In logic theory, 'fuzzy logic' is an approach to variable processing that attempts to problem solve using imprecise data spectra and heuristics, or ‘trial and error’ processes. Using fuzzy logic it is possible to obtain ‘an array of accurate conclusions’ from open-ended inputs. With some creative interpretation, this might also describe artistic practice, or the relationship between an artwork and its audience.

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At the centre of this body of work is a large-scale knitted tapestry drawing from a story in Homer’s Odyssey, illustrated by John William Waterhouse in a 1912 painting, Penelope and her suitors.

 

While he journeys, Odysseus’ wife Penelope weaves a burial shroud for her late father in law, Laertes. Her weaving, undone each night and begun again each morning, is a ploy to avoid acknowledging the suitors that appear in her husband’s absence. Interpretations of this story often take this trickery to be an illustration of fidelity, but her motives are perhaps more ambiguous: her weaving empowers her to express and assert her own narrative amongst the machinations of the men, and other external forces. It also makes her one of the first women artists, or master craftsperson, to be described in Western literature. 

 

Like Penelope, I find myself working through the dilemma of the artist through history: shielding myself from competing, external distractions to explore an idea from multiple angles, and perhaps towards multiple conclusions.

 

Working from open-endedness to precision, and back again. Again and again.