Turbulent Times

Turbulent Times

I began this blog a few years ago because I wanted a place where I could discuss creativity, art, inspiration and being an artist.  Since life has always informed my art, I came up with the name – Where Art & Life Meet.  Art has always been the thing that saves me.  When I am creating I am completely present, focussed and I am most at peace.  I’m in the zone, an almost trance-like state of being.  I feel happy and serene.  So when life gets turbulent, when I am scared, when the world feels chaotic and unpredictable, art is the thing that beckons me, soothing me, allowing me to appreciate life and it’s beauty, if only in that fleeting moment.  However these last two weeks have been particularly difficult, so much so that for an entire day I couldn’t do any art at all.  Nothing.

Thankfully, I had my online class, Dyeing to Design given by Elizabeth Barton, which I’ve written about ‘here‘ and ‘here‘ and we had another project due, so I forced myself to focus.  We began with some basic shibori dyeing.  Shibori is the Japanese art of wrinkling, creasing, folding and binding fabrics before dunking them into dye.  One can get a great variety of patterns from Shibori.  Here are some of mine.

But once the fabrics were dyed, I felt at a loss as to what to do with them.  I am drawn to shapes and usually sketch out my ideas first, but these fabrics are so bold, even bossy, that I couldn’t figure out how to respond to them.  Finally I had an idea that I began to play around with, but it was going to be far too complicated and I didn’t have enough time to create it…

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So I refined and came up with this…

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I plunged in and began cutting out shapes, putting them up on my design wall, pulling things down, putting other things up.  Eventually I designed this.

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In part this piece was in response to a comment about how things seemed dark, but the sun would shine again.  That red was glaring and SO red, so I went back to my design wall and did this.

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And here’s the back and the label.

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In between working on this piece, I lost myself in the bliss of hand painting some of my pots that I threw over  a month ago.  They make me happy.  I am calling them “Message Pots.”  The next batch will feature a more diverse population, which I’m looking forward to creating.  Did I mention that I haven’t been sleeping much?  I think all these guys look sleepy.

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To all of you who celebrate Thanksgiving, have a happy one.  To all who are feeling frightened and despondent, know that there are many feeling the same.

As for me, I will be losing myself in several days of cooking, another art form(!) before getting back to my painting, dyeing, quilts and designing.

Next week – screen printing!