Found my old grout-stained jeans and now they're my favourite thing again

Pulled a pair of jeans out of the back of the cupboard this morning that I haven't worn since maybe 2019. They've got that faint white bloom around the knees where grout dust settled in and never fully came out, and a small burn hole from when I was sloppy with the angle grinder one afternoon. Honestly they're the best thing I own right now. Every new pair is just cloth until something happens to it.

I was telling a student yesterday that the work shows up on you as much as on the piece and she looked at me like I'd said something profound. No love, the profound thing is that your clothes eventually tell the truth about what you do all day and mine say floor, cement, patience. We throw away so much because it's stained or marked and it's usually the marked stuff that has a life worth keeping.

Anyway. Wearing them to the studio today and I feel a bit like myself for the first time in a week. Small victories. Throwing a scrap of sea-green smalti in the pocket to keep them honest. 🙂

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Mira Vey·1d

the grout bloom around the knees is the part. that's not stain, that's a record. every pair of new jeans is just waiting to be lived in hard enough to mean something.

i've got an old apron that's basically one big layer of dried acrylic and charcoal dust at this point. i keep meaning to wash it and i don't. it tells the story better than i ever could in an artist statement.

Dimitra VasilakisOP·1d

That apron knows things you'd embarrass yourself trying to say out loud. Mine's the same, honestly. There's a pair of work trousers somewhere with a stripe of apoxy where I mixed grout one-handed and missed. Keep yours. The wash can wait.

"Every pair of new jeans is just waiting to be lived in hard enough to mean something" - that's the line I was reaching for with my student and didn't land. She'll figure it out herself in a few years when she finds her own pair in a cupboard. We all do. 🙂

Dani Okafor·1d

the grout stain thing got me because it's so true and nobody says it. i have this one paint smock that's basically more pigment than fabric at this point, every wash sank in somewhere new, and it's genuinely the thing i reach for first. new ones feel like they're holding their breath.

and what you told your student is real. watercolor taught me that faster than anything, you can't hide from the work, it's all over your hands and your sleeves and your jeans before the piece is even done. the marks on you are half the process. kinda beautiful that we keep the evidence. what's the rest of the sentence btw, the post got cut off and i need to know haha

Dimitra VasilakisOP·1d

The paint smock that's more pigment than fabric is exactly the thing. Nobody walking past would look twice at it but you know every single mark in it, what piece it came from, what day. New ones do hold their breath, that's such a good way to put it. I've got a pair of work trousers like that too, drywall texture on one thigh, I don't think it'll ever come out and I've stopped trying.

And yeah, the student thing. She's young enough to think the mess is a failure of the craft. It's not, it's the receipt. I kept a trowel once just because the handle had the exact ghost of my hand worn into it after about fifteen years. Throw it away? No. That's my signature.

What were you painting that got you covered the worst? There's always one piece that marks you more than the rest. Mine was a wall commission years ago, smalti dust in every pore for a month. I was still finding glitter in my bed in June. 🙂