weave IV

Between making these in August and posting them now I neglected to mention the meditations on process discovered.
The process was less about creating cloth, but rather drawings created with physical lines. Slow slow work to draw this way. Organization of the line slowed by the process to lock it to the ones before it.
The linen line satisfyingly uneven on its own, a hard thin twist followed by a soft thick one , transforms even more as it is laid in, tightened or loosened according to friction, pressure, speed.
Drawn through. The looser weft, relinquished to the tight warp, ever undulating.
Woven. Sculptural drawings or drawn sculptures.

This last one examines disregards a straight grid.
The Agnes Martin paintings I'd seen at the Dia Beacon few years ago kept surfacing in my mind. Those subtle lines perfect in imperfection. A shame pictures don't really capture them well, though perhaps it's good I am distanced from them for the time being.

glass bird

old sketches. . .
My friend found this unfortunate little bird underneath a glass bridge; he had flown into it.
These little drawings developed from the first. From flight to two to fish.

graphite, gesso watercolor, transfers

Rusulka

(re)calling, graphite and gesso, 15" x 6"

This past weekend I heard a radio program that touched me very deeply. The segment was about a Ukrainian songcatcher who records the stories women tell her through song. Some of the songs can be very old or the singers may tell their own personal stories into song weaving in metaphor, myth, and magic to relate the depth of their feelings. The periods of singing could last for hours and hours. Over time some of the spirits that dwell within the culture were sung about, one kind were the domovi house spirits, and another being the Rusalka, the spirits of women who died unjustly or very young, perhaps, unmarried women, women who died in childbirth or drowned. They are sort of nature spirits which can be benevolent or malicious, and one week a year women conduct rituals to appease the rusalki and to avoid natural disasters. Part of the week includes visiting the graves of family members and singing songs to them giving news of the present and and reminiscing about the past. Each woman in the procession has her own melody so the sound becomes a crowd of individual stories some filled with the poignant new grief of recent loss, or occasionally with the bitter words of a widow married to a long dead abusive husband.

As the Ukraine modernizes and the new generation turns to the radio for it's music, this practice is swiftly disappearing. It doesn't help that some of the some of the women interviewed were survivors of Chernobyl, a place that had a history rich with stories of rusulka and as a result these women are unable to perform the rusalki rituals in the place of their ancestors. The loss of a place once again marks the beginning of a loss of the culture.

Mariana the songcatcher also mentions that in the Ukraine the best singers are witches or fortunetellers. The word for witch meaning "the one who knows" how to heal and protect. She tells how at the age of nineteen when she traveled about listening to the songs of women, and one woman sang about Mariana, capturing her essence in song.

I am deeply interested the the ideas of women's personal stories told through song, and then mixed with ideas about reading one's essence, magic, and spirits, I am giddy. This tradition has such resonance for me as I used to sing in the woods that I explored as a child, sometimes my own heartaches, sometimes in nonsensical words, and then it has a connection to the work I've been making all along but especially to the drawings I made after my mom died. The drawing at the top is one of a series of bird drawings I began after my mom died. They all sing telling the stories I couldn't find the words for.

The program is about an hour long, but I highly recommend you to listen to it at thestory.org. The research led to a group based in San Francisco Kitka to make a CD based on these musical traditions. You can listen to two songs here. I am still absorbing the information, researching Russian folk spirits and trying to figure out what it means to me today.