In a recent post, https://www.alisonschwabe.com/weblog/?p=7560, I wrote of my interest in the basic symbols, among them + x and o, that humans anywhere on every continent come up with when mark making on any surface, regardless of cultural background, age and level of education. Here I’ve doodled a cross over a circular shape.

I sketched this idea with a couple of quick notes just to mentally keep hold of it until I had time to play with it, knowing that (1) I wanted to audition sheer fabrics, the half cut word ‘transparency’ reminding me to explore overlapping sheers to create pattern shapes (2) I noted the bronze nylon organza which I used bit in the previous work, of which I still have plenty (3) ?white? referring to potential background fabric, but no, not this time anyway. (4) the words ‘repeat pattern’ and ‘blocks’ signal I was thinking about some kind of grid layout.

But grids are not necessarily rigidly linear and square; they can wobble, be intermittent, and there are different types and shapes. And different sizes of grid can appear on the same piece of work.

There’s a lot to think about just there, and to help me clarify my plans for this work I’ll be looking a bit closer this afternoon at the numerous images on my Pinterest ‘grids’ board

Taking just a few minutes each, these small (4cm-7cm) samples were done over a couple of days recently. What they tell me is that I need to follow on with this idea, and that the background probably needs to be stitched and quilted with metallic threads. I do love a bit, or a lot, of glitter! Again, going for the shimmer effect.

I googled “cross shape imposed over circle” and found lots of varied images ranging from religious symbols to those of political and social movements. One of my sisters commented “Bandaids?” when she saw the first of these, and that offers a possible line of thought…. also they suggest some kind of road or rail crossing signs, or maybe whirling helicopter or drone blades! As I began writing this, I was listening to one of the leading scientists on the Webb telescope project that recently began sending fabulous photos from Outer Space, and when I next looked at it I was reminded of those satellites we see pictures of that have ‘arms’ I’m not blessed with engineering or scientific mind, and don’t know my way around a diagram of one of those things, so this is just a general impression.