Sewing not spinning

January 29th, 2009 at 06:20pm SabrinaGsch

Last September I married into the Spingarn family. Among other things, the Spingarns have spun documentaries and medical diagnoses. They also co-crafted the NAACP. 

Perhaps it was hubris to think that by accruing a new name that means “to spin yarn,” I would magically be able to do just that, on my own, without any instruction. 

Today I sat at my Ashford Traditional spinning wheel and made a few lines of thread that were alternately wiry, fluffy, thick and thin. I had no control over how they turned out. As I worked visitors came in and out; conversing, looking, questioning, commenting, and ocassionally judging. I was judging too, much more harshly than them, and failed to pass my own standards. 

So I abandoned the wheel. I’m too much a beginner to interact with others while trying to get the rhythm down. First I shot a  b + w Super 8 cartridge of Columbus Circle. Close up shots of the lines sprayed on the road, the taxis’ ads, the babies tucked into strollers. Then wide shots of the park, the Trump Hotel, Central Park South and Central Park West. Then a second roll of b + w, tri-X this time, which is grainier, of traffic circling around and around and around and around. The camera makes a sound very similiar to a spinning wheel- a quiet, soothing hum. Imagine an air conditioner in a hotel room. 

If the spinning wheel + viewers = too much distraction, then shooting film = not enough interaction. So I took out my plastic bag of 16 mm film and dumped it onto a table. I cut strips of different films (some that I shot, some I bought from eBay, and some given to me by a kind archivist who took over a fashion film collection that FIT wanted to get rid of) and I sewed them together into squares. At some point the squares will make a quilt-like formation. I realized that I had finally hit on an activity that I could do while speaking to visitors about my work, the museum, Columbus Circle, Joan Rivers’ new book on plastic surgery, the total cost of Joan Rivers plastic surgery ($80,000, apparently), analog to digital conversion, the meaning of the word spinster, and why the spinning wheel was all set up but not being used. 

-Sabrina Spingarn Gschwandtner

Entry Filed under: in the studio