Narrative in Art

While I was sitting at my desk drawing and pondering this month’s Creative Every Day theme of “stories”, I was thinking of the various uses of narrative in art. I wondered what role story or narrative played in my art work. At that moment I happened to look up at this old piece sitting in my window sill.  This is a mixed media piece I did for a drawing class assignment;  the ground is an old pop up street map of  Zürich.  There are three separate fold-out pages.

I'm calling it Nest Womb; it was done at a time during which I was contemplating life cycles and fertility.  I was on the road towards leaving my childbearing years, and my daughter was about to enter hers.

This artwork very clearly tells a story of birds in a nest, the womb as nest.

Going along with my recent adventures into using needlecraft in art, I've decided I want to reinterpret this piece in fiber, in 3D.

Here is the uterus I worked on this weekend.  The hope is that it will be more recognizable by the time I'm through!  I knitted it first, then began the fulling process.  I wanted very much to do it completely by hand; I just can't rationalize using all the energy the washer takes just for this one small item.  I worked on it for what seemed like forever and I just wasn't seeing any real progress.  So I gathered up all of my red and orange dishtowels -luckily I have a lot of those! - and I threw it all in the washer.  I will wait for it to dry, then take a needle to it.  Plus, I'm going to embellish the fallopian tubes and I just realized I forgot the ovaries.  What on Earth was I thinking?!  I told DH I was making this just in case I ever lost track of my own original.

This is what I was working on while thinking those thoughts up there.  Along the same theme of using needlework in art, I've been experimenting with using thread to draw and paint.  This is the sketch I've been working on for a crochet wall hanging I want to do.  I'm trying to get the impression of tumbling from the upper right down to the left.  My inspiration is waterfalls and radial forms in nature, such as flowers, snowflakes, and ocean creatures.  I can see that I was restricted by the borders of the paper.  I want more negative space between the various wheel shapes.  I think maybe I should not have the top wheel be the largest.  The snail shapes on the left are turning the other way to give tension.

So, does this tell a story?  I think in a way it does, in that the shapes are reminiscent of objects in nature.  Not sure on this.  What do you think?