I would love to say I used my house arrest earlier this spring to its fullest, but if I’m honest I have to admit it was mostly trash TV and doom-scrolling (and Pasta alla Carbonara). I didn’t even scribble in my serial-killer diaries. Bad Radish.
I managed one project. It’s actually one I imagined during the Eternal And Unnecessary Lockdown, but I lacked the perfect yellow-gold sequins to instantiate. I brought some back from Iowa last November.
March 2022
A bit of history: Long Ago, I became acquainted with Haitian folk art–and fascinated by the Drapo, the sequined flags that honor the deities of Vodou–at the Waterloo Center for the Arts and the Milwaukee Art Museum. I like the paintings and devotional objects, too, but the flags can be quilts: A front, a back, and a filling layer in between.
I have made a few over the years with my own iconography. Art is theft; no one culture owns “sewing shiny stuff to fabric” or “stitching textiles to honor someone/thing”; I acknowledge the source of my inspiration. It just looks really cool, guys. I love the look, and my conscience is clear.
Look how cool this is:
April 2022
“This looks amazing, Radish! Why don’t you do this more often?”
Because I haven’t exercised my love of collecting data on trivial events for several months, I took a Bad Handy Foto™ at the beginning and end of several sessions to try to tease out how long this technique actually takes. Forever. It takes forever. And that’s why I don’t do this more often.
March 2022
Until the next time I’m legally forbidden to leave the house for ten days!
