Notes for Mollycoddles Artist's Statement

April 1990

• Craftsmanship - not perfectionism
• exuberance, information, ideas, fantasies, celebrations
• sacraments enclosed/encapsulated/delivered through delight in craftsmanship unhampered by perfectionism
• celebrations - visual puns - not: reticent, afraid, shy words and images executed in fiber many languages
• fun - fantasy - delight - colorful
• fun fantasy delight colorful deliberate but not heavy - open to the happy accident incorporating coincidence, dream, accidence
• informed but not academic intended but not overly serious
• movement topology of fabric
• archetypes (goddess, clown, child, flower girl, virgin bride, femme fatale)
• costume theatre drama comedy irony tragedy romance
• proficient, deft, adept, skill, vision, women's work, tactile, craft/cunning/art/artifice mischief, roguery, spontaneity, expression, rhythm, whimsy, humor, challenge belief, asymmetry, fantasy, substance, value, revelation, enclosure, rootedness
• chromatic - palette - motif
• traditional - irreverent - purposeful
• personal symbols/fish/moon/stars/beads/squares/arrows/rain/triangles/hearts
• tension: between order and chaos literal & figurative sorting choices and randomness
• literary sources indirectly feed any decision
• intuition/unconscious
• trust my work more than my words to reveal my perceptions, responses and experiences
• WORDS LOOKED UP: outrageous, marvel, marvelous, fantastic

This was my first artist's statement. A later version is after. Notice how the essentials which were stirred up in my word list exercise have carried through to the later version.

Mollycoddles

Knitting is my key to the secret garden, my way down the rabbit hole, my looking glass.

Handknitting started it. Transforming string into clothing without expensive and cumbersome equipment has always struck me as magical. Over the years, handknitting has filled me with a sense of accomplishment and integrity, and it has proven a most amenable vehicle for translating inner vision to outer reality.

I love the creative power which knitting gives me, and I've studied it avidly.

I started to exhibit and sell my work as an experiment in justifying my passions for the process and for fiber. Now those passions have transformed me and - look, Ma! - I'm a fiber artist.

I knit from the inside out. Though I work as deliberately as I can, consciously employing knitting lore and traditional techniques, my unconscious is project manager. The concreteness of the activity frees my imagination and it "sees" each piece into existence.

A lifelong word junkie and reader of literature great and small, I've a storehouse of associations vying for expression. I work in bemused contemplation of the battle between reverence and irreverence which occurs in every piece. Perhaps that is what it is really all about.

Molly Gordon
Bainbridge Island, WA
April 1990

Revised Artist's Statement

Knitting is my key to the secret garden, my way down the rabbit hole, my looking glass.

Hand knitting started it. From the beginning the process of transforming string into cloth has struck me as magical. And, over the years, that magical process has had its way with me, leading me from hobby to art. Knitting fills me with a sense of accomplishment and integrity, and has proven a most amenable vehicle for translating inner vision to outer reality.

I knit from the inside out. Though I work quite deliberately, consciously employing both traditional and innovative techniques, my unconscious is the undisputed project manager.

The concrete, repetitive nature of this work frees my imagination and provides many opportunities for happy accident and grace to influence the finished product.

Recently I discovered some childhood drawings: simple, crayoned patchworks that resonate deeply with my fiber work. Inspired and invigorated by a renewed sense of continuity, and awed by the mystery of how creation occurs, I am now knitting richly varied fabrics exploring many patterns, textures and colors. Once knit, the fabrics are pieced to form an always new patchwork from which I make my garments and accessories.

Molly Gordon, Mollycoddles
Bainbridge Island, WA
November 1993

* * *