"Spring's Sweet Flowery Month Of May"

The first day of May has always felt a little exciting to me.   I think somehow May baskets and Spring combined into this anticipation I experience, a yearly rite of Spring passage.  Everything is so new and fresh, flowers are budding and blooming, green is spreading across the fields and yards. My favorite flowers bloom in Spring; the beauty...sweet, pure colors... the fragrances from deep and earthy, to musky and mild, to sweet and pure, to a scent so clean it's almost not there.

    

I Am Circling Around God

"I am circling around God, around the ancient tower, and I have been circling for a thousand years, and I still don't know if I am a falcon, or a storm, or a great song."  (Rilke)

I have to say that I am not satisfied with this piece.  I've always loved this quote.  For me it captures that never ending, timeless search for God and meaning in our lives; the soaring, raging, ragged, dancing, pushing out and going in of seeking Truth.  The worn out exhaustion and sorrow, the wordless joy, the seeking of Self in Spirit.

Maybe the concept is too big for me and the talent I have.  Maybe someday I'll think of a better way to do this. However that may be......In this piece each stone and leaf is individually cut and sewn to the background.  The piece is hand sewn, embroidered and appliqued.

                                               

 


                                 

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.

Fabric, Rain, And Mermaids

It's been raining on and off all day.  I've been cleaning and making curtains.  I need to back a fabric piece I've finished and I began laying out a new small piece.  In the meantime.....Rain = Water....
(Forgive the glare!)

Collage from the Past

Out With The Old....In With The New

Next year?

Night Waltz Again

More detail pictures of "Night Waltz":
(Note the hair is made with yarn made from saris.)

Night Waltz

"Night Waltz"
10 3/4"  x  15"

Winter begins.  The shortest night of the year. Around and around our days and nights lengthen and shorten.  Our lives are a part of a larger order and rhythm.  Celebrate the dark as well as the light....and Dance!

                                                                                   

New Crayons

Thinking of being a kid and all the colors at Xmas.  It made me remember new crayons.  The array of colors, the ends sharpened instead of blunt, the little charge of excitement as you carefully choose which crayon to begin with.  And the fragrance, the perfume as you opened the box.....how nice that something this small is so warm and sweet.

   

Deep Thoughts

"I'm a feminist.

I've been a female for a long time now.

It'd be stupid not to be on my own side."

 

Maya Angelou

My Prince!

An old friend emailed this to me.  I made this for her years ago when she was having relationship difficulties and we discussed how men SHOULD be.

Three Wise Women

May they bring Love, Peace, and Kindness to our World.