Category: Distraction

Time to find focus

1/4/2025

Depicting a distracted mind might not be helping

Disrupting the grid, upending predictable patterns. Acrylic on canvas, sewing pins, 24” x 24” (Carlyn Yandle)

If the person I share the bed with is to be believed, this morning (as of this writing) I announced in my sleep: “I’m sorry we’re going to martial law again.”

I have only a dim notion of what martial law entails. I’m also not sure if this ‘sorry’ is in the Canadian sense, as in “Sorry bus full” on the rush-hour B-Line that really means “Suck it up, buttercup.” Or is it regret that martial law is again here? In any event, I’m impressed that my id (if you’re a Freud follower) even has a notion of the word ‘sorry.’

I assumed this bit of sleep babble was a call to end this seasonal distraction or maybe our collective distractive state in general. I admit I am worried about my own eroding focus exacerbated by the commercially- and politically-corrupted internet. And I’m not alone; half of US adults are getting their newsbits on TikTok, part of the bombardment of unrelated snippets of (mis)information from maybe humans but increasingly AI.

Thoughts of doom-scrolling, pop-up ad windows, investment-building booms, Amazon fulfilment centres and faceless Cloud storage mega-facilities. Acrylic on canvas, 34” x 27” (Carlyn Yandle)

Over the years I have developed a near-obsessive way of working to evoke a seductive, unsettling visual field, somewhere between pretty and pretty distracting. This laborious process immerses the body in the subject while opening up time and space for the mind to consider some questions like: Are American reporters putting themselves in danger by exposing white supremacy groups? Is it safe to be trans in a small US town? Will women run the risk of more hate and harassment as the top trending phrases, “Your body, my choice” and “Get back to the kitchen” spread online? Is Canada the next alt-right nation? I’m concerned that as long as we’re preoccupied by our next Amazon orders to be fulfilled, or wasting hours killing foes in Call of Duty or dreaming of a career as an influencer, we’re not seeing some harsh political realities coming soon to a White House near you.

I wish I could be content to paint pastoral scenes or voluptuous florals that people would actually want hanging on their walls but this is where I’m at. I lose myself in this work of painting acrylic skins, slicing them into razor-sharp edges and right angles, then positioning them, layer after layer with tweezers and brayers, building and negating grids until my eyes start to cross and my back seizes up. And as the old song goes, I still haven't found what I'm looking for.

I’m starting to think that my martial-law proclamation is directed at my own obsessiveness and toward good orderly direction. We’re all going to need that kind of focus in 2025.

From mind-numbing to mindful

9/30/2024

Dropping out is easy. This art practice is about tuning in

Flat on my back in the chair last week, the dentist had just plunged the second needle into my eroded molar area and her assistant was now affixing the rubber dam. This is when my go-to flight response kicked in: I'm not really here! I'm not really here! I'm not really here!

Full disassociation is appropriate when two dental professionals are bearing down on you with drill and suction tube and you are required to relax your gag reflex. But checking out of reality to avoid the pain of the Divided States of America’s Presidential election campaign is not the answer.

In this Disinformation Industrial Complex age it’s tempting to drop out and go on a bed-date with the vape pen to binge Love Is Blind. But we need to stay engaged — yes, even Canadians. We need to tune in to reliable sources of news,* turn on our own brains and hearts so we can discern the rational from the irrational and the hopeful from the hateful. And when the time comes (in any public election), we need to turn to voting our own conscience and not what others expect from us.

The trick is to do it all without risking mental instability, starting with the premise that we are not all going to Hell in a handcart. We need to believe in ourselves as part of the greater good. Adding to ‘believing’ is the need for time away from the too-many screens. True, a growing number of US adults (58 per cent) say they prefer to get their news on their digital devices but we can choose which news sources and the conditions for absorbing it.
This is how I approach any artwork: through belief and time. I believe that a large-scale or complex project can and will emerge through small, individual actions. I give myself the gift of time to focus on one stitch, one paint layer, one quilt-block, one knot, one row. Or, for the purpose of this weekly writing, one sentence at a time.
The following meandering, improvisational stitching-painting hybrid (linen on wood stretcher) was started this past spring, growing in complexity over the summer:

Cotton floss, monoprint on paper, 10” x 14”I’m not sure if what I’m making these days reflects what I’m listening to, or if I’ve devised this improvisational way of working to allow my brain to fully concentrate on the information. I do know that this voyage of discovery is a symbiotic relationship, a positive-feedback loop that drives me to continue developing this emerging work in the studio while reaching a deeper understanding of the world beyond.
In another example, this recent exploration into redwork embroidery could have been influenced by tuning into news features on Vancouver’s global investment-induced construction boom, housing shortage, “renovictions” and homelessness.

Cotton floss, monoprint on paper, 10” x 14”

At the time of this publishing there are 42 days of increasingly outrageous tactics before a new US president is elected. However we get there, a resting heart rate is required to see fear-mongering for what it is: just a desperate power grab.
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*For those looking online in Canada for news that means looking elsewhere besides Facebook and Instagram, since parent company Meta chose to block their users from quality and local news instead of paying those news sources. (Google is exempt from the Online News Act after it agreed to pay Canadian news publishers $100 million a year.)

Circular thinking can be a flow state too

6/2/2024

I opened up my studio yesterday to the public to get some general feedback on a new series of paintings. Because even though I’m compelled to keep working on it and even though I’m enjoying a growing proficiency in this mash-up of stitching and painting I’m having trouble articulating why — or if — they’re not just pretty faces. Mostly I've been answering their questions with questions of my own.

“Why” has always been the trouble. Also aggravating: Why ask why?
This is the reason I’ve named this growing collection of paintings that all basically follow my own set of rules of engagement Circular Thinking. The connotation is negative but hear me out.

Asking ourselves existential questions while we create is infuriating (Shut the hell up, Inner Critic) but it’s also part of a process that can guide us to where we want to land. I would like to be settled with the obvious reason that it’s my route into flow, or actual, real fun. (The “so fun” episode of the We Can Do Hard Things podcast here was recommended to me by my sister.) And they do get me there: into the flow of playing with colours and opacities, of focusing on one stitch at a time, watching how each layer of paint or stitching changes perception.

But I can’t settle with just what’s in it for me. Making is my way of connecting with the world. Much of my work is collaborative, so those involved naturally have a stake in the final projects. Often that’s in the gathering of abject materials, or the actual simple hand-working methods that bring folks together. So it’s easy to see the ‘why’ in these crafted objects and fields; beyond their own resonance they stand as an archive of the social interaction, an artifact of the engagement with materials.

The Circular Thinking series has none of that. Each painting is a singular, intimate effort. It does not reveal any agency embedded in unwanted/useless materials and objects. So in the making, despite the flow part, I feel a whisper of guilt and shame that many women of a certain age might also hear when not doing for others: selfish, self-indulgent, self-absorbed.

There is definitely something in the ‘self’ there that is the driving force in these improvisational, unpredictable and unsettling paintings: self-care. I ache for solid, reliable ground in these perilous times so I start with a grid, like the criss-cross of rebar that sets the concrete footings in every new tower crowding the Vancouver skyline, or a typical nine-patch quilt block. Nine eight-inch-diameter circles in a 24" x 24" "block" anchor to that grid and then I’m off, free of all straight lines, off-setting those circles by half in paint, offsetting again with more layers of colour in paint or thread until I arrive at an attractive/distractive done-ness. It is an improvisational process of revealing and concealing (repeat!) petal-like sections of circles, creating unsettling, kaleidoscopic fields. It is the kind of all-consuming process that reduces hours to minutes, that absorbs all attention, a safe space away from the visual onslaught of social media, yet reflective of our ‘everything is awesome’ screen-field of vision.

It might be easier to eat this elephant one bite at a time by knocking down specific why-questions:

Why paint?
Colour-play. Especially important in this watery corner of the world. It can also act as a dye/stain.

Why canvas?
It’s fabric, with so much possibility for exploring its essential characteristics.

Why the wood stretcher?
Another fibre product that is a natural with fabric. It's basically a quilt frame or embroidery hoop for painters. Building stretchers and stretching the canvas is an investment in the project ahead (a trick I learned from my father @dennisyandle).

Why the stitching?
I like to needle at the hierarchy of painting over craft processes. Each stitch feels like I’m sticking it to convention. Stitching into painting offers the digestible label of “expanded painting practice.”

Why all the quilt references?
The geometry of quilt designs is fascinating, mesmerizing. I have little aptitude but a lot of respect for the beauty of mathematics. The tactility of that geometry connects to present and past makers of objects that exist as art pieces or as items of comfort, utility and gifts, an expression of love. This is a less-digestible "expanded quilting practice": improvisational, mixed-media works with none of that cushy filling.

$Picture$

The geometry of circular quilt designs remains a beautiful, captivating mystery.

Why this scale?
24" x 24” is my standard sample-block size. I dream of an exhibit of all my sample blocks blanketing white-cube gallery walls.

Why two-dimensional?
Closer inspection reveals the third dimension, in the stitching. Also, the aforementioned sample-block dream show is a three-dimensional, immersive space of pattern and colour chaos. (I want to go to there.)

Circular Thinking is both the name of this latest series of grid paintings and shorthand for how I approach every new project: play, think, write, share, think, research, share, write, repeat.

Through this writing part of that feedback loop I can see I just might stop torturing myself with the existential Why and get back into that flow.

@carlynyandle

Is Instagram a godsend for artists, a social drug, or worse?

11/14/2014

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I've been giving Instagram a lot of thought. And I've concluded that I'm exhausted.

(Photo by Carlyn Yandle)

I realize that Instagam can turn a small-town lady with a crafty idea into an international business success story, but that's quickly eclipsed by thoughts of more insidious, multinational business antics: top-level consumer marketers who court those Grammars' "Insta-fluence": Nike, Holiday Inn, Burberry. (More at this New York Times article.)

I think about how encouraging it is to have people following you in your creative endeavours, but then I think about the shared similarities among the top social-media savvy "micro-celebrities", our exploding narcissistic culture and the easy-pickins' exploitation for big-brand profit and almost-free fame.

I realize that Instagram can open a door for artists to the big wide sharing world and that by refusing to open that door runs the risk of a lifetime of professional obscurity. Indeed, "Instagram is custom made for the art world," says New York Observer opinion-writer/billionaire financier/art collector Adam Lindemann. But he then adds: "You get a quick flash of an image with virtually no text or explanation. There’s no need to read. It’s perfect for people with zero attention span, zero education and zero interest in learning about anything—perfect, in other words, for the art collectors of today. You could go so far as to say that the successful art of this current generation must be Instagramable to succeed, and if it doesn’t look good on Instagram, it ain’t working in this instant-gratification art world: goldfish have longer attention spans than ‘grammers."

(Photo by Ariel Zambelich/WIRED)

I realize that it's free and with the help of such apps as Latergram, it's possible to keep the phone-pecking at a daily minimum, but I can't help thinking about these guys: the Instagram and Facebook engineers who recently moved all Instagram photos to Facebook's data centre, without any users the wiser, as reported by Wired.

I realize that this is a wee worried whisper in the hell-yeah storm of 200 million mostly female, mostly under-35 Instagrammers. And I realize that I may be overthinking the whole thing. I could be expanding my visual horizons, connecting with artists around the world, but instead I'm fixated on what becomes of the millions of bits of personal information being sucked into that data centre in Forest City, North Carolina (as suggested in the Wired article) every day, and how that data has been used and how it will be, soon enough.

A slideshow still from How the NSA Almost Killed the Internet (wired.com)

Last year the FBI and the National Security Agency were handed over the ability to suck up people's photos, videos, emails and documents, after the largest businesses online allowed the agencies access to their servers. According to a ground-shaking Washington Post article last year, "The National Security Agency is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans, according to senior intelligence officials and top-secret documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden."

I think about Instagram and I think about what's monitored, what's censored (no pubes!), what's the next app to eclipse Instagram's success (Snapchat or Bolt?). I think about how all these social media apps contribute to the time-sucking attention to that little gadget that is now as much a part of the restaurant table as the cutlery and that has turned a busload of riders into something resembling group prayer. I think about how Rogers is a dealer, getting rich on its users' increasing dependency on data, more data.

Am I overthinking Instagram and the rest of the global social re-wiring? Yes, but I might not be thinking about it enough either.

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Words are not enough to capture the seduction of distraction

6/6/2014

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Distracts #1, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 33"W x 27"H.

To me, the easiest part about carving out a place in the visual arts world is writing something about it. Yet most of my artist colleagues don't know how I make myself do it on a weekly basis. Easy. It only took 20 years of deadline writing for newspapers.

'Easiest' isn't quite the right word; it's more like 'reliable.' I can rely on the fact that if I sit down at a blank screen, soon words will link into sentences, inspired and connected by images. It's really just a habit at this point. If I don't get the chance to try to make literal sense of the past week, things start to swirl up into a ball of confusion. But once it's out there, it's done and I can move on.

Distracts #2, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 33"W x 27"H.

If only my days at my shared studio were as reliable. I wish I could start the morning with the same confidence as I stare at the freshly gesso'd blank canvas, and have the same conversation I get from writing a column (okay, blog). The two sides of my brain do not dance together at the studio. I do not enjoy the small eureka moments of understanding, or any great leaps forward in concept. And unlike weekly writing, I can't see that I'm creating any history of my process/progress.

Distracts #3, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 33"W x 27"H.

Some days I feel like I'm just painting myself into corners, or cycling back to where I started months ago. I often need to call in the reinforcements — artist friends — for a studio visit, when I ask, "Am I flat-lining here?" or "Am I a one-trick pony?"

But words work for me. Letters soon coalesce into strands of ideas and at the moment of this writing I see one taking shape as I type, and drop in these images of my latest paintings.

Distracts #4, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 33"W x 27"H.

This much I know is true: This is the most distractive time in human history and I live in a neighbourhood that is arguably the nation's capital of everything yoga. As I ride to the studio, I'm generally pre-occupied with this idea of the swelling dedication to personal, meditative practice juxtaposed with the seduction of our screens and the growing realization that our personal identities can be stolen in a click of a button.

Distracts #5, 2014, acrylic on panel, 14"W x 16"H.

I think about how we crave peace of mind and heart but are captivated by the fantastic and unfathomable, packaged in high-def or in 3-D, with same-day shipping, something to Like, Share, Tweet, and post to Instagram/Tumblr/Pinterest.

Some days at the studio I just need to retreat, retrace past meditative practices, like lace-making. Other days I need to represent the fracturing of that focus.

If painting really is a conversation the painter has with the materials, surface, technique and image, I'm seeing that this is talking about mapping out an understanding of the here and now, where words fail.

Distracts #6, 2014, acrylic on panel, 16"W x 20"H.

It's somewhere in the uneasy spaces between the digital and the handmade, the personal craft expression and the art and decor industry.

Put into words, it's a little terrifying to be in unexplored territory with no obvious path ahead.

I'm just bush-wacking, looking for a clearing.

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The unfathomable drives next generation of artists

4/17/2014

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Detail from Emily Carr Masters student Duobaitis' ink on board work, '(re) formatting', 2014.

How we're feeling about our place in an uncertain world is evident on art school walls.

This is where the next generation of emerging artists grapples with the shape-shifting natural and built environment, consciously or subconsciously.

The increasingly puzzling, distracted, technically fraught visual field reflects students' reactions and responses to the relentless and devastating images of catastrophe and the bombardment of data-graphics, encompassing everything from micro-surgical robots to data-graphics on global human migration patterns.

It's all enough to make a person retreat to a quiet corner to knit or knot. Or draw. Or collage. Or build.

Dallas Duobaitis' recent work in his first year Masters program deals with some of those topics — maybe. That's the beauty of abstracted images; they engage the ideas and thoughts of the viewer who is also negotiating this particular, uncertain time and space. This artwork resonates because it is of our time.

Detail from Motut-Firth's installation (Carlyn Yandle photo)

Monique Motut-Firth (disclosure: friend) also grapples with those themes in her first-year Masters installation, part of the It's Not You, It's Me show at the Concourse Gallery. Her found print images of largely domestic objects (including pictures of women) are meticulously constructed into robot-esque clusters that hover on the gallery wall, in conversation with Duobaitis' work that includes a motion-sensor-activated oculus/dream-catcher contraption (see below).

This emerging genre of work is not created in a Vancouver vacuum but is in conversation with creatives all over the world, in reaction to innovations that provide answers to problems but also more questions, as seen in this documentary from Japan on the future of robots in our daily lives and this one on the horrifying/banal reality of surveillance in the UK.

Duobaitis and his latest installation at Emily Carr University.

***
The Emily Carr University gallery walls have since been transformed for the annual Foundation Show, often the very first showing of work from the university's first year students as young as 18 and from all over the world. The Foundation Show continues to April 26.

Motion sensors activate Duobaitis' chilling/thrilling installation of metal and threads. (Carlyn Yandle photos)

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QR button blanket: Epic fail or a larger reading?

3/21/2014

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After three months of sewing one donated button after another into a giant QR code, the big moment arrived this week: time to stand back and scan that baby with a reader app, translating this quilt-thing to read, "The devil is in the details."

Except it didn't read. Don't panic!, I thought, then spent the entire next day working with a photo image of the QR Button Blanket, Photoshopping in more buttons and darker buttons and bigger buttons, trying to add the minimum amount of density for the software program to register the pattern and work its magic to produce the punchline. No luck; even a sliver of white in one button cluster puts a wrench in the wholecloth works. I filed this one under the category of Epic Fail, not worth finishing it as intended, framing it in black bias binding. I do not want to create something that is 'still' good; I want the thing to be good, full stop.

Failure demands confronting the why. Why conceive such a laborious, risky project in the first place? Why endure the painstaking process when half-way through it was becoming abundantly clear that this was not going to 'read'?

But there is another power here, and that's tied to the process beyond the product. The achievement may lie in the endurance (in an increasingly A.D.D. world) that is not necessarily attached to the product after all. It may be in seeing it through, without the promise of a sure result. The power may lie in the humble, everyday materials and the community of women who contributed all those bits of plastic saved from the waste stream. (There should really be a global ban on production of billions of plastic buttons. Plant-based plastic, bone, wood, and leather- or fabric-wrapped tin buttons eventually return to the earth.)

But what's really starting to click in for me is the cultural reference of this button-grid design. A decade ago, it might have been viewed as an oddly arranged colour field or an abstracted grid but we're so acclimatized to codes that the pattern begs to be 'read.' The fact that this is irresolvable might be annoying. And that's interesting.

Wavy Gravy, marker on synthetic velvet, 58" x 43"

The possible multiple references could be more engaging than the one answer provided by a QR reader app. There's something to be learned in the discomfort of the open-endedness.

Moments like these, I seek out the artists who have embraced what New York artist Polly Apfelbaum calls the 'tough beauty' of visually exciting works that incorporate everyday materials in surprising ways. Apfelbaum, who calls herself a bad crafter, articulates the process of hard work in this video.

"I work all the time," she says, without a schedule and in a highly experimental way. "You make the work and then you hope for the best."

"It's very important to get your fuck-you back."

I'm going with that.

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procraftination spikes when math hits

1/24/2014

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I was told there would be no math.

Turns out there’s nothing but math in making things, and all kinds of math in packaging it all up for clients and justifying it all to Revenue Canada.

I love to build stuff but I am not wired to readily tackle building an Excel spreadsheet, or at least I tend to steer clear of that sort of construction for fear of stirring the ugly, frustrated beast within. So instead of getting myself educated — knowledge is power yada yada — I go into serious procraftination mode. Need a project budget by Monday? Who wants a pair of knitted slippers!

Excel what now?
The only thing I excel in when faced with spreadsheets and cost projections is making busy-busy with the hands, anxiety being the main fuel source for my handwork. I might even chart my productivity during tax time, if I could only drag my eyes away from my latest DIY obsession.

‘But it’s so simple. You don’t even have to do math.’
Can’t talk; making household cleaner out of orange peels.

‘There are lots of marketing courses for artists.’
Orrrr… a jewelry-making course, to make tiny silver sculptures! Sign me up.

I am aware that there are marketing resources and income tax tips just for visual artists but my feeble research into online tutorials and tips is quickly sidetracked:

'Gridus' served up by a Moscow-based design studio. (artlebedev.com)

In my defence, it’s better not to try to grapple with the month-end reconciliation reports and annual income projections, because even I don’t have to do the math to know that the numbers are bad. What other kind of a business model has galleries demanding artists pay a submission fee (typically $35-50) just to send images of their work, then, if accepted, exhibit fees to show the work that the artists pay to ship to and from the gallery, with a commission to the gallery if the work is sold? That's before any travel expenses to actually attend the gallery opening. Any accountant would advise switching occupations.

You don't have to crunch those figures to understand that unless you've got a highly marketable 'product', this is no way to make a living.

The fact is, artists are easy-picking. We will do what we must for free, even paying to get it out there to be part of the dialogue. We may not make it as models in business, but at least we're making.

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Time to find focus

From mind-numbing to mindful

Circular thinking can be a flow state too

Is Instagram a godsend for artists, a social drug, or worse?

Words are not enough to capture the seduction of distraction

The unfathomable drives next generation of artists

QR button blanket: Epic fail or a larger reading?

procraftination spikes when math hits

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