...and in completing herself, she completes me

mom's birth - day was saturday - january, 14 - 91  

“Do not wait for the last judgment. It comes every day.” 

“Life can be magnificent and overwhelming -- that is the whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would almost be easy to live. ” 


I finished "LEFT," as I wanted, before the stroke of midnight 2011/2012.  So since I wanted to post the final version and mom's birthday was close to the finish date, and they are related, I'm posting the completed cloth here. 

Front view

 “Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.”

Back view

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”  

top details

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” 

bottom detail

“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”  

The following image is the central part of the cloth, the part most important to me.  That is where the story began:

“Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.” 

The story of the cloth and title, "LEFT," have a lot if not all to do with my mother and her illness.  It also refers to my sister.  

Left can mean many things.  It can be opposite of right.  It can be the past participle of leave, as in go away, gone.  Or it can mean staying  behind.  All but the first definition applies to this piece.  My sister left when she got married - and is rarely present.  My mother ages and changes and forgets and returns and leaves everyday.  Her memory is part of the past participle.  The figure on the right, the only singular figure that is completely stitched is the person that remains or perhaps memory.  The other two figure, what could  be an adult with a child, or a female figure with a younger person (my sister is two years older.) If you look at the figures moving "left" you can see them migrating out of the frame, eventually becoming a shadow, a memory.  Something that might peak from around the corner, depend on the light, the time of day, or the presence/absence of the person.  

Also, where the two figures in the center are standing, is the only place that remains unstitched. There are a few other rectangles placed around the figures - also not stitched.  Those are the voids from where we might emerge, get lost in, lose our memories, and who knows, maybe where we might meet again. 

It was a hard piece for me to deal with and think about...also the one that took the longest to complete.  For some reason completing that last stitch, like O'Henry's leaf...

There are many many stitches  here.  Call it Kantha if you want, running if you like, or just walking, as Jude calls it.  Either way, the cloth has a soft feel.  Very much like my mother's touch. 

And finally on a cheerful note:

I wrote a comment on Velma's blog which prompted a reply from her that gave me an idea.  These were the flowers that were popping up on mom's back yard lawn before the snow came.  Mom loved watching them out her window - she noted them everyday and after regretted they were covered.  Velma suggested I pick them and dye with them.  Well, I pound the dandelions on cloth and pressed the pansies. I will use them to make a little stitched bouquet for mom for her valentine.  

“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."  And this Winter, until it started to be Winter, maybe we had a third spring as well.

“I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” 
― Albert Camus 

The quotes above are attributed to Albert Camus.  Don't ask where they are from...the bad librarian didn't keep her citations for these, she just, "made notes for a short story," dear Chekhov. 

the old, the completed, and to be worked on: 2011+1=2012

Left the piece started a couple of month back is just about done:  99%

The project I started, probably back around middle of October or so is just about finished.  The lower left band has some stitches to finish...will be done by the stroke of mid-night 2011.  I will discuss the story and stitching after the new year. 

OakLight
Gifted to my sister....29 December 2011

This was a piece that I started playing with stitches in preparation for my 2012 little weekly challenge to me.  My fascicles project (see 2 posts ago).  Fascicle Project.  It is bases on the influence of several ideas, but mostly Emily Dickinson "self-published" bound fascicles.  The way she sewed and preserved her poems for herself.  She created 40 all together.  I'm hoping to get about forty done as well next year.  Here, below is the first fascicle.  The main character is an oak leaf, that will tell her story through the year: seasons, months, weeks, days, night, cold, heat.  Her own view from up high and from looking up.

Fascicle, 1.

The beginnings of the Fascicles project.  Each fascicle will be made up of four leaves, 6 pages with a front/back cover.  A single signature sewn with thread, probably red, since I don't use much red (read) thread and somehow I've gotten it into my head the ED used a color! Basic pamphlet style sewing: 3 holes sewn and tied through the center...leaving a frayed end, "somewhere for the eye to rest."  My very first binding teacher told me to fray the thread, leaving sort of a combed hair like effect.  This was her signature - her symbol.  Everyone who had ever studied with Joan Flasch does this same kind of tie-off, "to rest the eye." 

Text will be left and image right.  Various stitches will be used but mostly simple basic stitching.  The text for this page is: 

HappyOak

last of winter

with peace

at the door

contented, soon

i'll be no more

There will be 6 lines of text (including the name/title of the oak leaf that is speaking. I'm still trying to work out the method for including the text.  I will probably just write it without necessarily stitching it...I have planned 40 such fascicle, with 4 leaves, (8 pages): that's 320 pages of stitching.  A bit of stitching I'd say without the text...so it will probably just be "printed" in some fashion.

The fascicles will be my small relaxation project while doing part II of Jude Hill's: magic-diaries-part-2.  That will start in January and go through the end of June.  It is a subscription instructional workshop.  Wonderful things to be learned there. 

And finally:

a stitch is just a stitch or a stitch

Long short stitch::Split back stitch

 My post today is  to show a bit of an "experiment" I did in response to a post at Jude's Magic Diary.  November 22nd. Jude did a video on dense stitching where she discussed filling in the negative space with her split back stitch.  This prompted me to ask, in the comments, " i don't know if you noticed but on the cloth that i'm working on now, LEFT, the filled in figures are done in long and short stitch. as you point out the space does provide another element...lift, dimension and it does take a while. I'm going to try the split stitch on the next figure I will be filling in but i just wondered if you have an opinion on these two stitches, different contrast kind of thing." To which Jude responded,  " what i like about the split stitch is the spliting of the stitch actually, it connects the stitch in a more durable way and makes a more integrated surface. more like a woven tapestry without too much pattern in the stitch itself.  i kind of made it up before i even knew it was a stitch. i also like how splitting the stitch spreads the thread, widening it and also allowing you to shift the position of the thread by catching it, moving it into place and then anchoring it. it hugs the cloth really nicely." Therefore, I offer the image above as a demonstration of the two stitches next to one another. Jude also mention the suzani (no relation, ha...sorry about it but couldn't help myself) stitch as another stitch that adds density. November 22nd Magic entry (for members)


Visually the stitches might look the same but technically there are some differences that I have observed. The split back stitch for one is "easier" to do in the respect that the orientation of the stitches are consistent.  The long and short stitch has to be formed in such a manner that oddly shaped corners can easily throw off the pattern.  The long and short stitch is really done best on measure canvas, like needle point and crewel. One other observation that I made and want to stress, is Jude's suggestion to "thumb" press the stitch when you make it and before you "split" it.  I initially did not do that and then I took a closer look at Jude's example, watched the video from her sidebar stitch reference and noticed that she explains the pressing.  Once I started doing that it made a big difference.  Since you will be most likely using more that one strand of floss when doing this type of fill work, the strands can twist very easily - the stitch will not lay flat on the surface of the cloth and you end up with a "skinnier" look spot...and there is some loss of the tapestry effect that you would get otherwise.  There really is a lovely texture that is created with this method...but as Jude points out, it is a time consuming stitch and you will use a lot of thread so if you want to maintain the color of the area that you are working in, have a good supply of the color.  It is a silent, slow, calming stitch that takes concentration and therefore, for me, relaxing.  I can drown out most of the noise around me as I'm holding the cloth and focusing on that little patch between hands, cloth, thread and myself. 


 I'm showing a few example of the stitches just to illustrate the technique:






           stitch comparison

I am also include the stem stitch here because that is what I used to outline the figures.  It is another stitch that my mother used a lot and taught me.  She was an absolutely magician with the Long and Short stitch.  Today sadly her hands and mind don't have the patience for such detailed work...but the clothes hold their memories well.

 I am going to have a detailed update on my cloth and memory, which I was to include here but decided to keep it separate.  But in the interim here is a shot of a corner I just finished, hoping to catch your fancy.

                                      

Can a shadow cast her own shadow back?
The "boxed" shadow is done in split back stitch,
whereas the retreating shadow is done in
Long and Short stitch. 

Concept of the other: or to know thy self

She knew, "it's only real once."
1982, kodalith film printed
on black and white photographic
paper.  

I have been thinking about the concept of other ever since I started looking at the shadow idea.  Is the shadow just another component of other?

 In order to know the self, other has to be acknowledged.  Could the shadow be one of your others? I put the image, above, here to also illustrate that this isn't something new.  (I will be doing an entry on some of my earlier photo work as well.  It was all non-silver, contact printing.  A lot of it dealt with "catching the shadow".)  I did make some notes, in my journal/sketchbook, awhile back when I was working on "waiting to mend," the piece just before "LEFT."  I remarked, in my notes, about how things were coming back to me.  Old ideas which never left...even technical devices that I had used when I was getting my undergraduate degree, were sneaking their way back into my thinking.  What work I did have out, a lot of it is buried and a lot of my sketches were ruined last year when my basement got flooded during a record setting down pour...first rule, don't store work in a basement (or books.)

The work I looked at reminded me of how I used to think, process and how I went about composing and putting ideas into practice.  I was always trying to figure out my place...the role I played in the circle that was my day/night, personal/social...even my interior self examined.  All my work, regardless of the media, was "image and text."  It was like trying to communicate (speak more directly.)

 Another remanent from the past is the opening paragraph from Nabokov's Speak Memory. "A cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.  Although the two are identical twins, man as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour.) I know, however, of a young chronophobiac who experienced something like panic when looking for the first time at homemade movies that had been taken a few weeks before his birth.  He saw a world that was practically unchanged - the same house, the same people - and then realized that he did not exist there at all and that nobody mourned his absence.  He caught a glimpse of his mother waving from an upstairs window, and that unfamiliar gesture disturbed him, as if it were some mysterious farewell.  But what particularly frightened him was the sight of a brand-new baby carriage standing there on the porch, with the smug, encroaching air of a coffin; even that was empty, as if, in the reverse course of events, his very bones had disintegrated."  This started me thinking, what if you did go back in time to a life your remember living...and you were not there.  That your past did not contain you.  Maybe like a shadow that doesn't appear some days. There are days (light) that causes us to not have shadows...is the relationship between object and shadow mutually inclusive/exclusive?

Words like ontology (of or relating to the nature of being), epistemology (nature of knowledge...how do we know), phenomenology (study of conscious experience), one -ology after another kept racing through my thoughts.  (I went to school when hermeneutic was big: methodological principals of interpretation.   Today these words still bounce around in my head but probably don't have as much of a blow. I mean, is questioning really going to give me answers, or more questions? )  And,  there is also that little matter of quantum theory that somehow sneaked in as well.  My interpretation of that went something like this.  Time is a linear concept.  We move through time, similar to a train that goes along a predetermined line (not to be confused with pre-destiny.)  Anyway, in my thinking, you could at any time slice into this "time line" and there you would be. So you could exist in multiple places at multiple time.  Also, at the time, I was very fond of T.S. Eliot.  Four Quartets, Burnt Norton, opens: "Time present and time past/Are both perhaps present in time future,/And time future contained in time past./If all time is eternally present/All time is unredeemable./What might have been is an abstraction/Remaining a perpetual possibility/Only in a world of speculation." Read by me as, just what is time...no two timing devices (except the digital) ever seem to be show the same time...time really is an abstraction.  Our sense of time is really not a tangible "thing."  You can't hold it.  So how do we know of it's existence...?

So there you have it.  In a nut shell...Is it possible to be the being in the reflection and the reflection.  To see and experience oneself both in the present and the past...I see a lot of that in the work that I'm thinking about and doing.  It is very reflexive of who I am, my relationship to the other and who the other is.

A phrase that actually prompted the next piece, which I have sketched out (below) is,"her mother's shadow began to merge with her's,/She worried about loss, loss of her identity."  Nothing biographical about this!!!  Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror or a picture and thought about resemblance...that you were looking like your parents (maybe it's that latent retinal image, but that happens to me.)  The first time I really saw my mother in me were my hands.  I have my mother's hands.

This was the sketch I did based on the phrase:
"her shadow..."  It is a performantive piece.
You read the phrase as you get closer and
the voice should be whispered, reflective.

view #2

 closes view, #3

  But now for a little update on LEFT.

A look at the back.  After Jude  showed her magic diary cloth,
I had to take a peak too.  Not as good as Jude's but..

Where the rectangles all started.  I originally added
the cloth appliqued rectangle...which had the effect
I was seeking: slight relief off the surface, separation of the
object, boundary, barrier.  Then, what to do next? I decided
to continue the idea by adding a few more cloth rectangles, and
some that are just stitched.  The same day I decided to do this,
Jude Hill did a talk on pulling elements together, integrating elements
(I took this to mean union, cohesion not just separate
floating objects.)

view of the only two figures
that are seen as one: before
the larger figure starts to separate
away from the smaller figure

added stitch rectangles to the left
most figure (shadow is starting to
separate) . Larger figure is just
left of this that is in back
of the first cloth rectangle.

detail of center top section, mostly stitched rectangles

Imagine this as the right side of the cloth...should have rotated it! how the cloth
and stitched rectangles interact.

Hope you got through this post and that I didn't get too distracted

More images of the cloth can be seen on my flicker page:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/69022257@N06/

Plato on my mind...

Today I'm stitching away...it is gray, windy and probably all the remaining leaves on the trees may just have to fall.  Or so it seems.  Only the O'Henry leaf will remain, it remains for us to find it.

I have been thinking a bit about the Allegory of the Cave from Plato's Republic.  The allegory deals with prisoners that are chained in a cave and only get to see shadows on the wall and perceive this to be reality. They have no concept of what reality really is.  (This is my summation in a nut shell.)  Of course once they are let out of the cave into the sun light and actually do see "the real," they don't know what/how to deal with it and long to return to the cave. And do.  This reminds me a little of stories you hear about blind people who have their sight restored.  They have to relearn their surroundings and people they knew by voice since their sense of reality has been altered.

 Plato also goes on to deal with the issue of Form and Idea.  Here he asserts the the non-material world  (abstraction - ideas or ideals) and not the material world of change which we know through sensation, construct  our highest and most fundamental reality.  In many ways I think this is believable.  If you think about it - what forms our ideals, the image industry...media.  (?)

So what does this have to do with my current stitching project (LEFT)...well, it's the shadow.  I think the shadow image is the most important feature to me.

Thinking about the shadow this way, I decided I needed to add another figure, hence, the shadow on the left emerged.  This cloth is a little darker - camera flashed washed it a bit.  I also decided I wanted to add a little dimension to the cloth...nothing to pronounced just a little more surface to introduce the concept of separation.  A boundary layer, defined as: a region of retired fluid near the surface of a body which moves through a fluid or past which a fluid moves; a bounder. Thinking that this might present a region where one body could not reach another body with noticeable ease.  

closer look at the shadow figure

I also added the "applique" type edge.  I brings forth the surface and contrasts the unfinished edges.  As Jude states, it a nice play with the edge. 

In thinking about how in someway, are lives are like shadows, I started thinking about simulacra.  Theories that were presented by Jean Baudrillard.  It was a much discussed issue when I was in graduate school so forgive me for the chit chat here.  I copied the following from Wiki because it would take me forever to get it all out and I probably would make it even more confusing...I guess this is also a issue about the separation of people that social media has brought about.  That school are considering that their students not learn writing (penmanship) because most of them are typing.  Conversations are mediated through mechanical means, etc. Those few entries that Jude did with written  text instead of typing were nice...all this and more brings me to this issue (but I have to say, not all media is a negative.  It allows  me to share here with  you, and other places in the media sphere.) But still...makes one stop to think.  So could a mere shadow bring all this about? ha.


Simulacra and Simulation is most known for its discussion of images, signs, and how they relate to contemporaneity. Baudrillard claims that our current society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that human experience is of a simulation of reality. Moreover, these simulacra are not merely mediations of reality, nor even deceptive mediations of reality; they are not based in a reality nor do they hide a reality, they simply hide that anything like reality is irrelevant to our current understanding of our lives. The simulacra that Baudrillard refers to are the significations and symbolism of culture and media that construct perceived reality, the acquired understanding by which our lives and shared existence is rendered legible; Baudrillard believed that society has become so saturated with these simulacra and our lives so saturated with the constructs of society that all meaning was being rendered meaningless by being infinitely mutable. Baudrillard called this phenomenon the "precession of simulacra".

"Simulacra and Simulation" breaks the sign-order into 4 stages:

1. The first stage is a faithful image/copy, where we believe, and it may even be correct that, a sign is a "reflection of a profound reality" (pg 6), this is a good appearance, in what Baudrillard called "the sacramental order". The page six refers to the volume titled Selected Writings. 
2. The second stage is perversion of reality, this is where we believe the sign to be an unfaithful copy, which "masks and denatures" reality as an "evil appearance - it is of the order of maleficence". Here, signs and images do not faithfully show us reality, but can hint at the existence of something real which the sign itself is incapable of encapsulating.
3. The third stage masks the absence of a profound reality, where the simulacrum pretends to be a faithful copy, but it is a copy with no original. Signs and images claim to represent something real, but no representation is taking place and arbitrary images are merely suggested as things which they have no relationship to. Baudrillard calls this the "order of sorcery".
4. The fourth stage is pure simulation, in which the simulacrum has no relationship to any reality whatsoever. Here, signs merely reflect other signs and any claim to reality on the part of images or signs is only of the order of other such claims.

So there it is...or here it is...or was. My update. 

LEFT and the color of memory

Prep sketch for LEFT. 

Have you ever consider the color of memory.  

Today I remembered my dream from last night. Perhaps, I felt as thought I hadn't dreamt for a long time or if I had I was not remembering.  It's been hard to get a full, continuous amount of sleep when sleeping over at my mom's.  She wakes up almost every other hour and I along with her to ensure her safety and also that she just goes back to sleep. 

 So my dreams concerned an old friend to whom I had written yesterday with an update on my situation.  We were very close at one time but drifted.  People drift.  Lives go on sometimes in ways and waves unforeseen.  I thought we'd always stay close, and maybe in a way, absence is a form of closeness.  So in the dream I wandered around this arrangement of rooms that can best be described as labyrinths.  Mazes of different colors (pastels no less...which I would never have picked as colors that I fancy!) But then at the end of the dream...he was gone again.  This time the image was very different...sepia toned.  Lovely colors of walnut cloth dipped by magic fingers! The color of Eau de vie de marc. This is actually a brandy made from pomace - marc in French.  You might be more familiar with the term grappa.  It is a clear brandy type beverage that might have some sediment.  I use to kid my friend that it was the water from the life of marc.  In the dream that is actually how it ended.  My friend had vanished (the magic of dreams is that anything happens - right) but instead there was a little niche with a water fountain.  The color was so intensely sepia.  It was rich...when I awoke, my first thought was of the Eau de vie...that made me think about, "does memory have color." 

Looking at the image of the "prep sketch" the edge are obvious what we called faded, yellowed, aged.  There is even a musty smell to the page.  (does memory have odor?)  When we want to antique an image, we have it tinted most of the time "sepia" but sometime blue (cyan.)  We tend to think of old as Black and White images...digital is full spectrum color.  Technicolor. Photographs/film will fade to a reddish color.  (there is a chemical reaction on the acetate film base and moisture that will also crack the surface of the film...another image of aging...surface alteration: wrinkles/lines)  We tend to refer to elderly folks as having a greyish tone.  And when we lack oxygen - we turn blue. (As an aside, Joan Didion's new book was released today:  Blue Nights.  It is a memoir for her daughter.)  The blue refers to location at certain latitudes where there are long summer evenings - little darkness. Patina, also covers a more vibrant color...memory is held under the bluish cast.  

My cloth, LEFT, has to do with memory, past, remembering, loss.  The color was picked to evoke that sentiment.  It is suppose to make you think of the "back then."  The place, "the past, is a different country.  They do things differently there" kind of thinking.  The quote is from the Go Between, by L.P. Hartley.  

The cloth was dyed in walnut, double dipped with vinegar.  The "door" opening, top right, has a brighter orange color - that was an additional dying with metal - to get rust coloring.  Rust is passage of time, elements, change.  The band around the "amber/umber" color is a cloth that is "dyed" with (mold stain.)  I left the cloth - a pale pinkish cloth - wrapped in plastic (so as not to lose any moisture) for a good period of time 6-9 month!) to promote the mold growth.  Washing it made the "blackness" fade a little to a bluish (payne gray) color.  The thread that I'll use too, has been selected to keep in the same color scheme.

So when you think of the past/memory, do you see it in color, monochrome...or dark like a shadow.  Is the shadow following you.  In a linear sense, is the shadow then, your past perhaps. 

Latest stitched figure, LEFT, detail.

All little more stitching last night

I remember the days when I use to think, yay Friday.  Don't have to think that way anymore.  The days really do wander off or come on their own.  Without regularity, also known as a job, one has to really think about the days in a different way.  I have several calendars which I find myself checking for validation now...seeing if it really is the day I think it is.  I can see how and why my mother with ask me what day is it.


Today I was back in the library (my old office) doing a little more cleaning up and out.  After almost thirty years these things take longer.  It's almost as though I'm moving out of my second home.  So much trash and just plain stuff that I've kept around thinking I'll go back and read that article, or refer to that report/memo.  Conference guides and presentation proposals and then the presentations' scripts.  The grant proposal that I worked on submitted and got and the ones I didn't get but thought I'd reapply for.  Catalogs that I had marked for future acquisitions that now are so old that newer editions of those same titles have been re-issued.  When it comes down to it....we are just accumulators/collectors of little bits of memory, history aspects of our former self that we try to hang on to.  Why, because we'll forget who we were?  Maybe in some cases people have an easier time of just filing away things (in circular containers) and keeping an orderly house...but I think a lot of us too will hold on to things because for one reason or another they have a value that only we understand and probably ultimately forget.  Maybe this can explain why my mother keeps going through her things over and over again...seemly without point or really objective - she's trying to recapture something of herself that her memory has misplaced.  Someday she look in the mirror and will not recognize the person that she sees in the reflection and she'll eventually too forget my name so until that happens I guess it's okay that she keeps sorting her things remembering the best way she can - just who it was, who was that person that first saved that little object which is so meaningless to everyone but her.


Memento mori is a Latin phrase translated as "Remember your mortality", "Remember you must die" or "Remember you will die".1* It names a genre of artistic work which varies widely, but which all share the same purpose: to remind people of their own mortality. The phrase has a tradition in art that dates back to antiquity. 


*1literally " [in the future] remember to die", since "memento" is a future imperative of the 2nd person, and mori is a deponent infinitive


Well, topical subject this: Day of the Dead celebrations are acts of Memento Mori...Victorians were known for keeping photographs of loved (after their death, dressed and posed! but noticeable dead) as such remembrances.  And let us not forget the reliquaries - a little saints' keepsake for a token of memory! 
But I digress...


So I went to the office...did a little cleaning and came home to the same old same old.  

But I did want to post an update of the corner of the newest piece I'm working on...LEFT.  The bottom right hand figure is completed.  It is the image on the top of the blog page. The correct color is somewhere in between these two!  I don't have photoshop just auto correct.  The figure is totally filled in long and short stitch.  This is the only figure that will be filled.  The other figures on the cloth will be outlined and stitched in Jude's walking stitch.  The shadows will be completed and will progressively get longer.  There is the rectangular "chamber" in the middle which also probably will remained unfilled.  Progressing slowly.  


Also under the heading of, really like this.  I read this yesterday on the Mermaid in the Attic blog.  Thought is was interesting and that I'd share it with those that perhaps have not seen it or her page.  It deals with down time during the creative process.  Artists' Block kind of thing.  A little mythical and spiritual and mysterious but that's okay.  It reads very with and gave me cause to think about those times I could thread a needle of draw a little or "just what is wrong with me today kind of mood."  Hope you enjoy it.  I did.


http://amermaidintheattic.blogspot.com/2011/10/descending-into-underworld-labyrinth.html


I like mythology by the way.  There is something about the underworld that I find creative.

keep going...inspiration

Today is Pablo Picasso's birthday.  Born in 1881.  He said, "Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." So wouldn't it be lovely if it was that easy, but maybe that's what, why, and how we have decided to do what we do. I wanted to take a shot of this old gnarly mulberry tree that I've been walking passed and today I finally remembered to slip my camera into my pocket just to discover that the tree was being sawed down...I was upset with myself but more with the man who was doing it.  Why not let nature and time progress as it should - to it's own beat.  But, I guess living in the city that isn't as possible for trees as for those that reside in forests, woods and far from man.  Still, I wish it had turned out differently for that old mulberry.  I once had to cut a tree down, a grand old pear tree.  It had become infested with carpenter ants and soon it would have toppled, but it probably wouldn't have fallen in the right direction but instead would have hit my house.  Funny thing was, that I actually decided to ask for it's forgiveness by giving it a hug.  I swear that I could feel the soul of that tree and that it had some understanding of what was going to happen.  Still, I don't really eat too many pears these days because I remember the sweetness of those pears and miss that tree.  


But back to stitching.  I have been following along with Jude Hill's work and blog, I hope you all go there for a visit. Some wonderful stuff to see and learn and people to get to know.  She's been a huge influence on things. 


I am currently working on a piece, the piece that is pictured on the top of this blog.  The short title is LEFT...the last line is ABSENCE.  I am trying to figure out the sequence of the wording and how/where to place it.  The color is influenced by the work of Anselm Kiefer What I like about his work is that it is very textural and the fact that is is mono-chromatic.  I have seen some of his work "live" and there is a real feel of encaustic layering.  I don't look at his work from a political point of view I just look at it as material for visual reference. In that sense this image (right) reminds me a little of that color, non-color:

This caught my attention the other day.  It is a photo of water standing atop of some asphalt not quite dry.  The oil has come out of the tar causing slicks to form.  A few leaves have been caught on the surface. (a sort of mini early evolutionary period - where life began!)  All of these things added fuel to my thinking about the cloth: LEFT.  


LEFT's narrative is dealing with the absence of the other.  Who is that other - it could be anyone really but we all do feel the absence of someone at one time or another.  In this case it is a child that has been left by someone - a parent, sibling, loved one...but as the other moves away from the child, the shadow grows in size.  I've also been dealing with shadows in my work so it will be as interesting to me to see how this develops.  I did take a philosophy class in school that dealt with the shadow - darn if I had taken better notes or had a better memory....

so this is where the piece is today.  I'm as interested in seeing how it progresses as I am in the evaporation of the water and the "oil" slick and how that hole is filled where that old gnarly mulberry stood.