Hmmmm – really Spirographs? Is this where creativity should start? Well yes it did for me!

I think I have thought a lot about my design. And there are many conceptual possibilities and limitations. I don’t see this as failings on my part in how to carry them out but rather physical impossibilities such as the materials I don’t have or know how to use. And of course, there is a time constraint although with four months here this seems an old adage used to excuse myself from being truly creative. I am not, for instance going to do intricate embroidery although of course I could. And probably not large floor loom weaving as I am unlikely to have access to one. Or fine figure painting because I can’t.

Of course, there are things I do have time for and aren’t any good at like drawing or sculpture but as I bought the requisite materials then I will have a go and be satisfied I had a go and failed – you should see my drawings I have done based on my initial spirograph drawings. Truly terrible.

But part of you has to fail to know that you really aren’t any good at something. Even if others think you are actually good at something if it doesn’t spark joy in you (thanks Marie Kondo who wrote the celebrated “Magic Art of Tidying” – one of my new bibles) then I cannot really celebrate it. I am also scared. I have been very clear and repeated this almost as a mantra before I left. I wanted to spend my time here being as creative as I truly could be. I find my work in London hugely satisfying but limiting in the creativity I am allowed to do both in my clinical work and my teaching. There is a carte blanche with true material creativity (painting, drawing, musical composition etc) that there really are no rules. But the health and university system are tied by so many rules most people cannot even remember why they are there!

I laid all the things out in both places that I have stayed for at least a week so that seeing them can inspire me to be creative. Going around with my eyes open has led to purchases – like seven purple small blow-up beach balls bargained down to 300 rupees (50p each ball).

And having a decent camera makes me place things in as many different ways as possible. That really does fill me with joy. I have managed to delight in spending time photographing different arrangements of ribbons and a stone. The ribbons were purple, lilac and violet. The stone said “contentment” on one side which is the most memorable feeling I had a child. This was given to me at the end of the Bridge Retreat I did in July this year in Frome, Somerset. Before receiving it, I danced to Karl Jenkins Palladio ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mqmbz8W1-tA ) flinging my arms high into the sky in a yurt on a wooden bridge beautifully decorated with flowers. Freddy gave me the stone at the other side. I took 92 photos and could have gone on.

It reminded me of an exercise I did on Staff College. This was an amazing leadership course set up with the Army and NHS by Aiden Halligan. We were asked once to write down all the different uses we could think of a paper clip. Most come up with under 10, some 10 to 20 and occasionally people came up with more – that was me. Its is just the way my mind works. Always whizzing about thinking about things. I find meditation and mindfulness so painful. Not constricting just impossible! Yoga is fine though – phew as it really helps my back.

I had been keen to design a logo that sums up my theme and this may still be possible. But this might come later. I feel I am still at the exploratory phase.

Here is what I have been working on and considered completed….

Spirograph

So, the spirograph helped me unleash some creativity but I did do it an orderly way. Using the smallest of the 6 cogs till the largest and methodically going through all the points of each cog. The largest went up to 34. So, in total there are well over a 100 spirograph examples. I had the idea of some order but did need to decide where to move on the next drawing to start it. And I also had to decide when to change direction with the spirograph and then it got very busy. I used very thick paper (lilac 220gm paper) so it wouldn’t get any holes and it didn’t. I thought I might not get all the spirograph entries on one side and would need to insert a hole to get to the other side but that wasn’t necessary but maybe I missed some of the starting holes out (oh dear the problems of hyperactivity).

The Spirograph was invented in the year of my birth 1965 by Denys Fisher and sold in a Department Store in Leeds – Schofields. I used the 6 cogs which fit in the larger circle you have to hold to keep still. Each cog has between 10 and 34 settings. But they are produced different shapes which gradually change.

There are nicks where the cog jumps and the whole drawing then can become mal-aligned. I mostly turned them clockwise. It was a purple HiTechPoint pen on lilac paper. Nothing like sticking to the theme. Actually, the paper was chosen as it was the heaviest and Spirograph drawings tend to make holes in thinner paper. The bends and corners were most compressed – a bit like life when you make twists and turns it feels denser. I knew it wasn’t neat or particularly predictable but I also knew that in reality I just cannot draw so this was a great way to start and feel that I was being true to myself and my sabbatical. It is as much about realising your limitations and going with the flow of what you have and what you can do.

Lavender bags

The lavender was bothering me. It spilt all over my case and so I made 19 little lavender bags using the material I had bought from Anokhi. I had chosen only 2 designs as these were plentiful and I liked the designs (flowers).

So this was my only (well probably although I did buy some frangipane perfume oil later in Pushkar) foray into smell. And I decided to make 19 of them. For the year (2019). To commemorate what a hard and emotional year it has been for me. And it being a prime number. I tied the bags with the lavender yarn left over from my 2019 mystery blanket I had just completed.

They smell heady and comforting. I photographed them all around the room with different backdrops and with all different lights and using twists so that I could video them https://vimeo.com/377514037. I like the way they fall from a single point and all are different lengths and twist and unfurl on each other. Twisting takes time and get multiply tangled like life. I spent my last day untangling them which took well over an hour and I photographed them all nice and untangled. But this is a temporary respite from their normal state of getting re-tangled all over again!

Lavender isn’t a very pretty plant but it is characteristic with a very special smell. From fields in France to gardens in the UK. Especially lovely was the day I spent with Tracy at Hitchin Lavender with the wonderful lunch and a great time spent picking and taking fabulous photos. A truly wonderful memory. There is a photo of Hitchin Lavender on my first entry on purple.

Cyanotyping

I had a wonderful day of cyanotyping in August 2019 in Trowbridge. In the morning I joined a class of other women and did the cyanotyping using 2 light sensitive chemicals (potassium ferricyanide and ferric ammonium citrate. We did paper and cotton and I brought along some taupe silk. All my results worked well there but when I tried to reproduce it on some baby vests the edges were a murky dark green and it didn’t have sharp blue edges.

I took both chemicals to India and decided to try it out on a thin piece of white A3. I prepped it in the shower part of my bathroom in Pushkar (Dia Homestay) and put it under a stool covered in towels but they got wet and the whole thing was one soggy mess. The A3 was too large to dry between applications (usually 3). I did expose it on the balcony but it was too blowy. I also only left it for 10 mins to expose it which again wasn’t long enough.

The subsequent pieces I did (5 white A4 and 1 lilac A4 – all 220gm heavy paper) worked well. I prepped them in the dark (easy as it is dark between 1900 and 0700. I kept them in a felt case and once the wind had died down in the afternoon but the sun was still strong, I used them to make a whole pattern using bracelets, rings, earrings, findings from jewellery box, felt and wooden flowers. Essentially, anything that was round went on the paper. This worked really well.

Next up will be yarn bombing (wrapping to be precise), dream catchers, a jungle jelabi mobile and cards.