Yes and No

NO i will not work on any Schedule C matters today, no i will not vacuum or clean bathroom fixtures, no i will not grocery shop or fold fabric or make any unnecessary phone calls

YES i will make turkey rice soup for D and me (he’s headachy and woozy and home from school) YES i will bake a cake and ice it YES i will finish the 12 page addendum to my sister’s application for SSDI (only because it’s due tomorrow) and YES i will RSVP to a lunch date for tomorrow YES i will deposit the checks that are burning a hole in my wallet when I take C to the orthodontist later today and YES i might even treat myself to a trip to the library for some picture books (Klee, the fauvists, Chagall come to mind for now)…

because
it’s my birthday!

TWO THINGS about looking in the mirror at 53 –

One, I love Craig Ferguson’s running joke about looking in the mirror and wondering why his grandfather is staring back at him! Indeed, who IS that old lady, there, with the sagging eyes and jowls (never mind the grey which I have never minded)….

Two, one of my sister’s roommates in rehab is suffering from some form of dementia (I really WILL defer learning the fine points of Alzheimers and other forms of mental decay for now), and obviously her impulse control has weakened.  She announced gaily yesterday,  “Oh yes!  You’re the one with the half-finished haircut!”

Too funny.  Really.  I didn’t get in to my fine-tuned calculus of sacrificing beauty runs for New England Mobile Book Fair runs (I cut my own hair and I’m proud of it!), but I did get a laugh.

Having to see

I think the stuckness with this piece is NOT because the cellar is cold (even though it is) or a function of not having enough time (though quilting time has been precious lately), but a function of visual overwhelm.  While this could be the fault of my fabric selections (going for chaotic, here), I’m starting to think it is a vision problem.

I can’t quite take the piece in.

For one thing, six inches of pieced sections at the bottom fold onto the floor and are not visible from where I stand (roughly eight feet away) to look.  And for another, I find even what IS visible is not quite digestible.  I’ve dispensed the idea of depicting polar bears anywhere in this piece, but the top horizon has baffled me, until today, when I broke it down.

Am I just going for what’s more comfortable, here — that is, my preferred scale of three feet by two feet?  Am I short changing a process just as it’s about to morph into something brand new?

This is partly put in mind by recently listening to CDs that talk about how systems change — which is to say that when sufficiently stressed with new information, complex systems either breakdown or reorganize.

I’m not sure I can tolerate this quilt being disorganized for long enough to discover whatever the “new system” might be.   I have done this before — started large and then created four or three smaller pieces instead of resolving the big.

I will keep at it.

SoulCollage — Dread

Early on in ‘Loving What Is’, Byron Katie states:

“Every story is a variation on a single theme: This shouldn’t be happening. I shouldn’t have to experience this. God is unjust. Life isn’t fair.”

This card depicts my current version of that story.

Katie goes on to offer four questions of inquiry, which can reorient us to our thoughts, and ultimately, nudge us toward freedom, and they are:

1) Is it true (the belief)?
2) Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
3) How do you react when you think that thought?
4) Who would you be without the thought?
and
Turn it around.

The details of the story literally do not matter to get the gist of this SoulCollage card. It’s all here — the posture of resignation, the failure to be properly equipped, the paralysis of defeat.

What this card ALSO reveals is the freedom that lies just outside of the story — the encircling unity of the brass compass (untouched by the drama within), the delicate silk butterflies oriented upward, the suggestion of galaxies just over that defeated shoulder…  which to my view, makes it ultimately a card about hope.

In January, one of my stated goals for the year was to use tools already in my arsenal.  Well, I’ve just shared two of them – SoulCollage and Byron Katie’s “Work”. We all need tools like these. And they need to fit who we are. A visual person who likes to make collages, who studied the Tarot beginning in high school, whose read and resonated with Jung, and who has a 40-year, fairly consistent habit of keeping a journal, is well suited to these two tools.

What methods do YOU use to investigate and release negative patterns?

scratches

Almost done with this one… some of the stitches need better anchoring, because it was hard to control the tension pulling through fabric that had been gessoed.

The little single chain crochet that is couched on the edge was tinted in a pot with onion skins and one lone black walnut shell which appeared in the kitchen the morning I had the pot going.

What I notice — There is a tension pairing marks made by me (the script, the stitches) and ‘found’ marks, as printed on commercial fabrics (those little vegetal shapes — which look like a primitive form of writing and those pink upstrokes on the linen, which I repeated with my black marker).   What I want to see now is a piece that ONLY has marks/writing made by me.

Pushing one’s preferences, but not too much

This picture was shot under a sky light that was filtering northern light through a thin veil of snow — hence the blue cast.

Are all epiphanies obvious after the fact?  Here’s my latest, associated with making this little quilt — when taking on something new, don’t change up EVERYTHING else while you’re at it.

While consciously switching scale, palette, or medium is very instructive to an artist, and probably ought to be built into one’s work rhythm on a regular basis, juggling too many projects where everything is new is disorienting.

Case in point — my first script quilts (like the above).  I was busy shifting to a paler palette, sewing more by hand, trying out gel mediums and markers on fabric, weaving strips of fabric — and getting very frustrated because NOTHING was familiar (except the collage aspect).

For the  little spiral piece, I played with some of my most beloved fabrics. . . current fabrics (in use in the Global Warming Quilt that is in progress downstairs).   This is my preferred palette.  I am drawn to very saturated colors — not always this hot, but usually this saturated.  To mix in a few washed out hues was not enough to throw me.  Further, these are patterns I love — polka dots, solar disks, spirals.

So, the teeny scale and hand stitching, which are NOT usual for me, could be dealt with.

I picked a single variegated Sulky thread and stuck with it, so that I could focus on placement of stitches and not thread.  It was so pleasurable to stitch!

PS  I am thrilled to be pushing a needle through soft layers.  In the past, I have needed to use my TEETH, often, to get a needle through because I’ve backed my quilt with an upholstery fabric and layered applique on top of piecing, and sometimes added sections of previous quilts (that would be SIX layers, one of them upholstery-weight!).