Post-Formative Review, Part 2

After reading the feedback:

- I need to evaluate whether or not the fact that the "unnecessary labour" piece is unfinished actually adds to the work or says something that is worth saying, as opposed to being a flaw I need to correct.

- Striking a balance between: 1) an amount of labour small enough that it doesn't feel like "labour," and 2) an amount large enough that it is impressive and doesn't seem "unnecessary," seems like the best way to communicate the point, but I will experiment further.

- I should "revalue futility" / question views on labour and futility.

Habits To Kick

More stress:

more time spent trying to split the workload into tasks, remind self it's all okay, make sure all pieces of work are listed somewhere so they won't be forgotten, make sure there isn't anything I'll forget to do,

less time spent getting stuck into work.

I Should Write Fortune Cookies

Cross-stitching is like life; it's too hard to keep going because of the fear of making a mistake.

Kerning

While embroidering a text piece, I realised that I wasn't sure whether to measure the spaces between the letters as being between the very edges of each letter, or ignoring the 'overhanging' bits. I was doing the former (I figured it was fine as long as I was consistent), then remembered that the latter was probably what 'kerning' was, and that I should probably look that up. The former option seems more consistent, while kerning looks more consistent. Consistency is important to me, so it's a dilemma.

Post-Formative Review, Part 1

I was feeling pretty ill on the morning of the crit, so I missed half of it and then felt that it would be rude to ask to discuss my work anyway. Naturally (or not), I am now plagued with the idea that if I had been present through the whole thing, maybe someone would have said something that would have turned out to be somehow vitally important and/or life-changing. I may just have to settle for guessing what that thing could have been.

"Did you choose the colours for a reason?"
The colours are not in some way symbolic, but follow the (arbitrarily chosen) rule that no colour is used more than once (if we are being pedantic here, I guess I mean "shades" - no specific shade of a colour is used more than once). I could make up a reason why the colour choices are somehow significant or meaningful, but I feel that that would go against the intention of the piece. The colours end up being meaningless; each is chosen with aesthetics in mind and goes with the colour next to it, but all together they make up a muddled selection of unplanned-looking rainbow colours arranged in a pattern that to me conveys both monotony and chaos, and well as being kind of ugly but also kind of pretty. I guess the idea is that you'd ask, 'What exactly are you going for here?' and the answer would be, 'Nothing, but it took some time.'

"Should there be more contrast between the pink letters and the orange surrounding them?"
Aiming for readability would imply that the piece was created for a purpose, and then it would not be 'unnecessary.'

"Does the piece's setting matter?"
I think it's best taken out of context, so that it doesn't refer as specifically to a certain type of person or lifestyle. The way it's presented currently creates an ambiguity that I like. It's folded up, and there is a lot of unused fabric behind the embroidered pattern; it makes an effort to be neat and finished, but gently fails. It looks soft, like a cushion or quilt, but it does not have a function. Putting the piece in some sort of context risks upsetting the balance.

"Should it be bigger?"
A smaller amount of unnecessary labour is as unnecessary as a larger amount of unnecessary labour. It is either unnecessary or necessary, and the quantity does not affect this.

I may have to come back to this with further made-up questions, but I feel as though the nature of the piece leads me to answer every question, even those posed by myself, with some variation of, "This is all inconsequential."

"Unnecessary Labour" - Scale

I'm thinking that this piece may not need to be exceptionally big, since the idea is that the labour is unnecessary regardless of the quantity. A large piece would be a large amount of unnecessary labour, and a small piece would be a small amount of unnecessary labour. Both are unnecessary.

Maybe I should make a "SMALL AMOUNT OF UNNECESSARY LABOUR" piece, and a "SLIGHTLY LARGER AMOUNT OF UNNECESSARY LABOUR" piece.

To Do

- Expand "Unnecessary Labour" piece.

- Finish other series (the pieces that say, "I'm just trying to...").