Wear It Out, Use It Up, Make It Do

I've been noticing some artwork that is based on "wabi sabi", the Japanese art of finding beauty in the natural cycle of birth, growth, decay, and death.   It celebrates the changes and marks that time and use leave behind.  I have really liked the look and feel of these pieces and decided to try it.  I got a few old pieces of muslin and cotton print fabric, some of which was faded and stained.  [SPOILER  ALERT] : Now the theme of this is "transiency" but wanting to make this piece NOW was more important to me than authenticity. I did not want to wait for "real" old pieces and I put unstained fabric in hot water with tea bags to "brown" and fade them.  I dried and ironed them, then layered and stacked them.  I used a running stitch in some soft hues to hold them all together, did a bit of embroidery, and....done.

This type of look really appeals to me.  I grew up on a farm and was reared by parents who lived through the Depression.  "Wear it out, use it up, make it do" was the mantra in our family.  Clothes passed through siblings and cousins.  Lucky was the child who truly fit the clothes of another child who didn't stain or tear her clothes.  We had the "shoe box" where outgrown shoes were put until someone else could wear them; sometimes I helped my mother cut out cardboard to fit inside the uppers if the soles were too "hole-y."   Shoe polish was a NECESSITY!    Towels, linens, furniture, dishware...everything was used until it was gone.  And while I pined for new dresses and shoes, for "modern" and "new", I learned the the material is less important than the immaterial, that new isn't necessarily better, and about what truly lasts.

    

Deep Thought

Happy International Women's Day!

Women are the biological Creators of Life.  We must fight to create authentic lives for our individual selves, the lives of children, and the life of our planet.  We women need to commit or re-commit today to healing through how we think, feel, know, act and create.

Resting In The Blues (Robert Johnson)

Listening to an old original recording of this old blues song..... made me cut up some strips of different blue fabrics and variegated yarns, grabbed embroidery thread and glass beads.  I remember lying on the blue shaded grass, with eyes nearly closed, watching the white clouds race across the blue sky over the spinning earth.  And under me the immense weight and layers and size of the world.  If I kept lying there awake-asleep, it felt like flying and merging with the universe.  And then Nothing....and Everything.  Just resting in the grass.

"Resting In The Blues" is hand pieced, appliqued, embroidered, and beaded.

Thank You, Jane!

When I was getting my eyes checked, my optometrist told me she had bought a small piece of my work.  We began talking and she told me of her love of old vintage handkerchiefs and that she had LOTS them.  We made a deal.  She gave me a big sack full of hankies and I made her this piece in return.