AMY MEISSNER
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Blood.

3/16/2017

4 Comments

 
Amy Meissner, textile artist | From the post, Blood. | www.amymeissner.com/blog/blood

​I recently updated my artist statement -- that challenge of fitting in every idea you have about your work into about 1000 characters -- a small piece of writing, but one that refines the point of why you're compelled to do what you do.

Or at least kicks your ass in the process.
​
Amy Meissner, textile artist | From the post, Blood. | www.amymeissner.com/blog/blood
Amy Meissner, textile artist | From the post, Blood. | www.amymeissner.com/blog/blood
Amy Meissner, textile artist | From the post, Blood. | www.amymeissner.com/blog/blood
Amy Meissner, textile artist | From the post, Blood. | www.amymeissner.com/blog/blood

​"Hand stitching isn’t fast work. It’s a quiet skill that feels tenuous, lost in a contemporary context, slipping away like childhood, like domesticity, like safety beneath the weight of something handmade. I sew because I don’t know what it is to not sew, despite the connotation of “minor art” or “women’s work,” and it’s this expectation of what the hand-sewn form is — protective, warm, decorative … the definition of the ideal domestic role — that compels me to push against it. I use abandoned cloth and old skills, relying on the traditional, beautiful handwork I was taught as a girl, then later as a professional seamstress, couching it within the painful, uncomfortable or frightening. My intent is to create thoughtful, arresting work, reliant on layers of narrative within the textile pieces themselves, yet resonating within the lens of history each viewer brings.


This is time-based work. 
An act of slicing apart, then piecing oneself back together."


​It's a version of the first artist statement I wrote in 2014. Not much has changed. But it still kicks my ass.
​
Amy Meissner, textile artist | From the post, Blood. | www.amymeissner.com/blog/blood
Amy Meissner, textile artist | From the post, Blood. | www.amymeissner.com/blog/blood
Amy Meissner, textile artist | From the post, Blood. | www.amymeissner.com/blog/blood
Amy Meissner, textile artist | From the post, Blood. | www.amymeissner.com/blog/blood

​I should probably whittle it further. 
​
 
“My work is loving the world…which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.”


​– Mary Oliver 

But I'm not a poet.
​
Amy Meissner, textile artist | From the post, Blood. | www.amymeissner.com/blog/blood
Amy Meissner, textile artist | From the post, Blood. | www.amymeissner.com/blog/blood
Amy Meissner, textile artist | From the post, Blood. | www.amymeissner.com/blog/blood
Amy Meissner, textile artist | From the post, Blood. | www.amymeissner.com/blog/blood

And although I'm in my head most of the time, I'm not that smart. 

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.”

​~ Albert Einstein

But I'm a really good seamstress. And maybe a little mysterious.
​
Amy Meissner, textile artist | From the post, Blood. | www.amymeissner.com/blog/blood

I'm shuffling through images, grouping themes to spread on the table as I move forward with this work, honing edges and abrading excess, waiting for the surprises that shouldn't be surprises at all. (Related theme-based posts are Ice. and Fire. and Bone.)

One thing that is a surprise, is that this blog was recently listed in the Top 60 Textile Blogs on the Planet. Yup. This one is #29. Huh. This, despite the description of, "Frequency - about 1 post per month." 

Hey, go easy. I'm a busy woman.
​
*     *     *
​

Posted one year ago: A history of misunderstanding. (part of the histories series of visual how-to + backstory)

Posted two years ago: The traveling eye 7: Ruins. (part of the traveling eye series that I totally forgot about, but really love)
4 Comments
Olga Norris link
3/17/2017 02:45:44 am

Your language as ever is lyrical and affecting. And thought-provoking: your statement that hand stitching is a skill which feels as if it is slipping away "like safety beneath the weight of something handmade" has really got me thinking. I suppose you are right that folks automatically accept that if something is factory made it must be safer. Obviously for all us hand stitchers, that's why it's so much fun living on the edge!

Reply
Amy Meissner link
3/17/2017 09:45:47 am

Hello Olga, Always lovely to hear from you -- thanks for taking the time to read and comment here. I've been thinking about you a lot lately...the cross-stitch you sent for the Inheritance Project has been on my design wall since the day you sent it, so I look at it every day. I realize I should have put a photo of it with this group of images since it would have fit.

I'm close to knowing where to go with it. I'm a slow thinker.

I hope you are well--
XO
Amy

Reply
tallgirl link
3/18/2017 10:20:45 am

Truly your creative gifts are not limited to stitch and cloth. This is an intriguing artist statement as it is not at all that esoteric BS but rather a passionate view into why you do what it is you do. And aren't these statements always a work in progress, like we are, anyway?!

Reply
Amy Meissner link
3/18/2017 10:04:55 pm

Oh, I really hate esoteric BS. It makes me feel stupid reading it, which is unfair, since most of the time it's just a cover up for bad writing and weak ideas. And yes--everything is a work in progress, nothing is ever really finished unless you walk away from it entirely. But even then, the memory of an abandoned idea is a reflection of who we've become each time we revisit it.
Looking forward to our time together--
XO
Amy

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    Amy Meissner, textile artist. Photo credit Brian Adams, 2013. www.amymeissner.com

    Amy Meissner

    Artist in Anchorage, Alaska, sometimes blogging about the collision of history, family & art, with the understanding that none exists without the other.

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