I am reading The Paper Garden by Molly Peacock. It is about a woman born in 1700 who started doing paper collages, with some other media included, the first mixed media artist. I found a good quote in it
I refer to this as I have been using my game to make some mandalas. My game is a bit like painting by numbers as the colours and shapes cannot be changed but I can still design different mandalas (or images) within the paramaters allowed by my pieces. I have found that I want to build more and more onto my original designs, as well as change them by turning pieces over to see what will happen. It is amazingly restful.Craft is engaging. It results in a product. The mind works in a state of meditation in craft, almost the way we half-meditate in heavy physical exercise. There is a marvelously obsessive nature to craft that allows a person to dive down through the ocean of everyday life to a seafloor of meditative making. It is an antidote to what ails you. ... One can lose oneself, even in paint-by-numbers, and the loss of the self within safe confines nurtures the imagination. To ornament one's existence, even with six paint-by-numbers paintings, is a key to understanding one's personal wealth - and acknowledging that wealth in others too. (p298)
I notice that this book was published in Melbourne, by Scribe Publications Pty Ltd. It is a very heavy book to hold, the paper is all shiny and must be of some very dense paper.
2 comments:
That's a beautiful quote, and there's truth in it. I remember I used to knit when I was walking around on yard duty as a primary teacher, and I found I could more calmly handle the fights and arguments in the playground if I knitted.
Parlance, I used to work with a teacher who could knit while doing yard duty - I could never even try! Nowadays I suppose it would be forbidden in case a child impaled himself on a knitting needle.
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