Keep on going . . .

In February of 2019, I took a workshop with Joe Cunningham at a retreat center on the Hood Canal in Washington State, west of Seattle. Early one morning, I was walking in the mist and I happened on this elaborate spider web that was visible to photograph because a light frost had collected on it.

I have a resident spider in my bathroom who continuously builds and rebuilds her web despite my random cleaning. I have come to respect her diligence and her persistence. She lives under the radiator so I am not sure what will happen when we need more heat. But I respect her constant creative work.

I have had a spell of not doing a whole lot of significant work after a couple of rejections and a shows postponed. But I have resumed working on this piece about the Pablo Neruda poem “Ode to Age.”

Many are called, few are chosen

This is Social Distance, one of my entries into Quilt National 2021; it was not chosen. When I don’t get into a show, especially one I really want to get into, the first thing I do is begin to compare my work to what does get in and rationaiize why mine didn’t. Dumb judges, my work’s no good, imperfect. All that stuff. This time after getting over all that, I decided I need to get a grip and evaluate my work on its own merits. Does it say what I want it to say? Could it be “stronger”? Things like that.

I’ve decided that my work is fine and even though it can get better, there is nothing wrong with it. Being judgemental and competitive is keeping me from enjoying what I love, sewing and quilting and making things that satisfy my creative urges.

Like a fool, I will still keep entering shows but take a different approach; that is, make what I want to make and not what I think others will think is good. I have spent too much energy comparing.

The North Woods, MN

I am lucky enough to have generous friends who own two cabins and a chunk of land “up north”. Spent the weekend there and was inspired by everything I saw, heard, smelled and ate. My husband and I got to stay in the Summer cabin, which is very rustic and very lovely; right on the lake. Fall colors were dramatic on the drive and around the cabin.

On Vision and Art

About two years ago, I discovered at a routine eye exam that I had macular degeneration in my left eye. I also have glaucoma so I felt like it was going to drastically compromise my vision. I pictured being dependent on my husband for my mobility and having my independence being seriously compromised. I also saw it as an end to my work. Fortunately I have wet macular degeneration so I can get monthly injections in my eye that are stopping the loss of vision.

Nevertheless, I am constantly aware that I see the world a little less clearly. I see things out of corner of my eye that are probably not there. Sometimes, it takes a while to focus my vision. I feel klutzy (but then I have never been particularly balanced). I am looking for ways to express this experience in my work. Every month I take photos of the scans they do at the clinic of the back or each eye (the macula). I have altered the color and cropped the image posted below.

The following is from a site call visionandartproject.org in an interview with Dahlov Ipcar, a painter and fiber artist. I found this site to be an enormously comforting and rich resource:

“Among the subjects we touched upon the day I visited her studio was that of her vision, an issue that clearly preoccupied her. She had warned me before I came that her vision had recently worsened and that she feared she had just painted her last work. It was of a panther and birds and, despite familiar subject matter, she was having trouble finishing it. In fact, in the time that had passed between my call and visit, she hadn’t painted at all and was clearly depressed about that. “I was always happy when I was painting,” she said, “and I miss it. It takes a big bite out of my life.”

This has been coming on a long time, and I sort of watched it develop. In the beginning, it was trouble with reading mostly. It didn’t seem to bother my art until just a year ago. I began to have difficulty with not being able to coordinate my hand and eye to get the details. Now it’s like the fog has come in, and that makes it even harder. I mean, almost impossible. Things are in a deep fog now… You are wiped out. I can see your white shirt, and can see your arms and hands, and I can see your legs, but not much. I mean, I can just see they’re there. But your face and your head are gone. And anything on that side of the room is gone. That painting is gone. It’s just black over there, black fog. It’s not solid black, it’s just very dense, deep fogginess. And it gets into the middle of my vision when I try to paint something. My hand comes out and can’t see what to do. It’s impossible to do anything, because it’s just a blur.

Her most recent works were arranged on easels in front of us, including the painting of a panther she had mentioned over the phone. “I got this far, and stopped,” she said.

“The hand knows a lot, but it can’t see through the fog,” she said, explaining how she had articulated the panther’s form by tapping into the magnificent, fluid line that her hand remembered.”

Tree

I have been walking past this tree several times a week since Covid restrictions began. I think it’s probably dead but it has an strange beauty which I cannot quite capture with the camera. I have done some photoshop manipulations of the images and I am hoping to pay proper respect to the tree in the form of a digitally printed piece.

Work in progress . . .

I am currently working on this hand stitched piece which incorporates a poem by Pablo Neruda called “Ode to Age.” The base fabric is hand dyed and “deconstructed” hand painted linen. I have been working on the stitching for about four months and am beginning to see it take on its final character. I will be adding stitched drawing in areas of the poem and adding a backing and quilting it together.

Thong Tree, Prince William National Forest Park siting

Walking with my daughter and her family in the Prince William National Forest Park, I found this amazing tree, which Eleanor McCain kindly identified for me as a Thong tree. According to LakeHistory.info, Thong trees, also known as Indian trail trees, still dot the landscape throughout the Lake of the Ozarks area. They are trail markers left by Indians and early settlers. In addition to delineating a trail, some thong trees pointed to salt licks, springs, caves, and medicinal herbs found along the ancient pathways.

Plastic!

I had a solo show at the Phipps Center for the Arts scheduled for June and July of this year. Owing to the virus, it has been postponed to May 2022. There’s a good side to this. I will have time to make more work. That’s also the bad side, maybe.

One of pieces I made for this exhibit is a four and a half feet wide by nine feet high woven piece made out of single-use plastic bags I accumulated for a year from our household plus some bags I got from a friend. I also occasionally stole from the plastic recycle bin at the grocery store.

The plastic piece “An Ocean of Plastic” hanging in my studio

A detail of “An Ocean of Plastic”

We begin

It only took until age 75 but I finally have a website. I hope you take time to peruse the work in the galleries. I intend to talk about new work I am planning, good and bad ideas I have and work I see that intrigues me. I will also be sharing books and articles I find interesting. I would also like it if you share feedback with me now and then.