Originally posted to @thenewartgallerywalsall Instagram page
As well as my relationship to home, another important theme developing in my work is time. The repetitive, slow activity and the resulting collections of granny squares became a physical representation of my time spent. Time spent not only making, but reflecting, remembering, grieving, and healing. The growing stacks of crocheted yarn becoming not just pieces of textiles, but a physical token of real time.
Using your hands to make is inherently slow, as is learning a new skill. But the part I am relishing is the process of getting there. David Gauntlett describes it as 'the satisfaction of making sense of being alive'. Which, as I sit staring into Dad's photographs pondering loss and life, is fitting.
Distracted by this process and the accompanying reflections, it was an appropriately slow realisation for me to recognise the significance of the colours I was working with. Once I'd learnt to crochet, I started buying and collecting more and more yarn to pursue my fixation. Throughout this spree, I found myself seeking out rusty, dusty, earthy colours. Lots of deep reds, oranges, leafy greens with soft pops of mustard. These were colours that felt comforting to me and that I wanted to physically wrap myself in. I didn't realise until some time later that these were the same colours as those repeating themselves in my dad's grainy pictures of home.
So my next thought was to question how I could refine this relationship further. The commercial yarn I was obsessively buying was lovely, but it was fixed; I couldn't alter it's existing state. What if I were to go further back into the life-cycle of yarn though? Pre-yarn yarn. Natural, naked, woollen fibres; a clean slate for me to paint my colours into and spin together, forming bespoke bobbins of photographic yarn.
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