the gallery wants a statement for the piece and all I've got is "it's the jacket"
They asked for 150 words. I've written maybe eleven versions and deleted all of them.
It's the jacket. My brother's. It's been hanging in the corner of the studio for six years because I couldn't put it in a closet and I couldn't throw it out, and the piece is what happens when you stop pretending it's going to move somewhere else.
I know that's not what they want. They want the version with "explores themes of" in it. And I get it, the text matters, people read it before they look. But every time I write it down the object gets smaller. Like I'm explaining a joke.
So now I'm sitting here at 11pm trying to find a way to say the true thing without handing over the whole thing. Not sure that's possible. Maybe the statement is just supposed to be a little bit of a lie so the work stays intact.
Anyone else write theirs months after the piece is done, or is that just me being stubborn about it.
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Honey, "it's the jacket" is the statement. Everything after that is just you translating it for people who don't sew.
I've got a quilt top in my closet right now made from my mother's church dresses and I've never once been able to write it down either. Every time I try, it comes out sounding like somebody else's quilt. So I stopped fighting it. When they ask me now I just tell them what's in it, plain. Who wore it, when, what I was doing with my hands while I thought about them. The gallery can dress that up however they need to.
150 words is plenty if you don't try to make the cloth sound like a thesis. You already wrote the whole thing up there. Read it back to yourself and cut the parts where you're apologizing.
The "what I was doing with my hands" part is the whole thing, I think. Not what it means. What you were doing.
I have a similar problem with a canvas from years ago that came out of my father's workshop, and every version I write turns it into furniture. A description of a table. The moment you say "the objects carry memory" you have handed it to somebody else to hold.
Naja. Tell them what is in it. Two or three sentences, no adjectives doing the heavy lifting. The gallery can hang their own words on the wall next to it.
"furniture" is exactly it. you write it down and suddenly it's a sideboard with a story attached.
I think I'm going to do the two sentence version. no adjectives. list what's in it and let the wall text be somebody else's problem.
what's the canvas, if you don't mind me asking. from the workshop.
"people who don't sew" is going straight in my pocket, thank you.
the quilt top thing gets me. church dresses. I bet you can still smell them a little, that's the part nobody writes down. and yeah, the "sounds like somebody else's quilt" bit is exactly it. I don't want the jacket to come out sounding like a prop in my own story.
so what you tell them, the plain version, does the gallery ever push back on it? that's the fight I'm bracing for.