I finished a new piece today. "14 July - 31 August, 2005"(Wool Diaries) was a piece in the making for almost 4 full years. Started in graduate school at The University of Connecticut, this piece never quite went where it was intended until now. Using raw sheep's wool I began felting at the studio in Storrs and made many pieces of felt that I placed in a single pile. The purpose of the work was to show how process and repetition serves as a meditative act. The piece went unresolved, however, and about a month ago I ran across these really big felted pieces of wool and I got caught up in the tactile quality of the wool. In keeping with the original idea, I began to cut up the wool into smaller pieces and bundling them. While I was processing the pieces, I was remembering everything about that time period. The intense heat of the studio, the quiet in my building...my God! I was the only art grad working all through the summer. The campus was very creepy then. I remember calling campus police once...there were some kids on the property breaking into the old vacant asylum buildings on the premises. Some of these memories were so intense I could smell the building the studio was lodged in. It was sad too. I had worked so hard on this piece and everyone hated it...including me! I somehow lost my way while I was intensely processing all that wool. Come to think about it...the piece really was successful in what I was trying to portray, I just couldn't seem to find a way to display the work, thus, it was an abject failure because no one could really get anything from it.
