In the new year of 2014, I started this blog to document my practice as a visual artist outside my profession as an elementary art teacher. The spur came from a professional development session advocating building a “positive digital footprint.” My colleagues opened up Twitter accounts and a couple started WordPress blogs. I abandoned a personal gardening blog to begin what I vaguely deduced would be my foray into showcasing my skills in photography, drawing and printmaking.
On the brink of 7 years later, I have changed, the world has changed and currently the nature of my paid profession has changed. It has been almost two years of self reflection flecked with a high degree of distraction and melancholy. Focus on the positive has been spare.
Yet, one thing appears to have kept me from falling into complete creative and mental apathy: working with wool in the capacity of spinning.
Creating yarn forces me to work in the abstract. Spinning focusses my mind: pay attention to tension, listen to the sound and watch the movement of the spindle or treadle. See the formation of something new from raw or reused materials. I am realizing the potential of how colour and texture can play together. Play. Something absent from my years of haphazard and dutiful drawing and printmaking work. Something absent from my natural instinct towards anxious thinking.
As I continue in this space, I will make room for this medium. I feel like it may help me more fully answer the question of “Who for what?”
b wanhill 