Our year long project for 2012 has been BOYD – Bring Out Your Dead; a challenge to “fix” pieces that other members have deemed dead. I love this! I resisted at first. I looked at some of the dead and heartily agreed they should stay dead, but on closer inspection I could see that these sad, rejected poppits had a place in our ongoing quality discussion. What struck me was that most of these Boyds were extremely well made pieces of felt; fully fulled, strong, durable and some really good shapes but what made their owners abandon them to a dark shameful corner of their studios?
Mmmm. I pondered this for a while and through a wonderful instance of serendipity I came across a really insightful statement about our creative processes (see image below). Although aimed at beginners in any creative field it is also appropriate for us “old hands”. Sometimes what we have in our heads does not match what we produce, this isn’t always a bad thing, sometimes we create what we should have created despite what’s in our heads. But (there’s always a but) sometimes this preconceived idea of what it should have been, clouds our perspective of what it became. It’s not how I wanted it so it’s going in the cupboard! We are all guilty of this. I have a box of them.
Over the next couple of posts I will talk more of my process to revive the dead.
- Why didn’t someone tell me?
