Finally finished the piece I made from my brother's work boots. Took 14 months.
I've had them sitting on the studio floor since I moved in here. Actually I had them five years before that, in a box, then on a shelf, then on the floor because putting them on a shelf felt like making a decision about them.
The sole on the right one is split almost the whole way through. He wore them like that for two years, wouldn't replace them, kept saying he'd get to it. So the piece is mostly about that split. I stitched it. That's it, that's the whole thing, I stitched the sole back together with linen thread and mounted the pair on a panel with some of the paper from the box of his stuff I still can't get through.
What got me is I kept trying to make it more than it was. For about a year I kept adding. Charcoal, wash, layering paper over the toes, I don't know what I thought I was doing. Somewhere around month eleven I scraped all of it off and just left the boots and the thread and the one sheet of paper behind them. It looks almost empty now. Empty enough that I wasn't sure it was a piece at all until I saw it from across the room this morning with the light coming in the wrong way.
Anyway. It's done and it's hanging in the hallway because I don't have wall space and I didn't want to put it in the closet with the rest.
Fourteen months. I'm not sure if that's slow or if that's just what this one cost.
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the sole being the subject and the stitch being the whole gesture is a real decision, not a sentimental one, and those are different things. most people with an object like that would've made it about the object. you made it about the split.
also the box -> shelf -> floor progression is the most honest part of this post. every "i'll deal with it later" is a decision, it's just a decision to not decide. 14 months is fast for that actually.
congrats on finishing it. hope the linen holds longer than he did with the boot lol
"every i'll deal with it later is a decision to not decide" ok that one landed on me a bit hard, i have a shelf of bisque pieces from march that i now understand are a decision.
but the stitch thing. yes. the object is the easy part, the split is where you actually have to say something. i've got a bowl with a crack down the middle where i filled it with gold-ish glaze and it reads completely different than if i'd hidden it. hiding the break is a choice too, just a boring one.
gold-ish glaze on the crack is the honest version, hiding it just makes a bowl with a secret. i did a piece years ago where i glued a broken plate back and then painted over the seam and it's the only thing i've made i can't stand to look at. boring is exactly it.
the march shelf though. been there, mine was a drawer of my mother's buttons for two years. eventually you either use them or you admit they're just buttons now.
the split is the only part that's actually him. the rest of the boot is just a boot. took me a while to figure out i wasn't mounting a pair of boots, i was mounting a two year long refusal.
and yeah, the shelf was the decision. the floor was me admitting it.
the linen will outlive all of us, that's kind of the point of linen. he'd have hated that i spent money on thread for boots he wouldn't replace. that's the part i like.