Most of us, here in the United States, are hoping the next day and a half will go by quietly and without violence. In addition, since most of us are not yet vaccinated, and the variant has hit the US, with death tolls from COVID at an all time high, I thought the perfect remedy for free floating anxiety is a little silliness and laughter. This first clip is from a morning news show that airs in Calgary and whose anchors seem to genuinely enjoy their jobs.
And then, because I had clicked on this video, Youtube helpfully suggested the following video as another they thought I might like, which of course I had to click on, because that’s what one does…
Things devolved from there as youtube recommendations (you know the list of videos they think you might like that pop up on the right of your computer screen) began to include increasingly raunchy titles such as, “Pussy Get Out of my Pants” and other such salacious click bait. So I did what anyone would do, I went down the youtube sinkhole of clicking on recommended titles, and then had to pull myself together and redirect, as one does when heading down time wasting sinkholes. Oh but I did laugh at some of these… seriously laughed until I was crying. Even so, I’m happy to report I was successful in extricating myself and am now heading into what I hope will be an extremely productive day.
But before I go, here is one more, which made me laugh… I know, I know.
There was a show at the David Lewis Gallery that my husband and I recently went to, which absolutely stunned me. It was one of those exhibits that takes your breath away. A solo show by the artist Thornton Dial. I walked in with no expectations and left profoundly moved. It was a visceral response to a work that brought me to tears. The jarring juxtaposition of discarded carpeting, remnants of fabric staple gunned down and then painted over with house paint and spray paint was exhilarating to see. There’s a rawness to the work, an immediacy, and yet the pain, the tragedy of life, the turmoil as well as the joy and beauty are all invoked.
This piece is in the entrance and the last thing you see before leaving.
MeatIn HonorA close up of Meat
A Close up of In Honor
If you’re interested in learning more about this amazing artist, you can watch The Art of Thornton Dial.
As this post’s title suggests, there’s a little something for everyone, but let’s start things off with Fiber Talk!
In December I was interviewed by Gary Parr and Beth Ellicott for their podcast Fiber Talk, also available on their Youtube channel, Flosstalk. We had such a great time covering a whole variety of different topics including inspiration, finding your voice, color, color theory, art, choosing threads, improvisational stitching and life in general. Fiber Talk just released our conversation Sunday, so go have a listen. We had such a good time and I hope you will too!
You know things are difficult when my mother sends me several videos within a few days of each other. This is something she started doing when COVID hit hard this past spring in an effort to cheer all of us up. I’ve been posting many of the things she sends on this blog ever since. This last week I was the lucky recipient of THREE wonderful videos from her. The most recent is from the New York Philharmonic, a performance of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now.”
https://youtu.be/zA5ZlhcUf-U
Another was this, which is particularly hilarious because many of my descendants are German and this sort of humor is exactly what we have often noticed and commented on.
Finally there’s this, which is just an amazing and beautiful example of creativity and where it can take us. If you don’t like the colored lighting shots, skip ahead to around the five minute mark and look at the other absolutely spectacular work made.
When I was nine years old my father had a horseback riding accident, broke his back and almost died. He never fully recovered. Flashes of disparate memories are all I have left from that time. The beautiful gold cat pin my grandmother gave me with an emerald belly, ruby eyes and when I lost it years later, I felt a deep inexplicable sorrow that lasted for decades. It wasn’t until many, many years later that I realized I associated that pin with my father’s accident.
The visits to the hospital and the sickly, antiseptic smell, the sound of the rubber soled shoes the nurses wore as they approached his room, the sound of his labored breathing, the bright California sunlight in the parking lot of the Stanford Hospital, and the sense that nothing would ever be the same, these are the things I remember now when I think back to that time.
Nothing would ever be the same.
And it wasn’t.
In that moment when I learned of his accident, when I understood how serious it was, when I heard the words, “He might not make it” and “if he does, he’ll be paralyzed for the rest of his life” and all the other pronouncements made, then reevaluated and revised, and the realization that these doctors, whom I had believed knew everything, perhaps knew very little when it came to predicting my father’s future.
Much, much later, as an adult, I would again be reminded of how little people, even highly regarded people, actually know. These very people we are taught to admire, respect and believe are not always as they would like us to believe. After all they, like all of us, are human, fallible, imperfect and often far more complex than the stories we like to read and hear about. But most people want desperately to believe that things are simpler than they often are.
Yesterday, here in the United States people expressed shock and horror as we watched scenes of our capitol under attack. It was a gruesome reminder of how things that have been percolating for a long time can suddenly shift, how anger and resentment can propel people to behave in awful ways, how acts of violence are justified, how one side blames the other and then the other side retaliates and on and on it goes.
It’s easy to say we need to be kind to one another, but so much harder to put into practice.
A friend of mine, James Cone, someone I admired tremendously and who spent every Thanksgiving with us for many years until he died, once described to me what it was like growing up during the Jim Crow era in the deep south. He told me how he would watch his father leave the house each morning and each morning he would wonder whether this was going to be the last time he saw him. At the time I said, I can’t know what that must have been like, but I can try to imagine. I loved that man. He was a beautiful soul. I asked him once, while we discussed the rampant racism that continues to rip through this country, “How do we change this?” James said, “Love. The answer is always love. It has to be.”
What would James have said had he been here to watch our capitol come under attack? What would he have said as he watched all those people wandering around the Capitol building, knowing that had their skin color not been white, a very different scene would have played out? I can’t know for sure, but I will repeat what he once told me, not so many years ago.
There are so many things going on that I cannot talk about publicly for a variety of reasons, but all of these things piled up can make life feel particularly challenging at this moment. The specifics are unimportant. Most people are grappling with things they cannot and do not talk about for personal reasons. What I do know is that staying calm in the midst of it all, certainly helps. In addition, I remind myself to take time to appreciate all that I have.
Which reminds me of the story about the man who is being chased by a tiger. There is a cliff straight ahead and all other escape routes are cut off to him. He must make a choice – get eaten by the tiger or jump off the cliff to his certain death. So he does what any reasonable person would do, he jumps off the cliff, but on the way down he grabs hold of a shrub growing out of the cliff’s sheer face. As he hangs on for dear life he notices a single flower growing from the shrub. He marvels at the beauty of this flower while clinging to what few moments he has left of his life as his grip loosens.
This isn’t how the real story actually goes, there are a number of variations to it, though the central theme remains the same – what do we do, how do we behave when things get tough? The above story is how I reconstructed the original Zen story, which features a strawberry and not a flower. My interpretation isn’t about the importance of staying present or the inevitability of death, though both are worthy topics to discuss. To me this is about how we behave in the face of adversity. We think of life as going on endlessly. When excitedly awaiting something, the minutes pass slowly, however our lives are just seconds when compared to the history of mankind. We are all going off the cliff to our deaths eventually, but on our way down, how do we behave? In the face of adversity, can I still marvel at the beauty of this life and the planet I’ve been fortunate enough to occupy while looking for an alternate way to descend the cliff without plummeting to a gruesome death on the sharp rocks below?
When things are tough can I remember to be curious and explore despite everything else that’s going on?
When creating a new project there are a few themes that crop up over and over. One of them is this idea that there is always more going on below the surface. One of my first pieces that I designed, I put a large metal zipper in to signify that what looks like a pretty garden has more going on. Another one of my pieces I entitled, “It’s Not What You Think”.
Bringing this idea into one’s art is something I continue to explore. The layers of the human experience, the depths to which we can delude ourselves, but also the honesty with which we can examine our experiences and hopefully learn from them is the fertile ground we can explore as we create. During this time of uncertainty, with the pandemic raging, the virus mutating, the constant and seemingly relentless drama in the United States, not to mention the myriad personal challenges most of us face, can I still see beauty in this world? Can I still create inspite of it all?
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