....lace

This piece of corrugated cardboard came at the bottom of the bag of Chinese take out. This is the stage of the Lace Futures project where every string you pull on is connected in some way to lace. So there at the bottom of the bag is a piece of corrugated cardboard which has been cut off from a larger piece and cut right through a word, leaving the word "lace." How fortunate. I start wondering about the missing part of the word....
birthplace
bootlace
commonplace
displace
fireplace
interlace
marketplace
misplace
necklace
palace
place
populace
replace
shoelace
showplace
solace
someplace
unlace
workplace

Hy

First Official Meeting of the Year!

As Ted Layton suggested, we need to have some regular meeting times to show progress and discuss what needs to be done. The meeting times will be every Tuesday and Thursday at 12:15pm.

I have chosen these times because it is during the common hour when no classes are scheduled. I have moved it to 12:15 to give you time to get back from other extracurricular activities that may have been scheduled at 11. The meetings will only be as long as necessary. Some days we will just meet and exchange information. There is a lot of work that needs to get done before the end of January. Also, as per Ted's suggestions, we will set up deadlines for the list of work we need done.

Our next meeting is this Thursday @ 12:15. We will meet in the ID Studio by the model of the Kanbar Space. See you then.

Hy

I like the name I chose for this project. "Lace Futures." On one level the name spans time. The very old imagined new again. On another it is about the value of ideas and how we can invest in them. "Get rid of those pork bellies and buy me some more lace futures." I woke up one morning with the end of a dream in my mind. Circular patterns rising off a lace tablecloth. At first they seemed to be flying doilies but they were flying saucers.

no thing

So I'm sitting in a booth at the Trolley Car Diner with my friend David and we are discussing with the waitress whether anything should ever be called something as unappetizing as "breakfast meat." As we wait for lunch which is a breakfast, I catch him up on the Lace Futures project and my recent fascination with voids (see past few entries). As I am talking about nothing which becomes something, he tells me that I am restating a Zen idea. "No thing." Not "nothing," but very much the opposite idea. He puts his finger in the empty coffee cup, stirs it around and shows me that without the "no thing" inside there is no place for the refill of coffee, for which he is waiting.


The character "no thing"

voids

Why are we so interested in what isn't there?

connections

Are the strands of thread connecting the patterned areas or is it the patterned areas which anchor the threads between? In "Man on Wire," the Philippe Petit film about walking the wire between the world trade towers, are we interested in the Towers or the wire?

Highways and Rest Stops

images... I keep seeing different iterations of lace.
A fascinating characteristic of lace are the great voids. Lace is not simply about pattern and repeat. Pattern is dumb in a way. It doesn't trust you to "get it" or "keep it" so it establishes a truth in easily found repetition. There is certainly pattern and repeat in lace but it occurs differently. You think you understand it but then it starts to get sparse. It's a bit like driving on a superhighway. You know there will be other places to stop, other restaurants, gas stations, small towns but then you are out on that long strand of highway with no confirmation that the pattern will repeat. Just when you think you have lost it you pick up the pattern again and there is the sign for the rest stop. It is pattern connected by possibility. There is assurance in pattern, but lace is always a risk.


Hy