Sunday, March 30, 2008

My Repetition Project Ideas

I'm considering doing embroidery, as long as the stitching counts as repetition. I want to stitch the image of a dream catcher, where certain creatures and images are entangled in the dream catcher's web, while others are entwined in the feathers that hang from the main ring. I also want to go for a theme of elemental balance, where each of the hanging feathers represent a different element, and even the items entwined in the web of the dream catcher represent the harmony that can be achieved between opposites. As far as the underlying meaning is concerned, the stitching represents that, at least to me, personality is not a joint, fluid thing, but a combination of all the little parts of the self--some of which contradict one another--to create a greater thing. I tend to see my self as being a precarious balance of fluid traits that sometimes rearrange themselves to fit the situation, but the main joint image that they portray is always the same.

A dream catcher, according to Native American stories, traps bad dreams, but lets good ones filter through the feathers and into the dreamer's mind. This can be paralleled to the complicated nature of one's personality and how it is expressed, because what someone sees as being 'harmful' or 'helpful' is personal. In this way, much like a dream catcher, people filter their personalities, trapping certain parts of them inside, and letting other parts pass through for others to see. I know that there are certain parts of myself that I would rather people see more than others, and I therefore feel that the dream catcher is a parallel for myself and the way I filter my personality.

I've never done embroidery before, but i have all this random embroidery stuff sitting around the house and have always been curious, so I think I'll be able to manage.

However, if this idea doesn't work, i don't really know what I want to do...
I could make something out of those little Dove candy wrappers...
--you know, the ones with the little pieces of advice in them--
because i have quite a few of them. I could use them to represent how we shape ourselves by the way we react to outside information (believing it, being skeptical of it, etc.) but I'm not exactly sure how I would achieve this. I like the dream catcher idea better, overall.

4 comments:

Lynette said...

Cheri,
Embroidery is fine. You should know though that it is REALLY time consuming. You will have to spend many hours on this! I can teach you some stitches. Bring your stuff on Tuesday!

Sarah said...

cool interpretation of "repetition"! the imagery sounds interesting. lynette is right, you'll spend a LOT of time on this, but it'll be worth it.

Amanda said...

wow! thats crazy and pure genious! i love you idea, deffinaly gonna be a lot of work, but all worth it in the end! =^_^=

melississippi said...

i love embroidery! it does take a long time, but is thankfully something you can do while watching tv. and if you wanted to make it really 3D you could embroider on fabric and then wrap the fabric around something