(sarah cornwell, actlab 11.2008)
blank center square
On
this square I will screenprint the nightmare I have when I sleep under
the otherwise finished quilt. The center image will be the
culmination of the collective energy of a group of people expressing
their nightmares. Will the psychic energy of this project imprint
itself on my own sleep? It has taken many hours of my thought and
focus to facilitate and generate these images, and it will take many
more to fabricate a quilt; these dream images and the idea of the
project will have percolated long in my mind. If I do not dream,
it will stay blank. But I think I will dream.
collective terrors
...dreams make art...
(Beardsley, Rackham and Clarke)
We
are not the first to turn our dreams into image. Though I want to
leave the arrangement of nightmare squares to my intuition as I build
the quilt, these four squares will lie at each corner of the blank
center square, giving the quilt a little fundamental geometry.
These four pieces of art resonate for me as common nightmare ideas: sin
and corruption, live burial, capture and control, monstrosity and size...
nightmare archive
These
bad dreams were dreamed by real people--friends, family, classmates,
friends of friends. I bought good white and violet cotton fabric
at a quilting store and measured and cut it (with scissors, the 18th
century way) into 7 inch squares. For months, I carried these
around, as well as a ziploc full of cloth pens, sharpies and puff
paint, and solicited nightmares. I limited the colors to a cool
palette to maintain a cohesive asthetic. Some people told me the
meaning of their nightmares as they drew, and some did not. I did
not ask. Sometimes the drawing of an interior thought is more
uncanny in its ambiguity than in its intended meaning.
