Were you to plug me in and chart my vitals this week you’d find my stress levels well into the red zone. I am stressed for many of the typical reasons: visit from mom, end of year school demands, party planning, broken appliances... This morning, while dusting this quilt I found at a yard sale some years ago, I was briefly caught in a trance of sorts. I saw the thousands of tiny stitches, the countless little efforts of cutting, tucking, and holding the cloth in place. The quilt was briefly transformed into a time scape of someone’s patient and careful effort toward beauty. As I stood there holding my duster and witnessing the intention and skill of some other artist I felt the band of stress across my abdomen release, I felt my tightened shoulders relax. Art therapy, and second hand at that!
on trying new things
Meet Lou Lou! Since her recent conception she’s talked of nothing but starring in a music video. She got a small taste of it in our recent ukulele group production and she’s hungry for more. Lou Lou’s aspirations aside, she represents a step I am taking toward collaborative art. I imagine her and others like her playing parts in a story written by one of the many creative people I know, set to music created by yet other creative humans. I imagine a small wooden theatre on a lush green lawn. There would be popcorn and beer.
Morel mushrooms
I love it that these strangely beautiful mushrooms grow most abundantly in woodlands that have recently endured forest fires. They are a reminder of the unpredictable gifts that emerge from catastrophe. Morels go by many other quirky names: dryland fish, hickory chickens, merkels, and molly moochers, to name a few. This small work is for sale in my Etsy shop.
chanterelles
Wikipedia claims these fantastic fungi are among the richest food sources for vitamin D. How thoughtful of mother nature to cultivate them in these Pacific Northwest woodlands, where sunshine is so often hard to come by. This tiny work is for sale in my etsy shop.
like Dr. Frankenstein
Picture me stitching little pale arms onto a tiny pale figure, silver scissors snapping snipping, needle hand doing it’s graceful rigid dance: puncture, glide, pull taught, puncture, glide, pull taught....
I am making a puppet, perhaps just for company, or maybe for something more.
on capturing the essence of a pickle
This morning, deep in the throes of piecing/stitching/painting, I had one of those weird perspective shifts where I briefly glimpsed myself as someone just walking into my work space would. There I stood, crumpling my brow, tilting my head back and forth to change the visual angle, muttering, focused, focused, focused on a pickle. Me, the brave artist, striving to strike a chord in the heart of humanity through my masterful depictions of pickles!
my first attempt at lichen
Since I posted that photo of lichen a few weeks ago, I’ve been mulling over ways of creating my own version of the stuff. These are nothing like the intension I began with, but I am still excited by them, and curious about their possibilities.
I cut, assembled, and stitched these while listening to a TED talk about creativity in the classroom. Quite appropriately, the speaker claimed that creativity cannot occur without one’s willingness to fail. This feels so absolutely true for me. If I could have recorded my internal dialogue while making these it would have gone something like this... “hmm, what am I doing? Well, that didn’t work. No, try that? what is this thing? weird! should I make another? these are ugly little suckers.....” I know it’s not much of a pep talk I’m giving myself but it’s actually one of my favorite working head spaces. I’ll call it my experimental mode. In that mode I’ve generated some really horrifically ugly art but I’ve also planted the seeds for the work I am most proud of.