A while ago I did a couple of workshops at a weekend textile conference, one in beading and another in wire sculpture.

The workshops were fairly advanced, in that there wasn’t a set path to follow: the teachers introduced techniques and gave guidance, but it was up to us to decide what to make.

I had a similar experience in both workshops, which might resonate with some of you.

Beady Doodles

(Boody deedles. Deedy boodles. Dudely beadles. Needy poodles. Hey, cut it out, brain. Do you see any of the other brains behaving like this?)

The first thing I made in the beading workshop is pictured above: I took a piece of black velvet, sewed the middle bead on and started doodling around it, circle by circle, without any kind of plan. I liked the encrusted sort of look I was getting. The teacher suggested muting the purple sequins by sewing spokes over them, which I think worked well.

“Now,” she said, when I finished the sequins and paused to look at the piece, “that’s beautiful.” She paused and grinned. “Put it away, and make a mess.”

So in the last half-hour of the workshop, I made this:

“Ooh!” said my fellow beaders. “That’s lovely!”

“Hm,” I said. Because I really didn’t know what to make of that.

I quite liked how the piece looked. But I found myself unsettled by the idea that it might be … any good.

Something there about effort and intention, and in particular, the concept of a “resolved” piece. More to explore.

The Wire

Next day, the wire sculpture workshop began with introductions, and we all said what we were hoping to make. I explained what had happened the previous day and said I wanted encouragement to go big and make a mess.

I started with some knitting. I made a small rectangle and scrunched it into a shape that I thought might be the basis for an animal of some sort (a sheep, I was thinking, on account of the knitting).

The teacher travelled slowly around the room, commenting on people’s work. When she got to mine, she exclaimed, “Gosh, that’s tiny!”

She was not wrong. Here it is with a thimble for scale:

We laughed.

“I bet you can go a bit bigger and messier than that. What do you think?”

So I put my little wodge of knitted wire aside, and struck out into the unknown.

Here’s what I made:

Well. I think this qualifies as a mess, all right. (But no messiah.)

It’s rough. It’s wonky.

It’s … how can I put this? … a beaded wire teapot … which is kind of playful, no? (I’m not terribly comfortable with playful, so this aspect appeals to me.)

Much to my surprise, there are bits of this piece that I really like. The handle and the underside of the spout please me enormously. The flexible, coloured wire that I used to lace the beads on comes from inside a modem cable, which in itself makes me smile.

More importantly, it feels as though making it opened up something for me. It’s not a beautiful piece of finished work. It’s not even useful. (Maybe I should make a version in chocolate?) But I made it anyway – and in the process figured out some techniques that I might well use again later.

Or possibly not. But they’re there if I want them.

That’s quite an expansive feeling.

Back to the part about similarity

I notice that in both workshops, I started out with a relatively careful, small, cramped piece, and had to be nudged into pushing that envelope.

It reminds me of a remark a cousin of my father’s made to me a long time ago. She was doing some art outreach workshops with schools in deprived areas. She said her first job was invariably to get the kids to allow themselves to draw pictures that filled up the whole page.

It’s about entitlement to occupy space.

Non-trivial, in other words. And kind of resonant, too – you’ll find it pops up all over the place once you start thinking about it.

In my case, also at stake is my entitlement to make things even if they’re not beautiful and successful. That’s a tough one for me. It runs deep.

(How deep? Very. Very deep, is how.)

My sense is that I hedged my bets in both of these workshops by starting small, because then at least if I made (objectively, you know) ugly failures, I wouldn’t have –

[arruga! arruga!]
OMG W-A-S-T-E-D

– too much space or materials on them.

Ahahaha.

You know what?

Fuck. That. Noise.

So. I’m not saying that I’m going to go about, like, wrapping Dublin City Hall in a hand-pieced metal quilt featuring beaded teapots (… hmmm … not this year, anyway). But I’ll definitely be paying more attention to how I feel about size, scale, entitlement to use materials and to occupy space with my work.

I may look specifically at pushing the embiggenation envelope a bit harder, too.

Fair warning.