Grrrrrr

I feel like growling - as unbelievably I have another cold!  So despite making it to the studio, I found myself completely ineffective, so just wasted 3 hours stood staring at scraps of paper, bits of thread and generally being confused.   There are a few key themes that I am trying to illustrate through my work, and it is a much more conceptual way of working than I am used to.  I am trying to show time through the use of materials, depict memory found and memory lost, a way of containing or preserving time and memory.  I want to find a way to embed these ideas through the process of making.   The handmade quality of my work is important and I don't want the concept to overpower the making of it - I really dislike the sort of art that has some deep meaning, but looks badly made.  I worry that although I have narrowed my research down, there are so many avenues to explore that I am still confused about what I am doing.

Continuing with ideas around the breakdown printing method - this appeals to me as the words I have written slowly become less clear, mimicking the way our memory works - but a piece of cloth somehow doesn't seem enough - and now what to I do with it?

A disastrous attempt using chemicals to create photographic prints. The photo of the process looks more interesting than the prints, mainly because I missed the essential final part of the process which was to wash the papers, so they all slowly developed to leave me with a nice collection of blank brown pages?!   Perhaps if I filmed this accident, that could be a way of illustrating time (me? film something?  EEK)

Slowly burning pages to extract them from an old book, makes a good image.

Wrapping and binding as a way to preserve or contain.

There are ideas here, but the experimentation all seems a little haphazard, I feel I need a process or perhaps certain techniques to help pin my work down.  Questions, that's what I've got lots of!