IC:Innovative Craft Blog

No sense of hurry

Posted Wednesday 18 February 2009, 09:10pm

Thank you to Scottish playwright and novelist Chris Hannan http://www.chrishannan.co.uk for writing such a great response to A Stitch in Time::

For me a sign of exceptional art is that it creates a sense of spaciousness. With Chekhov or Matisse, say, there’s no sense of being hurried or hectored or bullied into a response, you give it freely. 
 
There was definitely that sense about the opening night ‘A Stitch in Time’ event. The lighting had a meditative feel; wherever you looked there was a lot going on - film, music, weaving - but none of it was shouting that it was more important than the rest. Everything had room around it. 
 
When you’re given so much mental space it’s like wandering around a big open field. You know there are other fields but you find you are interested in this one and you want to know what it is that’s so particular about it. You haven’t been cornered in any way. You just decide to look closer. 
 
I got very interested in the ’flutterbox’ instrument one of the musicians had made. I think that happened because the event had sensitised me to making. The weavers were weaving, Deirdre Nelson was stitching, so I tuned in to the tactile, the practical, the physical. The flutterbox was an insane-looking construction, made out of a drum, bike wheel, gurney castor-wheels, wingnuts. The sounds it made I’d never heard before and because it wasn’t a known instrument like a guitar I had no received idea of how it should be played so that alone was fascinating. And the musician was bent over it like it was a loom or something.