted to use stamps because of their unpredictability and to make up for the fact that only I can really read my handwriting, especially when it is small.

 Halved envelopes become pockets to hold textile samples, 

 laminated pattern pieces and shift tags

 The tags have had more added to them

On the reverse there is a little postcard stamp in which I've written a thought, memory or observation :-

"The texture of the world is worth exploring"
"I am the ghost of winter and the promise of spring"
"I want to wear the landscape"

"I am trying to follow another direction"

"There are many doorways, paths, options"

"A day walking the canal side. Huge foxgloves"

The surface of the table and most of the dining room is now covered with the signs of my frantic activity and I keep having to remember to wash the ink off my fingers before touching anything else. The Postman has been especially welcome as I also received a wonderful surprise parcel from the amazingly talented Tara Badcock who I am hoping to meet in person some day! Best of all there is a real, hand written letter, so I'm taking a break now to read it!

Close to the Skin - Patterns & Petticoats - Snibston CPD

Apart from looking at the collections under my own steam and meeting with my Mentors Barber-Swindells, I was also able to select items from the Collections Resource Centre. I was keen to look at old shift patterns and the some of the petticoats that were supported by hoops or worn under / over the bottle cages. Sarah Nicol, Inspiring Collections Officer, Leicestershire County Council, Communities and Wellbeing was a wonderful guide through my chosen items and we had a wonderful time talking about the items she had brought to show me.

 

I was very taken with the layout instructions and have a feeling I'll be coming back to these in the near future, especially as I have a whole box of vintage Vogue patterns stashed away! As I don't have the figure for couture or faith in my pattern following abilities these elements these may just become part an image but there is something very tempting about these maps of the body.

I found the shapes, crumples and wrinkles fascinating and was very drawn to the colours an textures of the old cloth. There was something playful, joyful about the swing and swish these petticoats create when in motion. I was amazed at the many variations on a theme, I thought about the restriction, freedom and support these garments brought to the wearer and even though they had lost their crisp newness they still whispered of display and attraction, dance and drudgery.

It is hard to imagine just what this metal clasp 

must have felt like next to the skin

the metalwork and the rusting hoops were 

a strange reminder of the male and female.

There was also something very moving about the signs of wear and tear. The patches, darns and repairs encased beneath skirts, the bottle cages, bustles and padding all hidden extensions of the body. Shape shifters.

Then there was the surprising, joyous red flannel, offering protection from the cold but it was also believed that the colour itself offered protection from disease and could be used to draw out inflammation.

 

It is quite bewildering to think about the amount of time it must have taken to dress and curious that many items of clothing were either there to enhance shape or protect the fabric from the body.

I was only able to make the visit to view my chosen items two days before my proposal was due to be completed and I had to write something to send to Claire and Steve the day before this visit was to take place. I didn't feel ready, nothing was flowing and to compound my anxiety, my partner took a tumble down the stairs and had to be rushed to A&E. Thankfully he hadn't broken his shoulder, just partially dislocated it, but seeing him lying in a grey, forlorn heap at the foot of the stairs did fracture my powers of thought! Whilst trying to get my thoughts in order, I felt compelled to experiment with the notions of soft (wadding, fabric) and hard (machine stitches) as a way of sorting out the jumble of seams, shifts and pattern pieces living in my head! 

I enjoyed the raw edges and the flyaway threads, but I think Claire and Steve were a bit bemused by my strange samples and having seen their meticulous work, I'm not surprised!

However there are just some times when it's important  to follow your own processes and ways of working, these samples are fragments of thought, beginnings not finished ideas.