Good news and even more completed work

9.29 in the morning by Gillian Cooper

Please don’t collapse, but after last year’s almost complete lack of finished work apart from PomPoms, this year I’m on a bit of a roll and here is yet another!

 

9.29 in the morning (detail) by Gillian Cooper

I’m really pleased with this piece of work for a number of reasons.  Firstly, because I almost gave up on it, but didn’t.  It felt like it was taking way too long and that it just wasn’t going to work.  This was partly due to the (very) slow production process.  I only have one silk screen and it covers any area roughly 30cm square at a time.  I had to get the pattern onto the screen, wait for it to dry, then print the fabric, wash the screen, wait for it to dry and then set off again.  Oh and fabric generally needed to be printed twice.  The stitching didn’t take too long, but whilst I was doing it, all I could see was the blue fabric: it was a piece that only came together at the very end: after the squares were sewn together and the orange and other wool tops added.  So I almost stopped.  However, with a little gentle encouragement from R (and some childcare too!), I finished it in time to enter it for the SAQA juried exhibition ‘Redirecting the Ordinary’.  Having had a number of rejections the week before I entered, I didn’t hold out much hope – you seem to get into a pattern of them for a while.  I know that rejections are all part of being an artist, but it isn’t always an easy part, especially when you seem to get nothing else...  But guess what?  To my amazement, it was accepted and will be jetting off to America in the summer to go touring with the exhibition.  I’m really chuffed and waited to tell you until I got these lovely photos of it that Alan took last week.

9.29 in the morning (detail) by Gillian Cooper

It’s surprising how much better you feel after an acceptance, especially as the sun is now shining and the daffodils are out!