Accretions and joining the dots

My first multitask of the day is breakfast blogging.
Wherein I break one of those foundational rules and do blog in my slippers. Never in slippers Bad blogger!




Couldn't help it! I had extra precious moments to spare before leaving for work. My head said 'blog'. My stomach said 'marmite toast and boiled egg'.




Such is the limited span of my memory that I cannot recall when the word accretion first interfaced with my cerebrum. (Watched Dr Who last night and it has affected my lingo.)
But somewhen, somehow, it did. And in doing so it unlocked something that brings me great satisfaction. That one word and my understanding of it has opened up a new way of thinking about creative work/play. All too often I resent the piecemeal approach that is a necessity due to time constraints.
I am forever fighting to carve out time for my creative life, constantly striving, unrealistically, to have the same input as when I was an art student!
In those halcyon days I could literally eat, sleep, breathe, creative things all day every day. And let me say that I knew then how lucky I was and how finite that time would be.




Now with more complex demands on my time my creative output is disjointed. But the idea of slow increase by addition of layers frees my mind to go with the flow. To do a little bit and then a little bit more. To celebrate the divergent paths that constitute my life and to see the cohesion in what results. I hope.
Deep joy.
I have been inspired,by the work of Frances Pickering, to explore this whole idea of accretions in a stitched fabric sketchbook.
Above is the front cover which I may layer up some more.




These pages are coming on slowly




I am finding that when working with layers things have more room to change. Returning to a piece after a break, reviewing and editing seem to happen easily. The ' what next' seems more obvious.
There is an overarching idea but it is very general and very broad so openmindedness is prerequisite and not having such a definite end in mind is very freeing.
Sometimes connections are perceived like a faint drift of scent on the breeze.
And sometimes not!
Until looking back you see where all the dots join.
I could be talking out of my rear end of course but I can see some dots connecting in the work that Ramblin' Randall is currently engaged in.




Quite some time ago he took lots of lovely photographs on a North Somerset beach. They just sit unused on the computer and get revisited from time to time.




Recently he has been designing and making some little shelves none of which I am allowed to show you because none of them ' worked'. Then he made the one in the picture above. Totally different to all its predecessors. I can see a strong visual link between the beach pics and the shelf. dot-to-dot. Or maybe just plain dotty!