Reach Out and Touch

It's been an intensely arty couple of weeks. No time to think about blogging. Sure, the Internet encourages instant sharing: it's possible to finish a piece of art or a step in a piece or a thought about a step in a piece, and within minutes your blog world fans can be there with you communing, commenting, commiserating, cheering. All the sharing, so warm and fuzzy...or eventually tiring and meaningless? I mean, how many times in one day or week can we find something that someone has done or said to be remarkable, say something witty about it, be kind and helpful, contribute in any useful manner?


At what point as an artist do you need to shut the door and just be with yourself, your muse, and your process? Too much Internet sharing and we not only lose time and energy better spent on the art, but we lose the integrity of our own vision. A poem (by someone who hasn't written one since high school):

We like too much,

we see too much.

Our art becomes homogeneous.

So as much as I love my blogging, online classes and forums, I am trying (with baby steps) to back off just a little, and give myself breathing room to work. That said, let me show you the recent reality.


One of the most constant creative muses in my recent life has been textile artist extraordinaire, Jude Hill, a true original. She doesn't teach her designs, she teaches how to design, how to think about design, how to let go of the rules and be original. Of course, we, her students, will tend to mimic her as we study, but we are learning something so much bigger as we build the pieces to a new type of "quilt" art, based on something ancient, but thoroughly modern at the same time.


Jude makes all her art by labor intensive hand sewing, and sells very little of it. So recently, when a small piece I had admired (as I watched it be born on her blog) found its way to her shop just at the moment I was paying attention, I was able to adopt this lovely creation. "The Edgekeeper" now lives in my sewing studio and looks over my shoulder as I work. Along with this small cloth came some of her magic thread, and an extra surprise cut from a piece of her exploratory work--treasures all!

The "Edgekeeper" under a March full moon

Fellow student and follower, deanna, has a marvelous blog that recently celebrated 200 entries with a giveaway, and somehow, on April Fools Day, I had my name drawn from the basket to win. Deanna's gift will serve as a daily reminder that my Internet friends are real (and talented) people.

A gift of friendship in my mailbox today

Lucy likes it! She says--no reason a pin cushion can't be beautiful.

Meanwhile my very real Designing Women met this week for the first time since the passing of our best pal, Jeri, in late February. It was a bittersweet reunion, because Jeri loved to try anything new, and missed out on a day of relaxed creative fun, food, and sharing. I passed along, to a great reception, the technique of making craft foam stamps that resemble entire paintings (as learned the best I could) from the article "Faux Silkscreen"by Patricia Gaignet, in the September/October issue of "Cloth, Paper, Scissors Magazine."

My friend, Jeanette, created the stamp, and gave me free reign
 to customize  a picture for myself.

For the past five weeks, I have been taking two classes online. One is "Mixed Media with Paper and Cloth" by Jane LaFazio, that has kept me massively busy producing parts and possibilities of interesting pieces that I will continue to work on for months to come. So far two are done (or nearly so.)

Time Machine--how a small paper/fabric collage became a quilt

Detail view to the layers of color and texture

Comfy Chair--mixed media paper on painted canvas,
 adapted from an original watercolor journal page

The other is an introductory course in shibori, or the Japanese art of shaped dyeing of cloth. It is taught by "Shibori Girl," Glennis Dolce. Motifs are dyed into cloth (rather than printed on the surface) through a combination of folding and clamping, stitching and drawing up, and wrapping around poles with string. The designs can be simple or complex, but are never identically the same twice. Again, I will be working on my own for many moons (an inside joke) to really put in the necessary practice to feel even somewhat accomplished.

Itajime Shibori--overdyeing with resists

Stitched shibori--mokume (wood grain)

Stitched shibori sampler showing the process

Stitched shibori scarf

As if my life hasn't been interesting and colorful to the max, I recently received a totally out of the blue surprise invitation to come visit an Internet friend on her own turf, a place I know from my youth, but haven't experienced for many years. I am more than stoked for that!


When I think about this creative life, it brings to mind the vision of a circle of people from my folk dancing youth. You always had to reach out both hands and take the hands on either side of yourself. Often they would belong to strangers. It didn't matter. They reached back and took yours. The music would start and the circle would begin to move. Together for just a moment in time and place, you shared a joyful creation through motion. Then over, but not lost. For the artist, the real creations are not the results, but the experience of the doing. Create something this week, alone or with someone. Make a friend, deepen a friendship, know yourself, find your place.

So Over It

It has got to be my fault. I didn't have a holiday tree this past December, but instead decorated my living room mantle and stair railings with colored lights to cheer the shorter days of what used to be called "Winter". I always used to say I didn't mind "Winter".  I rather like the break from an expanded life to cozy up by a fire, stay in my cocoon a while, and apply my attention to creations of the hand and heart.  This year especially, with studying drawing and weaving in online classes, I am well occupied in the warm spaces of my lovely life. Instead of the usual ritual of taking down the tree on New Year's Day, those lights are still being lit against the dark and cold, and well, maybe I've created the curse.

Winter in shades of indigo

Lighting the Winter night with promises of Red Buds on dark branches come spring

But let's face it, the calendar says it's almost Valentine's Day, and I do believe on average the "Jailer" season should be moderating by now. You know, the occasional sunny day without wind, when you can bundle up, but not too much, and walk in the open air. The day when my "Fargo" hat can be left in the closet. I thoroughly miss walking. In season (which used to include this one at least sometimes), I do it almost every day.  I'm so ready to make plans with friends or to attend events that don't get cancelled by snowfall and ice. I'd definitely rather not be healing bruised ribs sustained in an awkward tumble onto my book bag.

Yes, that says minus 1.7. Walk, anybody?

I read that some of my California friends are planting and enjoying Spring flowers. Who says they get to start Spring without the rest of us? All my flowers come from Costco, and seem to mock me from their perch on the kitchen island.

Instead, I must satisfy the longing for warmth with warm art. I have been drawing cozy chairs at Starbucks, and weaving Spring themed cloths. One of my favorite cloths in progress is a representation of my open heart, reaching out to the positive things that have been entering my life lately. It speaks of longing: the heart growing from a grid of warm red tones, layered on the infinite deep blue of the night sky. It is only in the beginning stages, but it cheers me and feels solid already.

From my class with Jane LaFazio, Sketch and Watercolor on Location

An Open Heart

Another piece is airy and light and feminine and has no purpose yet other than to reconnect me to the lightness of the air in Spring. That smell of warming earth that stops me in my tracks just to breath and go.....ahhhhh, it's back!

The tree destined for the back of my Spring denim jacket has acquired blossoms similar to a local favorite, the Red Bud, with its delicate fuchsia pink sprouting on the bare dark branches. It is a pleasure to work on it with its lovely complex colors and soft textures. I am almost ready to further define the story in embroidery.

A collage of closeups of pure joyful color

And so, in the face of the relentless snow and cold outside, falling even as I write this, and the start of yet another stretch of deep freeze canceling a romantic trip to the city this weekend, I am letting my art dispel the funk, and bring me closer to the eventual achievement of "Spring".  I have faith because what else is it to be alive, but to accept the circles of change, to make the most of the times we are given, every bit of it. Around me I have friends and family members stricken with adversity not in their control: unemployment, illness, loss. And me? I am lately blessed with riches beyond measure in the shape of opportunity for connections and growth, for love and creation. I mean to acknowledge this every day.

So I take up my paint and pens, my cloth and thread, and I create my thanks for all these blessings while I can.