Unmade/Remade I

Unmade/Remade I is a work I started in June 2012. First I stretched canvas over a 1m x 1m frame (I put together the frame myself - but had the wood cut to size and bevelled). I then pulled the canvas off the frame and unpicked it, unweaving and separating the threads into two piles, depending on which way they were aligned in the canvas (e.g. horizontal or vertical if you always looked at the canvas from the same side). I am now unchipping (with mallet and chizel) the frame. It is quite hard going - I think I need to get a much thinner, much sharper chizel.
When one side is unchipped I will use half of one of the piles of threads to wrap the splinters of wood together, before repeating the unchipping and wrapping for the other three sides. I am unsure exactly how the wrapping will go - and what from it will take at the minute, as with everything I'll work out the most natural way of doing it as I go.

I finally feel like I am getting somewhere with Unmade/Remade I! I'm unchipping the wood of the stretcher, it is slow work but intriguing in the way the wood breaks up, the difference between the wood on the outside and that on the inside and the knots. The knots are especially interesting - they are really tough and seem more sap-drenched than the rest of the material. They are also stoppers - when shards of wood are splintering off from the whole they stop at the knots. This was unexpected, from memories of popping the knots out of the garden fence when I was little I thought they would be slightly separated from the rest of the wood and would break out of the frame easier. 

The work feels in a good place, I am getting to work on it almost every week and have sorted a way of making drawings from the wood - which i'll chat about in my next post.