I M Perfect lady

Tag: creating

  • My Art Shows my Inner Changes.

    I had put off pricing my quilts, for the task seemed overwhelming. Today I asked a special friend of mine to give me hand, to see if we could find a respectable price that our local market would hold, yet honor the energy and Art of each piece. 

    The pile of twenty was quickly moved into smaller categories of size and composition.  From that point, we appraised its energy, story and fabric content (hand-dyed vs store bought) and found a price. 

    Once the prices were in range, I then went to work on giving each a name and brief description.

    These quilts had been set aside as quilts I could sell, for they didn't seem to have what I called my story line or were part of my healing Art Therapy, or had a bit of me in them. Yet when I began to give them titles and sit and stare at each one, all are part of my journey and in fact they hold energies of joy, feelings of sorrow, weight of tangled confusion, brilliant wisdom, subtle nuances and wistful growth, sisterhood, sister friends, soul sisters, etc…all carry a part of my healing, the past and the future.

    I could also see how my lady started.

    She was small. 

    She lacked movement and energy.

    She was drowned out by the color and design upon which she stood.

    As the years went on, she grew animated with movement, even her sorrow was pronounced…and her self worth blatantly evident in her size.,

    What I didn't expect from this collection of quilts is to see so much of me…and to feel the small almost unrecognizable me and the how the background energy moved into the Lady.

    Below are some from what I call my personal story line, that will show you how I saw myself back in 2005.

    IMG_3319
    She is one of the first ladies to emerge…Her size in comparison to the background really hit me.  How small I saw myself…insignificant almost. 

    IMG_3325
    Actually this one came before the previous one, for she doesn't even have hair… The writing in the quilting says, "Freedom to be free".  At the time it was a dream, a thought…a someday desire.  An unknown feeling. And the freedom seemed to be around me and I was trying to catch it.

    IMG_3281
    What struck me about these dancing ladies is the empty head…first I thought how sad, and then I thought, how delightful, to be empty of beliefs and thoughts, to be wide open. A clean slate…a new me. (this one was one of the first lady quilts to sell)

    In looking below at one of the latest quilts, one I pulled out of the pile going to Marquette, (I wasn't ready to let her go and she seems to be truly apart of my storyline) you can see how the lady and the background are equally as bright and infused with energy.  A balance…I am no longer smaller than my surroundings.

    IMG_8149

    So, no matter which quilt I have done, there you will find me…a snippet of my journey, a bit of inner wisdom and knowing…without words, you see me in the shape, color and design.  Wow, Art really is revealing.

    IMG_8186
    The description I wrote for this quilt, titled, "Comfortable Wisdom"…is, 

      "She rests easy in knowing who she is, where she has been…no regrets.  She  fully accepts the past and is at peace with the present…a lover of reality."  

    You simply can't hide in Art…it sneaks into every aspect of what you create.  

    As odd as it sounds, the more time I spend with my art, the more I understand it and the more in awe I become.  While playing with the fabrics and designs I am blind to the subtle blaring messages that are screaming at me in silence.  Just amazing to not see yourself…it is a slow progression.  I changed as my art changed…or my art shows my inner changes.


  • Surprises Me!

    “What is so interesting is that your quilt Lady has no body and your blog is all about the body…” is an insight a woman shared with me about my Art. “I don’t think you even see what you do…”

    I was so shocked and surprised at the way this woman was able to see and understand so clearly my Lady…and I was shocked she put the two together and seen the opposite.

    My lady quilts are all about feelings but there isn’t a body or even a face to be seen on the quilts. In fact it is a challenge to create them minus actually having a body, you make the clothes move like a ghost is wearing them.

    And the blog is totally different; it is all about the body, the mind and the soul…all things missing in the quilts.

    On my way home, I was thinking about the Lady not having a body and it struck me deep within, it is how I lived for so long, just clothes. That within me lay a ghost of me, but not one that was able to express herself.

    How curious or not, that my Ladies still have no body…yet are filled with expression or feelings…free enthusiasm a woman owning her life.

    I love that my blog is the missing body from the quilts and that each stand strong alone, but become greater together, like the blog is the background story or the Lady the pictures in a book.

    How interesting to be the author and the artist and learn about your work from another.

    I love that my work surprises me!

    Smug mug pics 2522

    I can see how this quilt is the emerging awareness!

  • The Artist Way

    On the CD of “Romancing the Ordinary” by Sara Ban Breathnach, she mentions Julia Cameron a few times. She is the author of the book, “The Artist Way”.

    My brother sent me the book and notebook that went along with it a little over six years ago to begin discovering the Artist within me.

    Julia wanted us to write “Morning Pages” just a simple practice of writing a few pages each morning, putting to paper our thoughts.

    They could be just stating what we had to do that day, how we were feeling, just ramblings but getting them out of our heads and on to the pages, cleaning up the space to be creative.

    I was a beginning student to this Way, when all hell broke lose in my life, and what surprised me greatly, is that I clung to these morning pages, which often grew to day long pages, for sometimes I wrote morning, noon and night.

    I filled that first book in a short time and then bought my first journal and after four years of writing longhand, I began a blog.

    I still write most days, sometimes more depending upon the unsettledness of my soul; writing is now part of who I am.

    What is so synchronistic is this book came to me just a week or so shy of a major event in my life, and it helped me find my way.

    What also has happened simultaneously my Artist arrived, she is having a ball playing with ladies, fabric, colors, designs, and is going places Artists go and her work is in an Art Gallery.

    I don’t know the way, but it seems to happen anyway.

    Perhaps that is the Artist Way.

    (I will have to go back and read in her book to see the marks I hit unbeknownst to me.)