I don’t always think things through when I first start them.  Scratch that.  When it comes to art, I rarely think things through when I first start them.  In life I try to have a plan, in fact I really dislike not having a plan.  Maybe that’s why I throw it all out the window for my art and just dive right in.

That’s what happened with my knitted canvasses and with applying them to shows.  It was only one I actually got accepted into a show that I had to figure out how my new creations would be hung.  See, the back of my knitted canvasses is just… knitting.  There’s no hook, no frame.  For the first one I made I just hammered in the corners to hang it up.  But I don’t really want to put holes in all of my nice new canvasses.

I was stumped.  I thought of wood glue and picture hooks, of superglue and a plank of wood, even of framing the pieces or attaching them to a board that could then be hung.  I had to consider whether I wanted people to be able to see the back, how far away from the wall I wanted it to be, and whether the option I chose would work for the four foot piece as well as the ten inch piece.

A few weeks ago, Jen Stark from exposedseam.com, came to my apartment to give me input on my knitted canvasses.  I met Jen by chance at the Fort Point Open Studios in 2011 and managed to get up the courage to tell her about my knitted canvasses, which were at that point only an experiment and an idea.  As a knitter herself, I had hoped that Jen would have some input on the fiber side of my work.  She had an idea that has, so far, solved my hanging problems.

What if I threaded wire through the knitting in the back to make a hook?

Of course, I left it until the last minute and got some wire the night before I had to drop off my painting at the Arsenal Arts Center.  Thankfully, Jen’s idea worked incredibly well.  It managed to get my piece on the wall without damaging it, adding extra visual elements, or being extremely difficult/costly to do.

So far on my newly revamped blog I’ve been writing a lot about my ideas, whether silly or serious.  But I also want to pay attention to all the incredible ideas that happen around me, both directly and indirectly.  It’s amazing what we can pick up from the world if only we screw up the courage to look or even ask what’s out there.