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?
February 20, 2020 – Posted my first Youtube video. March: Designed and Posted my Abstract Pouch in my Etsy ShopFound out I’d been granted a two week artist’s residency at the Chateau D’Oquevaux. All set to go in April, 2020, only to realize that wasn’t going to happen. Rebook my air travel for July, 2020 and hope for the best.March: New York City becomes the epicenter of the Pandemic.March: Home sewn facemasks become a thing.And so do empty Manhattan streets in the middle of a day during the week. Pick a day, any day, the streets were empty.March: A sobering moment when a mobile morgue parks just blocks from our apartment. NYC is unable to keep up with the numbers of people dying from COVID. Mobile morgues like this one begin showing up all over the city to contain the overflow. April: The eerie silence of a great city in full lock down.May: A little pandemic humorMay: And some beauty amidst the horrorJune: Stores board up their storefronts in response to the demonstrations against rampant police brutality.June: Design and release Otter Needle RollJuly: Outdoor dining transforms the streets of New York and brings a little magic to a stir crazy populous.July: Design and release River Rocks PouchAugust: With little else to do, I continue to design, and release my Rock Gardens BagAugust: Celebration of my 60th Birthday on our roof with a couple of socially distanced friends.September: Visiting an empty HighlineSeptember: Design and release eyeglasses case.October: My improvisational stitching idea continues.October: Design and release scissor’s case.October: A bike ride heading downtown.November HumorNovember: Fall in New York CityDecember: A little snow in New York CityFinish second improvisational stitching piece: “Perseverance”December: A quiet Christmas.
Often referred to as a negative, I’ve always thought of obsessions as a lifeline to exploration, creativity, joy and boundless energy. Being obsessed with something (rather than someone) results in any number of truly awe-inspiring things, such as these artists who carve thread spools into amazing miniature works of art.
Or Andrea Love whose website is filled with animations that she creates using felted wool.
How does one work through the fear that inevitably arises when creating if one isn’t obsessed with whatever it is you’re working on? I love creative, obsessive people (and thankfully so does my husband!)
My latest hand stitched piece began as a challenge for myself – Pick a fabric that is on top of the pile and do something with it. And so it began. The fabric that lay before me is a color I find problematic. It’s a kind of pinkish, salmon flesh tone. There’s nothing wrong with the color, it just isn’t a color that speaks to me, particularly. But I had set myself up with a challenge and so I was determined to see where it took me. That was in the beginning of November.
The beginning…
I began playing around, trying different threads and thread weights adding texture in the form of hand dyed cheesecloth, wrapped wooden beads, etc. At one point in a moment of desperation I took some pastels and just painted right over the fabric and the stitching. Gasp! I know. I know. Sometimes taking drastic measures is exactly what’s needed, though.
And slowly, very, very slowly it began to take shape. There were plenty of moments when I thought – well, worse case scenario I’ll just use this piece to demonstrate various things, including what to do when you don’t know what to do or how to proceed!
But I kept at it and eventually began seeing things I liked, as opposed to all the things I didn’t. And once that happened, I began to turn a corner with this piece. However were it not for the fact that I’m obsessed with hand stitching, creating and designing, there’s no way I would have stuck it out. This piece would have been put into a corner and forgotten about. I credit my obsessiveness, dogged determination and perseverance as the reason that didn’t happen.
When I was young, on December 24th we had a special Christmas eve dinner and then we would open our Christmas presents under the Christmas tree. If we were visiting my grandmother at her house in Colorado, we did the same. The only difference was that she had live candles on her tree and no one was allowed into the study where the tree was set up and that she decorated the night before, at least this is what I remember. I remember asking why we couldn’t help decorate the tree. But this is the way it was, a tradition my mother thankfully did not continue. Nearby there was a long pole with a wet sponge attached to it. This was to snuff out the candles and I’m guessing there must have been a fire extinguisher close at hand as well, but I don’t remember that.
My grandmother at her house in Aspen, Colorado
Later, once I lived in New York City, Christmas was often a time of enormous loneliness. My father was fragile and could not have any of us home for fear we would bring home some illness that he would catch, and so for many years I spent Christmas in New York city by myself. I remember one year taking one of my roommates, who was also spending Christmas in the city that year, to a Broadway show and afterwards standing out in the freezing cold, trying to hail a cab and wondering what we would do if we couldn’t get one. It’s funny, I cannot remember the show we went to, though I think it might have been A Chorus Line, the memory that stands out is how brutally cold it was. A decade later I spent another Christmas going to the movies and afterward ordered Chinese take out. I remember there were only three other people in the movie theater and one of those three was a homeless woman who brought a cart holding her possessions with her.
Cross country skiing in Aspen
And then there were the Christmas’s spent with friends and boyfriends, but it wasn’t until I had my own family that we began our own Christmas traditions, which often meant traveling with our children to be with my sister and mother in Colorado. Those were festive Christmas’s filled with lots of extended family, and friends. This year because of the pandemic we are staying put in New York City. We have a beautiful tree covered in decorations I’ve collected from all over the world and that I’ve made. Each ornament brings back memories.
I made over a hundred origami ornaments when pregnant with my first child. Obsessiveness is a companion I’ve always welcomed.
And then there was the year that I decided to make some pretty elaborate ornaments like this Santa Claus.
Another year I made felt houses.
And another year I made these little wool birds.
This can be a difficult time in the best of times, but particularly now because of the pandemic, so many are unable to be with family and friends. I am so grateful for my little family here in New York City, but it wasn’t always like this. I know many people are feeling the bittersweet sadness that can come with Christmas whether you celebrate it or not, and so to all of you, I just want to offer some love.
Wherever you are, alone or with others, I am thinking of my fellow human beings and wishing you a pleasant and peaceful Christmas. ❤️
To say that I feel lucky doesn’t begin to tell the whole story.
We met at a Christmas party on Christmas Day in 1998. Neither of us were expecting to meet the person that would completely change our lives, and yet, that’s exactly what happened. I was 38 years old and had pretty much given up on the idea of marriage, children and everything that comes with that. Ours was not a conventional story: meet, date, fall in love, get married, have children, blissfully live happily ever after.
Our wedding ~ December 22, 2000
Right from the beginning life threw boulders our way, but clamber over them we did, over and over. And, now, here we are. We have worked hard, really, really hard for the happiness and love we now enjoy together. It hasn’t been easy. In fact, there were times that were so painful we didn’t know if we’d make it through, but we did. And the one thing both of us kept doing over and over again was to show up, no matter how tough things got, we kept showing up. We were willing to work on ourselves, on our relationship, and now, more than two decades later we are enjoying that “honeymoon period” people talk about.
In Bermuda
One of the single most important lessons I’ve learned from these last 22 years is to appreciate everything, the little things, the big things, everything. So, for example, when I wake up in the morning (being a morning person, my husband is still asleep) and go out to feed the cat and make my morning tea, I notice my husband has emptied the dishwasher. He always empties the dishwasher. It would be easy not to notice. It would be easy to dismiss this fact, just one of countless things he does to make our lives (my life) a little easier and nicer. And then I might notice how he’s taken the cat dish and put it in the sink to soak over night, so that I’m not left with an encrusted cat dish to scrub out, and while I’m at it, I might also notice my laundry that is neatly folded and sitting in a little pile for me or the garbage that he took out the day before or the mail that he brought in or the little list we keep of things we need to do or get and he’s added something to it, something we will undoubtedly get together or how he makes our bed every morning after he wakes or the card he’s written commemorating our anniversary, because he remembers and commemorates all the holidays and every event that is, in any way meaningful, or, or, or… and those are just the little things, there are big things, huge things, personal things requiring tremendous courage and hard work, stripping away layers and layers of childhood trauma, things from our past that we needed to deal with individually and together so that we could show up for each other in kind and loving ways, consistently and without hesitation.
Glacier Ice Cave in Iceland
Years ago, okay probably more like 15 years now, we saw a marriage counselor who told us to list all the things the other person had done right. It was an exercise in appreciation; simple, yet incredibly powerful. I hate to admit that I needed someone to suggest I do this, but I did. Being a critical thinker it is easy for me to see what’s wrong, harder to see all that is right. And now, we see what’s right everyday without trying or consciously reminding ourselves to do so, it just comes naturally (most days). On the days it’s more difficult, I remind myself to do so. Which isn’t to say that we never disagree or fight, we do, but we show up until the conflict is resolved or at least until there’s been some understanding that we’ve been able to reach together.
This morning we did our “reading” together, just as we always do. Each morning we read an excerpt from something and then discuss. Today’s reading was, “For it’s disgraceful for an old person, or one in sight of old age, to have only the knowledge carried in their notebooks.” Zeno
We discussed the wisdom we have gained and fought so hard for and again I was reminded of how much I appreciate this man who just 22 years ago I would soon meet. This man who has changed the trajectory of my life, in myriad ways and whom I appreciate and love more today than when we first married. Which reminds me of another quote we read recently from an anonymous person, “There isn’t enough darkness in all the world to snuff out the light of one little candle.” And as I sat next to this man that I love more than I ever imagined possible, I thought of how grateful I am to get another day with him and then I thought about how one little candle flickering in the darkness, when joined by other little candles become a beam of light.
My husband, partner, best friend, hero, knight in shining armor, and beam of light.
Any little bit of snow is exciting news here in New York City where we used to get several big blizzards a year, but now, not so much. So in anticipation I went out for an early morning stroll and had such a lovely walk. I made a video of my morning outing and just posted it on my YouTube Channel: Ariane Zurcher ~ On the Other Hand.
As often happens when I’m video taping while exploring New York City, I ended up reminiscing about when I was a Parsons School of Design student, a roommate who used to keep a pair of cross-country skis in her apartment and would ski down Fifth Avenue when a good storm ripped through the city. I remembered a trip my husband and I took to Iceland, and three days into it, I fell and shattered my right elbow. The photo below was after I’d had it stabilized, so that we could continue our trip.
As I strolled along the snowy New York City streets I decided to wander over to Madison Square Park and then found some old photos of the Victory Arch that was built just to the north of 23rd Street and the Flatiron building. The arch, celebrating the end of the first World War, was subsequently torn down.
Looking north – The Victory Arch
A few photos of my walk, but if you want to see more and hear about my various adventures, watch the Youtube video I just posted.
December 17th, 2020 at around 8am in Union Square, NYC
These days we hardly get any snow at all, so this storm was greeted with a lot of eagerness and excitement, by young and old. The two photographs below are from a snow storm we had in February, 2009.
Recent comments