New art

So it's finally finished. A while back I was commissioned to make two artworks on the theme of HEART. Due to a huge bundle of red tape, I'm still awaiting payment for one of them.

Payment is often a difficult thing. People don't seem to understand that art takes time and materials, and these things cost money. Some buyers demand the art NOW and don't seem to care when the money will come to you. In the mean time, there's still rent and bills to pay and food and more materials to buy. I can't imagine another industry where an invoice can be 6 months outstanding and still no movement on it, while the client already has the work.

But so anyway, complaining aside, I've finished the second HEART artwork, the one that still hasn't been paid for, and it's at the framers now. I'm going to deliver it on Friday to the client, it's always a bit of a danger handing over the work before the money has appeared but it's been such a long drawn out process that I just want it finished (ok, so maybe I hadn't finished complaining about it quite yet :)

But please welcome to the stage: Big Ol' Black Steam Train, a framed embroidery piece with antique lace and silk.


The heart image itself was pretty easy to source, I google imaged HEART and found a big anatomical drawing of it, printed it out and there was my image. If you go onto etsy and type in HEART, you'll see really only two images over and over, and this is one of them. Funnily enough, when I was researching heart designs in Feb, I notices that a number of etsy sellers made sure to say that the heart they're selling has been hand drawn by them and is unique, when it's clearly not.

And that's a fascinating thing about the internet. Plagerism is as easy to spot as a google search is to do. And that's where most people will have gone to get their image/essay/article whatever. They forget that if they can do a search to find information, that everyone else connected to the internet can too. In student essays, people forget that the teacher has probably set this essay before and students have already done the copy-and-paste method of essay writing and handed it in before. I have to admit, when I was at uni and the internet was only for freaks, weirdos and geeks, and even they didn't understand how to use it properly, I went online and stole bits of writing from all over and wove it together as an essay, I was lucky, this was a long time ago, when computers had tiny monitors that were black and orange, and my photography lecturer didn't spot the cheatery. As I recall it was only one essay too, because then I figured out the best way to learn was actually do it myself. Which is something parents and teachers tell you for years but you have to wait for your own blinding flash. Why is it so hard to accept other people's wisdom dammit? It'd make stuff so much easier...

Anyway. So I'm also working the props for the play, and I figured I'd do a casual My Creative Space for you. I live in a tiny 2 roomed cottage and I've only jsut gotten my desk here. So before that, it's all about what you can do on the floor. So to your right is My Creative Space. In the photo is my grandmother's huge range of embroidery thread I inherited, all carefully wrapped in seperate colours. My grandmother recylced everything she could, so most of the threads are wrapped around old Christmas Cards she cut to size. There's also a design for embroidery on the paper, mt little black sewing box, a small upright wall with windows (awaiting wall paper), some feathers, a Radical Cross Stitch pattern for a bike that also lives in the embroidery box and, of course, the essential snacks. It's back aching work, working on the floor, but sometimes you jsut gotta work where you can.