Explorations Episode 17: Cleaning it All Up

 Explorations Episode 17:  Cleaning it All Up

This may be the last episode, for a while, of the saga of the creation of a quilt for an exhibit that requires participants to document their creative process.  Well, I've become the Queen of Too Much Information in that regard, because here I am at Episode 17.  There may not be an Episode 18, at least for a while, because I'm DONE.  As in the theme from the old TV show Dragnet:  "Done dah  done done."

And here it is, Sand and Foam, after five months of creative process:

This piece met its deadline of August 1, a date by which it had to be photography ready.  And so it was ready, photographed, and submitted to Dropbox.

What happens next?  I have to get it to the New England Quilt Museum, http://www.nequiltmuseum.org/index.html, in Lowell, Massachusetts, some time in mid-September.  

Meanwhile, I have to clean up the materials generated by this project over the past several months.

 I'm tired of having all this extra stuff on my sewing machine table.  I need that table to be empty in order to work on a big piece like this, so I have to shift things around whenever I need to sew. That's a container of beads on the left and my paints and brushes on the right.

There's a depressing feeling that everything is everywhere.  For example, there have been sewing materials on the kitchen table for months:

And piles of materials everywhere, like my work table:

See the yoga mat on the right and the purple notebook and yoga block on the bottom of the pile?  Those are for my Egoscue posture exercises, which I do daily, so help me God, https://www.egoscue.com/,  and which I hope will allow me to stop walking like Walter Brennan playing Grandpa McCoy on the old TV show, The Real McCoys.

 

I want to keep my Egoscue equipment close by, so I don't accidentally on purpose forget to do my exercises, and so there it is, in the middle of everything. Along with...did you check out the iron and the roll of paper towels right behind that pile?  As I said, I have this oppressive feeling that everything is everywhere,  So now, because my work is essentially over for the time being, I really have to clear things out.

Like all these paints.  Fer crapsakes, where am I going to put them?

'cause there's not much room on the shelves:

And the beads!  These are EXTRA beads, baby, and my beadbox was already overflowing and weighing a ton even before I started Sand and Foam.  That's why these new beads, acquired for this project, are stored in a bead annex.

And all my trial pieces, throat-clearing efforts to help me decide which silks, which paints, and which techniques to use.

The most poignant out take of all is a painted and stitched piece of lightweight raw silk, which took forever to make, and which was perfect in every way except that it was TOO SHORT.

So I started the process all over again with a piece of silk chiffon:

Did I mention that I broke my right arm somewhere in there?  Good thing I'm left-handed.

And how about this?  Patterns that I considered making for this exhibition, but did not make full-size:

 And how about this?  Scraps.  Scraps galore.

And how about this snarky pile of, uh, stuff, behind my sewing table?  Those protruding bolts of fusible bonding and lightweight interfacing.  I bump into them constantly.

But you see that simple brown construction on the right? It's a wooden silverware holder.  My father made that in shop class as a kid.  He dropped out of high school as soon as he could, I'm thinking 1922 or 1923, but before he dropped out, he did made that. So there's that.  So what if there are a roll of tape and some empty spools in it right now.

Meanwhile, I'm going to go back to my pre-exhibit activities.

Such as gardening.  My spouse is accusing me of not doing my fair share these past several months, and I tend to agree.  Look at these weeds:

These "weeds" are evening primroses, oenothera biennis, which are biennials, and in this case, volunteers.  That means they just volunteered to grow where they are, and were not planted.  If we want to be able to enjoy their bloom next year--and it will be next year, because that's how biennials roll, laying down a rosette of leaves in their first year, as here, and flowering the second--we should put them someplace more nourishing than here, the gap between the raised bed and the asphalt of the driveway. BTW the yellow flowers of the evening primrose open as you watch, like time-lapse photography.  They're programmed to open as the dusk falls, and when they do, they give off a lovely aroma, piquant, citrusy.   This link will take you to a short video of an evening primrose opening, in real time:

https://youtu.be/BTLLw0C6yEk

 

 So transplanting these evening primroses to someplace better will be on my gardening list.  They are worth treasuring.

Aside from the need to catch up on my gardening, I also need to prepare a talk on the subject of the spiritual aspects of the creation of art.  This will be delivered at the Unitarian Society of Hartford, my religious congregation, on Sunday, August 12, 2018.  The theme of the services this summer has focused on members' spiritual practices, so for example, someone spoke on tai chi, someone else spoke about "A Transcendentalism for Today," and so forth.

 I was asked to talk about the creation of art as an exercise in spirituality, But I only have 10 minutes, because I'm sharing the 20 minute sermon time with someone else. Nevertheless I want my  reflections, however brief, to be stirring and inspiring. So I'm digging into some of the sources that led me to give art such a central part in my life:

Ha Ha!  My collection of Emerson's essays is so old it cost 75 cents!  So hey, onward and upward with the arts!

"It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process. " ---Henry James