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what does Story mean to me? as in…. cloth

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this is a self portrait i did with graphite in maybe 2001, the summer of.  August.

it is a self  portrait, but it also is, when i look at it, a whole story that spans about 5 years.  it is the culmination of the years before it was drawn.  but it also is very specifically, the story of a very specific day that i remember vividly.  not only with my mind, but all senses.

i could recreate this drawing in cloth.  i won't, but i could.  this to me would be story cloth.

so…this is one way to think of it.  am going to look for more. 

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29 responses to “what does Story mean to me? as in…. cloth”

  1. Tammy Avatar
    Tammy

    Ok then… I have many picture stories .. but my some of my images are hard to see…as in painful difficult to look at but they are my story. I imagine that most people would not want to see them in cloth. THis makes me think of your hard post .. hard is painting your story that is then rejected. But thats also a big part of my story… I don’t even know if this makes any sense but that is it.
    This is a very nice drawing Grace ..and what about this is you ? In a cacoon, emerging from a change .. about to be a butterfly .. about to come into being a new life? About to spread your wings and fly away? Waiting? Sorry ..just where I’m at today .. ramblings of my head.

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  2. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    don’t hold me to anything i write here tonight. i’m tired.
    it’s been a loooong week. i have had a glass of wine. the
    hoses are still running and part of my attention is there
    still. i’ll read it again in the morning and maybe retract or add? who knows.
    i like very much your honesty. so that’s a place that
    story lives, right there. for any of us.
    and i guess…reading what you write, there is a question
    of what others will see. so, maybe we can think of two
    kinds of story cloth? one that will be ….acceptable?
    the other, more ify?
    and this drawing, i drew for myself. i used to write and
    draw to get things OUT of myself…to get them on paper
    and then…i was free of whatever it was, in a certain way.
    so…that in itself was good.
    hmmmm. where to go from here…….
    well…so, i am only going to talk about my own self here
    because that’s the only thing i can really know about
    in this kind of “partial” world of the computer. assuming
    anything at all isn’t so good.
    but i do know, that for me, if i were to make a cloth
    of stuff hard to look at, stuff that was frightening, or
    sad, or violent, or depressing
    i think that the making of that cloth would receive the
    story. i think it would go into the cloth, from me. that
    the cloth would then hold all that. for me.
    this is just a thought.
    ?
    xoxoxo

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  3. judy keathley Avatar
    judy keathley

    thank you tammy.
    thank you grace.

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  4. jude hill Avatar
    jude hill

    why not make a cocoon. wrap your self in it? coma is like that now.

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  5. Deb G Avatar
    Deb G

    I think for me it would be very hard to make something without a story…

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  6. Penny B Avatar
    Penny B

    I so love your drawings and your voice.
    I too am musing privately about how I will approach working from July 1st for the next six months. I love Jude’s idea here of making a cocoon or at least a shawl. A protective covering perhaps or would it be a public expression of one’s story.

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  7. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    a multipurpose cloth. cocoon…cape…cocoon…cape
    shelter…flag…camouflage…barrier…prayercloth…
    cloak

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  8. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    things have a front and a back…………..

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  9. Acey Avatar
    Acey

    i love the shawl/cocoon idea. also –
    i deal with violent, sad, and depressing things all the time in my cloth (and bead) based work because all that was an enormous part of my formative and early adult experience. i could not be very creative (or authentically expressive) if i kept it all on a back secret burner out of … what. respect? not exactly. fear? not my interpersonal style. awareness. yes. AWARENESS of other peoples’ potential response/reaction and therefore squeezing whatever i need to convey into some sort of palatable form ‘for everybody else’. I just do what I need to do – what creative intuition guides me to do. sometimes this has surprisingly positive results in the feedback sense. once some years back when i first began to participate in fiber arts online community – one individual made a MAJOR fuss about something I was making related to … well maybe out of respect for Grace and her established community of friends here, I will not say exactly what. But I will say it took a lot of courage on my part to get it articulated in fabric. Many times my hands were shaking and so was my gut. But I worked. Tentatively at first, then very tenderly and finally with a surge of empowerment. I could do this. “hard” or even “scary” didn’t have to be the guard dog that kept me in check. By comparison sharing the results on my blog was the easy part. Still. They way that one individual reactively threw herself all over the internet making a huge deal probably inhibited at least a few people reading along. And, to this day, I keep that particular project to myself – specifically because of how that type of behavior might impact somebody just starting to come out of their shell in an expressive sense. Not because of my own response which I admit was pretty powerful anger at the reckless disregard of somebody else. One of my life skills is the ability to work with anger productively and in authentically transformative way. Thus I let the emotional groundwater following this excessive (and highly immature, I might add) lack of compassion fuel an intention (since realized, but not once mentioned on the internet up to this point) to organize an art exhibit for abuse survivor art that was produced as a specific response to the so-oft-heard-phrase “Just Get Over It”. very powerful. and a story all on its own, fed by the garden of all the separate stories of each piece and the intentions behind them…

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  10. nance Avatar
    nance

    acey, i am glad you didn’t “just get over it” which would mean shoving it someplace that would inhibit your true self. you are brave.

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  11. nance Avatar
    nance

    to me it says … you can’t leave and you can’t stay.

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  12. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    what?

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  13. nance Avatar
    nance

    one of those moments in time where you can’t go forward or backward or at least thats how you feel… i don’t want to offend… its just a feeling i have had and this drawing feels like that with the eyes i am looking through today. maybe tomorrow it will be different.

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  14. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    oh, ok…i understand.
    no…it’s an old drawing. i was just using it as an
    example of how i perceive images (cloth or other media)
    to be “stories”. …this in keeping with the conversation
    about what story cloth IS….
    that to me, it doesn’t need to be a very literal image
    at all.
    just stubbed my toe on it, the frame, and thought to
    put it here as an example.

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  15. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    “tentatively at first, then very tenderly and finally with
    a surge of empowerment”…
    such beautiful words to describe a woman working.
    my first most basic need in anything i make is honesty.
    the most primal bottom line.

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  16. nance Avatar
    nance

    grace… i mean that is how i see myself in that picture… i know you aren’t there..

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  17. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    oh ….eee. ok. well, this is a good example for the larger
    conversation of interpretation of what we make.
    and i guess again, just reiterates my thought that all we can
    ever do is to create from an individual and genuine place within
    our own experience and then all who might look upon it will
    see what they see, feel what they feel. it might be if nothing
    else, a statement that the “work” is something in common, shared,
    with others….and so, we are “not the only one”.

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  18. handstories Avatar
    handstories

    grace, i keep coming back to look at this, think about it, trying to find words. i haven’t. maybe because this is yours, your story & my words have no relevance. maybe because you’ve got me thinking about redefining story. i have such strong feelings about story, as a tool, as entertainment, as memory, as a survival skill. thinking of acey’s words, and the times people were uncomfortable/embarassed by some of my stories- wanting me to keep the secrets silent. having flashes of fabric and stitch go through my mind, pieces that might convey those stories, exercise them, that were not MY secrets, but part of my story, but being afraid of being too much, of the reactions of others. this community is providing a safe space, a place to begin to touch these stories. thank you for opening this door.

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  19. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    i think it’s good thinking for all of us. i so much
    appreciated Dru’s thoughts on SEW from DrucillaPettibone
    blog..how she went straight to the center of not wanting
    to confine herself by story in the past, and in approaching Magic Diaries, is thinking.
    and then Tammy’s good thoughts, on to Acey today.
    i have told a zillion stories in different ways..some,
    just the telling. i am known to say..”i probably have
    told you this before, but let me tell you again.” and
    i launch into it. i have rarely censored my stories.
    some are raw. some are crude. some are very sad.
    some are all the opposite of the above. i love them
    equally. i have told them equally. i think many times
    in years gone by my stories have been too much, i was
    too much. but i didn’t care. the litmus tests were two:
    were they true? and would they hurt someone?…and by
    hurt, i mean were they meanspirited, not would they
    maybe bother someone’s sensibilities. if the answers
    were Yes then No they were stories good to tell.
    at some point, i just wore out from telling stories. i
    quite honestly don’t know why. and now, with having
    found Spirit Cloth, i have discovered a way to tell the
    stories that want telling still, with cloth.
    if you remember, and i know you do, i “recognized” you
    as a kindred spirit in the very short exchange with
    your introduction to yourself in Jude’s workshop. you
    told me a story and that story felt vibrant and very
    real and left a very strong imprint. the way you told it,
    the choice of words, how you strung them together told me
    that i liked you…that you were a person i could trust.
    maybe because of the lack of judgement…that was
    probably it…just the telling. no judgement.
    well…this is getting long. and i am not being able to
    find the point i wanted to go toward in the beginning.
    but just to say…i never mind and actually LIKE people
    telling the story they find in what i make.
    i will continue to think about what it means to me
    “being afraid of being too much, of the reactions of
    others”
    we can explore all this as we go, yes?
    much love….

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  20. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    now i’m thinking about this. was looking at one of the
    weavings, actually, i could look at more, that i did in
    cloth to cloth. in a certain way, Everything IS story.
    they would be story of my joy at learning…joy of
    weaving cloth, but they aren’t really in a certain way
    story cloths. ???? but they are no less beautiful and
    wonderful to me. they are about beauty.
    so…now am thinking from this point of view…thanks
    for articulating it
    xoxox

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  21. Tammy Avatar
    Tammy

    I love that in typepad you can reply to individual posts and you can’t do that in blogspot….. but I read the beginning of your reply and see that you said you were tired and had a glass of wine .. ditto haha .. I did that too. But I did mean everything I wrote. I noticed on another comment you made somewhere a reference to Clarissa Pinkola-Estes book Women Who Run with the Wolves. I am sure that in that book she wrote about making a Robe of everything that anyone ever said that was hurtful and .. gosh I’m going to have to go find my book and see what that was called .. now where is it? Sheesh.. i have no idea. But .. I set out to do just that .. I haven’t done it yet but I’ve bought several base items .. dresses that can be turned into a cloak or jacket with the intention to alter it ..and yes the idea was too put it there to see and maybe understand the weight of carrying all that around with me. Thats what I thought.. also to put them there instead of inside my head playing over and over like tape on rerun. I love the subject though and the way that you attack the ideas to flesh them out .. 🙂

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  22. Tammy Avatar
    Tammy

    Ha .. i didnt read all these comments before I wrote a reply to Grace .. cocoon cloak .. hmmmm

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  23. Tammy Avatar
    Tammy

    Yes yes yes .. that is I think what happens .. we share our work/creations that we have created from our own place of suffering, joy, happy, sad, mad, whatever we are feeling and those that see there own feelings in what you create is just as you said .. finding out that someone else has these same feelings … and YES they they are not the only one. I have been feeling not a part of things .. thats gone today. I just want to stand in the mix .. these stitchings we share .. they are a wonderful connection.. one thread that runs through each of us.. even if we can’t see you.

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  24. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    Tammy…i have to finish watering but before i go back
    out, want to
    CHEER!!!!!!!!!! THESE WORDS:
    “i just want to stand in the mix”
    these are just the best words.
    back in a while.
    xoxoxo

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  25. Tammy Avatar
    Tammy

    wow .. this is right where I am.. on my blog I so want to just write right from my heart and i do but I hold back. I can go to a blog and comment more freely because I feel like that is more anonymous even though it isnt but on my blog it’s all there .. it’s crazy .. I should just put out there and deal with it. I like your litmus test .. were they true and were they mean spirited. this is all good and with Handstories .. i relate too!! I am glad that this can continue .. I look forward to the exploration with all of you!

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  26. Tammy Avatar
    Tammy

    Oh Acey .. I’ll have to go over to your blog .. I just wanted to say that I so get this!! I referred to this exact experience in my first reply .. my stories are sometime hard and people don’t want to see them. Thanks for sharing this!

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  27. Nancy Avatar
    Nancy

    Yes this is what I think too…”i have such strong feelings about story, as a tool, as entertainment, as memory, as a survival skill.”
    I have some story now that I am trying to work through, but it feels to hard and ugly and I don’t feel brave to share it. I am seriously considering a wristband! I could use the extra power these days.
    Thank you to all in this caring community.

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  28. Nancy Avatar
    Nancy

    Yes…yes Tammy as I get my feet wet in the blogging world, I am wanting to move towards authenticity and less presentation. The writer in me likes to…write!

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  29. handstories Avatar
    handstories

    oh, i’m counting on this exploration. and yes, i do remember, and couldn’t believe it was true, you and all of this. still pinching myself. xoxoo

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