Finishing a Project is Like a Tiny Death

Finishing a Project is Like a Tiny Death

by | Dec 2, 2021 | Art, creative process, Design | 8 comments

I’m just about finished with my big improvisational stitching piece that I’ve been working on for the last 7 months or so, and it’s bittersweet.  It always feels like a tiny death.  There’s sadness and a kind of grieving that happens.  Sometimes I just leave it up on my design wall and look at it from time to time, knowing that eventually it will need to be stretched and framed or mounted, floated or somehow “finished” as in ready to be hung on the wall or made into a pillow or whatever I’ve decided I’m going to do with it.  But often I just can’t and so on the design wall it stays until something else is begun and necessitates that I take it down to give room for the new piece.

Also there’s the feeling that I’ve done my best and maybe this will be the pinnacle of my creativity.  Maybe everything from now on will just be a rehashing or versions of the same thing; I won’t progress as an artist beyond this, is the thinking.  But I don’t know that to be true.  It hasn’t been so far, so why assume it will be now?  I keep growing, exploring, investigating, learning, trying new things, new ideas, why invite trouble? as a friend of mine used to say.

The stoics are big on living today as though it were your last, being kind and recognizing that every action we take is a choice.  So today I’m choosing to just keep going.  I know I’m nearing the end, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less joyful working on it.  In fact, savoring each stitch, knowing that I’m almost finished makes it all the more wonderful and magical. Taking joy in the process is always the answer and boy, have I loved working on this piece!

Yesterday I had my monthly, scheduled livestream for my Patrons.  We had such fun!  I was talking to them about some ideas I had for this piece and everyone was chatting and I had a moment when I just stopped and savored the joy of stitching, of this piece, of all that’s happened since I began it.  And that’s the thing, each piece carries with it so many memories as life continues going along.  This piece came with me to Africa. It was with me when I learned of my mother’s death. I took it to Egypt and Jordan. I carried it in my backpack through countless airports and airport security.  It’s been put up on my design wall hundreds of times, only to be taken down again to be stitched, added, stretched, pulled, manipulated, torn, cut into, bound, sewn and even stuffed.  It has my tears soaked into its very fibers, I’ve painted, stenciled, appliquéd and stitched and stitched and stitched, culminating in this piece.

Now it’s almost done.

A tiny death.  What’s that cliche about one door closing and another opens?  This piece will give way to the next one and the fun and joy and magic will begin all over again.

And there’s beauty in that.

Interpretive Hand Stitching

Interpretive Hand Stitching

by | Oct 26, 2021 | Art, Balance, creative process | 3 comments

Yesterday I released a new Youtube Video with the same title.

Go check it out!

There are a few other key factors to interpretive hand stitching, improvisational hand stitching, expressionist hand stitching or whatever else you might want to call it.  I think all of these are good descriptors of my process when taking a piece of linen and starting to stitch on it.

The first few stitches

However at a certain point, composition plays a key role in how the piece evolves. It’s not enough to just stitch and hope for the best.  Without a good composition it can look like a bunch of disparate parts, each might be lovely taken on their own, but they aren’t necessarily interacting well with one another.

More stitching added…

Another common issue is that one part can take over, drowning out everything else; this brings its own set of challenges.  Or perhaps the whole thing is stagnant.  There’s not a great deal of movement, so it’s important to know when these things are happening and why.  Without knowing why, it is nearly impossible to remedy.

Once the large X was removed the two half moons in the upper right and again in the lower left began to dominate

The trick then is to resolve the “divas” and figure out how to turn the volume down or remove them.  In this case, I had to remove it.  Between the shape and color it was too much.  Except that when it was removed, I was faced with a new challenge.

Piece without the darker shapes

So that’s where I am right now. I’m sitting with the challenge of having removed three domineering shapes.  Taken on their own, they were fine, but when seen as a whole they were dominating.  Except now the piece isn’t grounded.  It’s lost some of its vigor.  Partly that’s due to the removal of the color, which lended a great deal to the overall piece.  So now I have to figure out how to pull it together, give it some excitement.  And this is how it goes.  There’s a kind of ebb and flow that inevitably happens when working on a piece like this.  Take away some aspect and suddenly there’s a new set of challenges.

The key is to not give in to discouragement.  To keep going no matter what.  To keep trying new things.  Thinking out of the box, pushing the boundaries of what I know how to do, trying something I’ve not tried before, test out other colors or reintroduce a color I’ve removed and see how that shifts the conversation.

This is the process that is interpretive hand stitching.  Where one idea leads to another and another and another and on it goes.