New Year ~ Day #15

The creative process requires dedication, perseverance and 100% commitment.  We’ve got to create like it’s our last gig!  No excuses and no whining, just create.  The medium doesn’t matter, the process is the same for drawing, painting, quilting or writing.  The only way to communicate what’s inside of you is to be creative.  The desire to create is inside all of us.  The essential question of “What do you want to make today?” posed by Mako Fujimura is relevant by what’s happening in the news everyday.  Whether or not we consciously ask ourselves this question or just act it out in anger, we all create.  Our society is angry, resentful, insecure, jealous, mean-spirited, vengeful and cruel.  Once these emotions take up residence in your heart, they manifest themselves in your creative hands.  We can’t control what another human being creates but we can decide with purpose what we, as individuals, will create.  You can only change yourself, not another human being.

Whole Cloth Art Quilt In Progress

So, as I greet day 15 of this New Year, I want to create with purpose.  “What do I want to make today?”  Today, I’m making texture with peace and joy in my heart.  The first whole cloth art quilt for my “Indigo Blues” series is in progress.  But I need to add texture and after researching my available options, I’ve decided to incorporate machine and hand embroidery.  I used embroidery on the “Convergence” blanket shawl but now I plan to rev it up so that the lines are more fluid and read as “thread painting.”  To incorporate this is going to require that I stitch out all the available stitches on my machine and make me a “Stitch Book.”  There are NO shortcuts in art and design and the possibilities are endless!

New Year ~ Day #12

Fiber Reactive Dyes Ready 2 Go!

“I will greet this day with love in my heart.”  These are the opening words to “The Scroll Marked II” in chapter nine of Og Mandino’s The Greatest Salesman in the World.  These words express my greeting for 2015.  In December I completed being a visiting artist and adjunct art professor at Chowan University.  Now, I need to demonstrate the lessons that I learned as the teacher/facilitator.  I can hear Mat Randolph saying “Those Who Learn, Teach!”  Driving two hours each way was the most difficult part of my adventure creating and sharing beside Lake Vann, but I persevered to the end.  The life lesson that I learned was a Billie Holiday song, “You Don’t Know What Love Is Until You Learn The Meaning Of The Blues.”  This lesson has been a hard one for me to learn, but at last I get it!

So what’s next!  Rearrange my studio so that I have a dedicated dye lab and sewing room.  This is no small task in the space where I live and create.  I’ve got issues with clutter from feeling lonely, broken, unloved and unworthy.  But my Chowan experience helped me walk out my “Trail of Tears” and gain the strength and resolve to let go of yesterday’s loss.  I’m moving on!  I read aloud the words of Harriet Tubman several times a day to give myself courage and resolve.  I’ve got this!  I can do this!  To make the “Indigo Blues” series of work and to complete the “Peace Quilt” I need a creative place to work.  The only available place is the Marlow Drive Studio so I’ve got to make it happen.

“If you hear the dogs, keep going.
If you see the torches in the woods, keep going.
If there’s shouting after you, keep going.
Don’t ever stop.  Don’t ever quit.
Don’t give up.  Don’t give in.
If you want a taste of freedom,
Keep going!”  .... Harriet Tubman