Material exploration

Small circles from a wool blanket dissolves back into nature

It all begins with the material at hand. I found a blanket in an old and freezing cold house at the end of my road. It had been empty for 2 years, since the previous owner died. The blanket was on hos bed, it looked loved and worn, thinner where a body had rubbed against it, over and over again, thicker at the sides. Three generations ago, people living in my small village would send the wool from their sheep to a small weaving factory and get these kinds of wool blankets in return. These blankets can be found in many a Norwegian home, in different colors and often with floral patterns, and are as such revealing the zeitgeists of a time that was. The colors and pattern comes through almost as a mother of pearl effect in this piece. The material is soft, shape-able but can also stand up, firm but bendable. I played with small circles, and let the material qualities help me create strange abstract rhytms and surfaces. When i worked like this, letting the material and my sensory curiosity guide me, i realize that impressions from my everyday life can sneak in. I see a lot of my local nature in this, but from forest and sea that i walk past, every single day with my dog.

My wandering and aimless sensory curiosity here creative meet Elisabth Grosz's thoughts on territory (Grosz, 2019), described as divisions and demarcations from nature and the forces of the earth; the chaos. Art can bring qualities out of frames and make them perceptible. It sends territories back to the chaos they have been demarcated from for a while. As an example of territories and frames, Grosz points to the house and claims that what architects do is create frames, like walls and rooms, which are in turn filled with furniture and fabrics. She describes this as demarcating the chaos and giving it a place, a space and a time where bodies can live and dwell. She calls the home our most rooted territory. 

In this I glimpse the origin of my wonder in the quiet and cold house of the deceased old man in my neighbourhood, his demarcations from the chaos, materials he has been in direct contact with. I open the frames and put them back together in a search for the atmosphere I encountered in his house, and in collecting materials with wear and tear marks from his life.

A fascinating aspect about this work is how much it changes when the light source shifts. Different areas of the work is illuminated, different colors, rhythms and textures.

Sources:

Grosz, E. (med Dunker, A.). (2019). Kaos, territorium, kunst: Deleuze og jordens innramming. H//O//F. https://urn.nb.no/URN:NBN:no-nb_digibok_2021112348612