Project Seven: Theme

FAMILY VIOLENCE:

Pig Intestines: (A Happy Accident)

I thought that if I could acquire some pig intestines that I would be able to convert them by way of either weaving or crochet to some form of creative textile artistic form. I tracked them down eventually to a pig slaughter house -the staff were beside themselves with laughter and curiosity.

“THEY STINK” to high heaven. The smell alone will not allow them to be any where that requires clean air, let alone offer them as evidence of my work for assessment.

From the outset I imagined that I could dry them in some form of solution containing salt so that they would be cleansed sufficiently to be used as either a decoration or in mixed media.My first mistake was to wrap them up in tin foil so that they would dry out. Not so, but the maggots were of the larger variety.

So I had achieved some small gains for my efforts – not that that was what I was aiming for. The second mistake was surfing the internet for information on curing them. Not so but I did find that they are a delicacy in China and very helpful in how they should be prepared for the meal table YUK! I have the sense that they perhaps should have been used in their wet state and if I delve further into using them will try working with them before drying them. Any how, they dried a dark greyish colour, shrunk down to a thin rubbery string-like fibre and stunk to high heaven. The membranes did stick to the base strand of intestine forming appendages along the length of the grisly flattened out tube.

To cut along story short the moral of which is ‘start with a design from ones source material’ is to build up the evidence of how to go about resolving the final outcome before choosing the materials.

One of my themes is going to be ‘Family Violence’ and the saying that goes with it – “It’s OK to say NO”. What better way of using the dry intestines than adding gesso and acrylic paint together and dipping them in it so that they can be attached to the source material. It’s worth a try – at least the stench will convey a message that Family Violence is not OK but the green colouring gives permission to say that it is OK to say no to family violence.

 

So that I can collect paper cuttings and other material I used filing boxes to put these in until such time as I was ready to work on a particular theme.