Slow Progress

I have been making slow progress in keeping up my New Year's resolution to make more stuff.  One of my goals for some time has been to make various sizes of my fabric boxes.  A couple of years ago I made many 2 inch cube boxes and a few large ones in the range of 4X6X4" and 3X5X3."  Finally over the past week, I cut sides for 3 inch cubes and 2X3X2 boxes.  I have a lot of fun embellishing the box sides in a variety of surface design techniques.  When I start a run of new box sizes, I first make a bunch in a blend of neutrals - black, white, grays and tans.  Here are the sides for the new sizes, embellished and sorted, ready to start zigzagging together.

I've discussed in an early post about how my fascination with boxes came in part from John Steinbeck's dedication to his East of Eden.  Another source of inspiration for my boxes comes from abandoned buildings.  Yes, run down, crumbling old buildings.

My boxes are made up of fabric scraps from other projects, capturing the patched together look of some dilapidated houses.  As I stitch the sides of my smaller boxes together, the action of pinching the sides together causes the box to undergo some shifting and warping.  This is a good thing, it gives the box more character and adds to the visual interest of the piece.  Even the house that I live in, built in 1994, has parts that have swayed and shifted.  This is what I want to capture in my little boxes - the natural, slow process of physical aging of an inanimate structure.  Of course, all of us get bumps, sags and wrinkles as we age, so the inevitable wear that these boxes show over time simply reflects us as well.

Image and designs copyright RPS

My little fabric boxes are mostly decorative, but they could of course be used to hold, as Steinbeck put it, "whatever you have."

Who are your influences?

 In the movie The Commitments, the main character tries to assemble an R&B band, and he weeds out the applicants with one very simple question, “who are your influences?”  Regardless of the subject; music, art or anything else; the answers to that question tell a lot about the respondent.  This is the first in what will probably be a long periodic series on the influences on my textile art, not only who, but what as well.                                                       

Today’s influence could really be called more of an inspiration, but I suppose I’m splitting hairs on definitions.  Back in college, I got around to reading East of Eden by John Steinbeck.  The dedication ended up inspiring me and influencing my artwork: 

                Pascal Covici 

                Dear Pat,

You came upon me carving some kind of little figure out of wood and you said, “Why don’t you make something for me?”

                I asked you what you wanted, and you said, “A box.”

                “What for?”

                “To put things in.”

                “What things?”

                “Whatever you have,” you said.

Well, here’s your box.  Nearly everything I have is in it, and it is not full.  Pain and excitement are in it, and feeling good or bad and evil thoughts and good thoughts – the pleasure of design and some despair and the indescribable joy of creation.

                And on top of these are all the gratitude and love I have for you.

                And still the box is not full.                   

Pascal Covici was Steinbeck’s publisher and friend, and Steinbeck had carved a wooden box for the East of Eden manuscript.  This dedication struck a chord with me.  I love the idea of a box being symbolic for greater things, a container representing so much more than what could be put in it physically.   

At the time I read the book, I was absorbed in my ceramics classes, and I started to make clay boxes.  I thought about decorating the insides as much as the outsides.

 image and designs copyright 2016 RPS

I started to collect antique boxes, and continue to collect.

image copyright 2016 RPS

Now that I am into art quilts and textile art, I am making fabric boxes, and indeed, I still embellish the insides of the boxes, reflecting the outside decoration. 

 image and designs copyright 2016 RPS

The box form lends itself to so many variants, and I don’t think that I will ever run out of ideas for them.  I cannot make them fast enough to keep up with the ideas in my head.  As I hit the art fair circuit soon, I hope others will take delight my treasure boxes.