LEFTOVERS
Everyone loves leftovers....well maybe in regards to not having to cook. But how about fabric leftovers?
Last year I hosted an online project entitled COMPOSITIONAL CONVERSATION. This project involved a group of artists each working in turn on one composition. One of the guidelines was that when it was your turn to work with the project, you could remove any elements from the composition you felt were not working but these elements had to be passed along to the next artist who might want to re-introduce them. At the end of the project there was a sad plastic bag of these pieces, some of them cut to tatters.
I studied this artifact of our experiment and would have discarded them as I generate enough leftovers (often donated to elementary schools and the like). However, I have heard Kentucky artist, Kathy Loomis, express her love of other folks fabric leftovers so I emailed her and she happily said she wanted them.
What could there be about these assortments of scraps that is attractive to someone? Is it because they have a history? Do these shunned remenants have some sort of built-in predisposition for coordination? Is it thriftiness on the part of the interested artist harking back to the origins of quiltmaking? Is it bravado on the part of the new scrap owner saying, "I can make something of nothing"? Or is it simply these collections of leftovers somehow speak to the new owner in a way many of us don't hear?
I invite you to visit Kathy's new blog Art With A Needle to find out and to see what she has made with our COMPOSITIONAL CONVERSATION leftovers.
So. How do you feel about leftovers? Would love to hear your experiences and thoughts.
