Friday, January 30

gracefuller than me?

I just finished a series of black pieces called "Everything Went Black." I am super pleased with how a few of them turned out. When I focus on my work in the proper way, just doing what I do, every once in a while I look up from my work and think "how did I do that?"
This dress
came out so solid, so graceful, so coherent, so self-contained in a way I love.

I don't mention this to brag. I mention it because I am continually baffled at how this art thing works. I feel like a fumbling baffoon - awkward, bumbly, full of neurotic striving, with a constant chant (sometimes whispering, sometimes pounding loud, accompanied by tablas and backup singers) of FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE always playing in the background. But somehow I made this very confident, graceful, standing-up-straight dress.

Can I make something that has qualities I lack? Or does my creating them mean that I have all those things in me somewhere?

Sunday, January 4

aww shucks and happy new year.

Oh look! I got a glowing mention in Marcy Tilton's 2009 New Year Newsletter.

Marcy designs her own line of clothing and home decorating patterns for Vogue Patterns and, among many other things, also co-runs creativity/sewing/fiber retreats nationally.

She calls herself a "textile adventuress" - and while we haven't ever met, I'll bet we are related somehow, the way many of us are, through needle and thread and a desire to make our own way in the world with them.