making marks, leaving traces

saturday walk

i know about leave no trace. but even a snail* leaves a trace. i will. a thread that says i was here. and then it will be gone. so the thing is, i should mind every mark i make as they go out into the world? do i? of course not.
carelessness?

kid knot, tire swing

 

many of my marks are made with fiber. of course. i wish, often i wish i could make my work in clay. it's not meant to be, for though i love clay quite madly, i cannot bear working with it as it dries. i am also a bit crazy about print making, the wonderful expressive lines that are possible. i have almost no idea how to make a print. it's those scores of marks on the de-bossed (is that the right word) paper that move me.

mill window, tibetan mould, grandfather maple

so i think often of mark making; and see marks, lines, shapes and colors that others might see as things, not so me. 

a friend points out something and i see the whole composition, the lines, the space, the colors, not the thing itself. this is very disconcerting at times. my children make lines, ian draws and draws, and hannah knits and she has a calligraphic hand, she makes beautiful letters. a joke in my family came from my dad, who asked me if i could study penmanship in college, because my handwriting was so poor.

 

memory dazzles for ian and hannah

why make art? why make anything?  i will argue that making is essential. it is making that keeps me human. there will come a day, perhaps, when this is no longer my great passion, the need to make. but not yet.

this barn was made, twice. it has been repurposed. it may be again.

(rerepurposed?)

this loft held many bales of hay, upon a time. 

it holds memory now.

*a must: the sound of a wild snail eating by elisabeth tova bailey