I Could Make That

A challenge for me as an artist is that my eyes are always falling on interesting objects that make me want to make them with my own hands - the wool ball trivet at Trader Joe’s, my friend’s intarsia sweater, the slick resin surface of a sculpture, a giant wall mural, an unusual knife, the list goes on. I don’t want to copy these things, I want to use their materials and map to make my own objects. 
Materials have shifted as I age. From the cool darkrooms of art school, where we wore gloves and sometimes respirators, to mixing my own chemicals for alternative photography techniques, to the ever-messier paints - watercolor, acrylic, oil, encaustic - and making my own pigments and paints, to knitting with finger weight to bulky yarn, to weaving with roving and strips of fabric, to forging steel, to sewing materials with a machine and by hand. 
As much as I loved photography, I tiptoed around its meaning as art. I stayed in my lane, happy with the results. And then I started doing more, finding more meaning and pleasure from the tactile processes. I could use my imagination more, I had more choices in how to blend and bend materials.