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It's a sort of chicken and egg situation. Which happens first, the title for a new work, or the idea for the work itself?
I love titles. A title is an integral part of a piece of art, a sort of explanation of what the work is about, a statement of what is happening in the mind of the creator. An 'untitled' piece has not been completed, in my opinion. It's somewhat like having a baby and not giving it an identity. Sometimes a piece carries a strong message and doesn't seem to need an explanation; a title then just adds something, like the cherry on the sundae. Other times a title clarifies a subtle message. Finding the right title can be as challenging, or as much delight, as designing the rest of the piece.
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Many of my pieces begin because of a title - not always, but often. Maybe titles are synonymous with ideas for me. I keep a journal within reach at all times because titles, therefore ideas, seem to appear when I least expect them. News items are wonderful sources of inspiration. Boris Yeltsin's comment that 'there is no shame in wanting' triggered my imagination for a piece a few years ago. Lectures, books, conversations and, yes, even eavesdropping can provide fodder for my works. On overhearing a conversation about mothers recently, I did a small series based on mothers' admonitions: 'Her mother told her to eat all her vegetables' or 'Her mother told her that redheads don't wear red'. My longest title, on a very small piece, is: 'Her mother told her that while her flowers and her bosom could be fake, her silver and pearls must be real'.
My favourite approach to finding ideas and titles is to play word games. While this can sometimes be just good mental exercise, it often results in artwork. I scan exhibition notices for show themes, then begin playing mental games. For example, our Pieces of Eight group, formed ten years ago to provide a vehicle for eight Houston-area mixed-media artists to exhibit together, recently decided that our exhibitions for this year should follow one idea. The obvious choice was 'pieces'. Each of us will do one 20 x 20 cm (8 x 8 in) piece which will hang with the others as a centerpiece. Additionally we will do our own thing on a larger scale to that theme. What possibilities! By narrowing my thoughts to one idea, I'm allowing my imagination to run amok, and the ideas are flowing.
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I begin by listing 'pieces': piecemeal, hairpiece, centerpiece, puzzle piece... the list can get long. From there I move on to list expressions: 'it's a piece of cake', for example. Then, on to list well-known stories or songs, and then I think about homonyms: peace -piece treaty - piece at any price. I could try peas. Or pease (porridge hot). Once I have exhausted my list of word possibilities, I look over them to find double meanings, or to change one letter in a word to alter the meaning. I plead for help from others, and it becomes a game. The list can get very long, especially when I allow myself the freedom to get silly. While many of the words on the list could not advance beyond a word game, many do have the potential to provide good visuals.
One of my pieces became 'Masters Pieces'. Another, still on the drawing board, will be 'Please, I Want a Big Piece' (of the pie). Libby Lehman, known for her quilts which incorporate machine embroidery, created 'Repiece 1' using pieces cut but left unused from an earlier project. Carolyn Dahl, concerned over an eyesight problem, did an 'eyepiece' using paint and embroidery, using the title 'Birthday Breakdown: It's Not a Piece of Cake'. Flo Barry began by using 'pieces' created in experimental play and ended with an embroidered composition which she titled 'Garden Frost'.
Peggy Moulton's humorous 'cats' began as wordplay, beginning with CATalogue, CATastrophe, AristoCAT, and others. She moved on to using other cat forms incorporating everyday expressions and then doing a series of 'artists' cats'. After almost ten years using cats as her theme, she continues to find feline inspiration, and even diehard cat-haters find they love these beasts.
Many simple nouns are good beginnings for wordplay: head, cup, bird, bag, for example. So are geometric shapes and numbers. Simple words can lead the imagination in many directions as a related word is picked up from the list and carried on.
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Wordplay is only a beginning, but a beginning that can lead to titles which in turn can lead to visual images. Once I reach visual images that have possibilities I like to let them rest, allowing time for further ideas to develop in the mind. Esther Dendel, artist and writer, calls this 'float time'. By not stopping at the first solution, more possibilities develop, leading to further ideas and often a series. And so I go around again: more listening, more observing, more titles, more ideas, more pieces. Where will it end? I hope it doesn't.
This article is from The World of Embroidery, Volume 51 No.4, © Cindy Hickok.