Chelsea Swan

Whenever I do something big that takes a while I always want to make lots of quick things to shake off the icky feeling that I have been unproductive or wasted my time making one thing when I could have made many. Most of these small projects get started and never finished. It really depends what captures my interest enough. I am learning more and more when something is not good enough, interesting enough or worth doing. I like to make things in series. Making about 20 variations at once as a way of testing different techniques or compositions. I am learning to not go ahead with all 20 and instead just proceed with what is working. I am learning to let go of what is not working and being honest with myself. I don’t have enough time in life and often ideas pass me by and never get explored because I am too distracted.

I am going with the flow more

That being said I saw a used spirograph and grabbed it and I love it. When I was young I don’t think there was a lot of excess. I didn’t have a spirograph until later. I got given a compass and shown how to make similar things using maths. FUN!! It did keep me quiet though as there were endless variations. My point being spirographs remind me of having ADHD. Having to keep me busy and quiet. How much I loved the endless possibilities. How I wanted to methodically make every possible combination. Thinking about colour combinations. Filling sheeps. Loving the spirals and intricacies and connections. Spirographs are very ADHD. Endless connections, scattered and complicated and hard to untangle, darting from here to there. It is chaotic and methodical and planned and unpredictable and beautiful.

I started playing and using my favorite colours on some scrap ink pages.

Then I started thinking about the other making game my family had me do when I was young. It sounds so stupid now and so clearly a shut up and be quiet activity. I went to my grandmothers after school and during holidays. She was the one who mostly gave me these activities. This one was fill a sheet with as many shapes as you can think of. I did it constantly. I have never been a doodler. I took this all very seriously. It had purpose. It was focused and methodical. I would always be pleased if I came up with new shapes.

I decided to make stencils and first tried spray paint but it cold outside and i decided to do it indoors. Bad choice. I switched to using the graffiti marker ink refills and a sponge. This took quite a bit of experimentation. Then I again added the spirographs.

I wanted areas of chaos and empty white space. This is how it feels.

I don’t know where I am going to go with them next but I have been playing with adding sparkles. Everything I do is usually symbolic of something. I think that why I like semiotics so much. The spirographs are now ADHD, the shapes are childhood, the sparkles are covering the sadness and bad things etc.