Draw a Line Somewhere
2012/13
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Soft drawing. Red felt, black quilting, yellow cotton. Approx. 3000mm x 3600mm x 10mm (h x w x d). Image 3 courtesy of artsdiary.co.nz
Draw a Line Somewhere is a soft-drawing celebrating the ordinary complexity of an every-person – softness, hardness, brightness, darkness, strength, and frailty compressed into one being. The form of the work is taken from a 1:1 drawing of a large shadow cast on the wall of my studio by a sculpture I was dismantling. At the time I made the drawing I was thinking about how to keep something (someone) with you after it’s physical presence is gone. In the idiom from which the work takes its title ‘the’ is replaced with ‘a’, rendering it open-ended rather than absolute.
In this work soft sculpture merges with characteristics of drawing. It is made from red felt and black quilting, materials evocative of childhood blankets and raincoats. The flat surface of these textiles act as a ground for lines created through cutting and stitching. Though it appears gestural, the work is the result of meticulous labour. It was stitched by hand(1), a process which took 200 hours.
I made the work during the final semester of my BFA. At the beginning of the semester my father suddenly became ill and was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. I decided I wanted to create something that was huge and portable(2), and would take months to complete. The time during my father’s illness oscillated between medical emergencies and periods of stillness and sleeping. I often stayed at my parents’ house, stitching whilst sitting with my dad. He passed away two weeks after I’d exhibited the piece at my degree show.
After being exhibited in the degree show at Elam School of Fine Arts, ‘Draw a Line Somewhere’ was shown at Sanderson Contemporary Art (both in Auckland, Aotearoa-New Zealand). Following this it was one of eight works selected from thousands of entries for the Aesthetica Art Prize (UK), exhibited in St Marys, York.
Notes:
(1) The cotton used to stitch the work is tennis-ball-)yellow in colour – a homage to my late-father who was a keen tennis player.
(2) I wanted to make something transportable that did not require a lot of decisions to be made during the process, so I could carry it around and work on it whether I was at my place, my parents place, or my studio at art school, and was able to carry on with it when my mental and emotional energy was otherwise occupied.