arranging and re-arranging

 

One of Mary Pratt's teachers advised her that in her family there could only be one artist and that artist is Christopher (her husband).  She heard, but did not allow herself to retire.

Instead, she took hold of her life and chose to continue painting, arranging her responsibilities as a parent around her needs as an artist.

this note from my 1998 journal

raw edges

uncertainty - order
holes first, cloth after - cloth first, holes after
raw edges - neat edges
chaos - order

and how does this relate to my life and to what I've just gone through this week?

facing my father's death, and then having him NOT die.  His will to live is very very strong.  His inner spirit conquered death again.

art is useful

astonishment and respect

 

the quiet slowness of growth in the natural world,
a sense of time much broader than what we experience each day

sensuous experience

 

 

Textile as a structure and a place of interaction.
Something that is a total experience.

Ancient textiles give this feeling.
Sensuous.

emotional courage

 

the use of sequencing
a reliance on intuition
the rigor and emotional courage of poetry
trusting and leaving space for the viewer

Meeka Walsh writing about photographer Robert Frank

one day workshop prep

 

Willed introversion is one of the classic implements of creative genius and can be employed as a deliberate device.

It drives the psychic energies into depth and activates the lost continent of unconscious infantile and archetypal images.

It is a deliberate terrific refusal to respond to anything but the deepest, highest, richest answer to the as yet unknown demand.

Joseph Campbell

tie sorting

 

 

Top photo:  All the  silk ties.
(No polyester ties here anymore, they are gone)
Then
the twinklers
the paislies
the striped and the wild.

Sorting them helps me to see that I am drowning in, but miraculously saved by, details.

figure

 

My body is the record of those I have loved.
I feel their bones as my bones.
The love is fixed.
The love is instantly accessible to memory.
It is somehow strained into my body as colour into cloth.
Anne Truitt

the magic circle

 

She identified with her daughters as daughters.
This identification gave her renewed access to unconscious materials that nurtured her art.
They surrounded her with a magic circle and mothered her as much as she mothered them.

About Anne Sexton, poet.