Symbols that Breathe-Going deeper into Episode Two of The Magic Hour
An exploration of materials as talismans
It began as an obsession in my teenage years in art school- I simply did not want to gesso my canvas. I would spend 45 minutes or so stretching cream colored canvas on sturdy wooden stretcher bars, but found myself more enamored with the texture and process than what I was supposed to ultimately do with it. As a student in the painting and drawing department, this wasn’t exactly the way things were supposed to go.
When I say obsession, I really mean it. I absolutely loved carrying around my canvases when they were just fabric and not painted on. They comforted me. I would gaze at them lovingly. It only made sense to dive deeper and figure out how to understand and use that obsession, and I gradually did. I started drawing on the fabric with markers, and hot gluing shapes onto the raw cloth. Soon, my communion with the shores and islands of Ireland began to take hold, and I started to realize that the designs and patterns I would doodle on notebooks belonged in this cream colored world, and that they were from beneath the islands of Ireland, where I fell in love with the land on a school painting summer trip. I returned to that island many times over the course of two years, and the creatures, energy, and magic of that place settled into my subconscious.
I consider these pieces a gift from the sea, from the land, from the animals there, and I consider what I have written above to be my own mythic origin story. I never knew I needed a mythic origin story. Do you have one?
In Episode Two of the Magic Hour Dreamcast, Rudo and I talk about art movements, and dive deep into two artists who have moved us. I spoke about Joseph Beuys, and his creation of a myth for himself. Within that myth he assigned mystical objects/materials infused with meaning. For him, whether it was true or not, Joseph Beuys identified Fat and Felt (among other things) as important talismans meant to channel stories that run through our daily existence and within society, claiming that he had an experience with them which literally saved his life in a plane crash.
I realized upon reflecting on Beuys that for me, canvas was my mystical talisman in the tunnel halls of art school. It was an oasis, a quiet moment in the chaos of OCD, of PTSD, of challenging hurdles that come with growing up. It was essential that I listen to that seemingly strange obsession, telling me not to paint over that glow.
Now, I use flannel. A similar tone, a softer texture. With more intention and understanding of what I have been doing all these years, the flannel has become a shapeshifted version of its more rough cousin. Alchemy in plain sight.
An animist myself, I feel the life in all things. If I pay attention some communication is meant for me, for where I am now. Fabric and swirling contained patterns have been medicine for me, a way to feel safer in a world that has rarely felt safe.
A powerful force these symbols are, and I proudly align myself with a new version of the symbolist art movement, a manifesto forming in my mind. To take back the life around us and relearn the meaning of being a part of somewhere, not isolated from it.
I consider all the the time how absolutely enchanting this romance with fabric has been, its healing properties, its subtle nuance. Every time I cut through the soft threads, draw delicately in just the right way on the weaving and wefting of the woven tapestry, every time I stitch lights within its core, I learn something new about patience, self reliance, inner ground. I am not using any of these materials in the way they were meant to be used. With that knowledge I feel a kind of liberation, my own language, my own voice.
Without the collective consciousness creating a flow of visual expression, spanning generations of human exploration and evolution, I would not be in the timeline as I exist now, finding voice and presence within sacred moments in time. Who knew something soft and simple could rescue my hands, my jangled and traumatized nerves.
Thank you to these artists who came before me,
I am enchanted by your voices.
