Sometimes it just has to burn.

Old wreath forms set in the fire until red hot then placed on linen.  Rich results. Stitching on this is proving interesting.  The constant scent of smoldering is a little unnerving.  Making the process even richer.

Going through the stats for this blog has shocked me.  Over 7000 page views since I started a few years ago.  How not nice of me to have updated posts when people come to visit. Eight page views yesterday!  Who knew. When I started blogging I read over and over again-'don't post if you don't have anything to say'. I really haven't had much to say since the last post.  Egad, January, 2012. Now I do.

Thank you.

Ripples

I did this piece about two years ago. It was the first of this path I am on-whole cloth, unplanned, stitching, ripping, painting, folding etc. This weekend we are taking pictures of the latest pieces. Look for those next week. What a difference. But still on the path. I really appreciate watching these pieces develop. Thankful.

Inspiration Everywhere

When curried chicken meets red cabbage on bamboo

artist: James, lunch, January 2012

I walked into the kitchen this morning and found this on the counter. I thought it was just beautiful. My husband left a little art installation.

ps: this is pretty close to the color palette of a room in the house.

photo by Kendra

Quiet. Still. Rejuvenating. Healing. Blessed. That is how I feel about winter and the darkness it brings. I welcome it with open arms. I have needed this time more than ever. This time of rest gets me ready for spring. I am a little bit polar bear. I hibernate. Move inward and slow down. It is just where I am at and the calendar validates me.

Communication

How much is too much? I ask because I gingerly walk the high wire of communicating to an audience. I am on the email lists for a number of artists, craftspeople and musicians. I read about creating tribes, serving a constituency, and playing to a crowd.. It boggles my mind when the closing of some emails has a good 4" of the various and asundry places you could find this particular person. FB, G+, twitter, zazzle, blogspot, wordpress, etsy, mails and more. That's a full time job. I don't think I am that interesting. You have better things to do than follow me on some digital dead cat swinging frenzy. I knew an artist back in the 80's who didn't have an answering machine. She was beginning her 'craft' career. Her feeling was if you really wanted her work you would keep trying to reach her. She figured she really wasn't all that hard to find. If I typed her name, you would know her. I guess it worked for her. Both ends of the spectrum.

As always I am somewhere in the middle, floating around, swimming in the sea, just propelling forward. Anyone have any thoughts regarding this? I would really like to hear what forms of communication you engage in.

On another note...

As I type this I am listening to Tom Waits being interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air. He said many things which I want to remember and think more about. So I will go back and listen online tomorrow. But for now this one stuck: What's left when you drain the pool?

What's in your pool?

Time and Change

It seems as though when I come to Swimming In The Sea I am writing about change. Today will not be different.

Change requires energy. For the last 10 months the lion's share of my energy has been given to all this maternal. I will not dwell. But will say that over these 10 months my mother was diagnosed with cancer and passed away. Passed away in a what seems like the speed of light. Since her passing in May I have been contemplating what it is to be without parents, my original family. I do not have siblings. So this is been big-ish.

In this time... January to now I have been doing this:

I have been stitching. Like mad. This is a detail from a whole piece of linen that measures about 2.5' x 4'. I have come full circle. I am back to the fiber art I started with at the age of 5. My mother gave me a little embroidery kit. Her idea of a kit was thread, needle, fabric and time at her side. No patterns. She showed me how to thread the needle, make an end knot, to go in and out/up and down, and finish the thread. She left me to it. I wish I had that now. The meandering I created. But in a sense I don't need it because it is what I am doing now. I have more to say about this. Because it has been a process. That is such an overused statement---but for this, it is so true. I will write about this body of work. And I won't wait 10 months to come back to this.


Unless something changes.