Transitions began with playful experimentation. I wanted to try some new techniques: Stamping, Stenciling, and Painting. I wanted to try a new dye: Wasabi color Fiber Reactive dye by Dharma Trading Company. I wanted to play with the new art tools Kristiann Bonn had gifted me. That was in late July. My life was amid transitions: Menopause, Empty-nesting-or-not, COVID-19 pandemic, and a whole lot of career changes for me and my partner. The studio was a Haven away from all the transitions and challenges I faced in the rest of the world.
Then transition came to my studio, too. I ordered a Long Arm Quilting Machine in late August. Due to shipping and the like, I knew it would take several months to arrive, so I turned my original experiments into a series about transitions.
I spent September 2020 ice dyeing for the series, then built the tops for each piece in October and November. The central piece, Bone yard, is the only one that uses commercially dyed or printed fabrics. Part of the transition I’ve wanted to make in my art practice has been to move to using only fabrics I’ve marked myself – so eventually I will eliminate all commercially dyed or printed fabrics from my studio entirely.
I’m a way from achieving that end goal, but this series gave me the opportunity to see that it’s definitely a realistic goal should I choose to continue in that direction. One of the wonderful aspects of the transitional moments in our lives is the ability we have to catch glimpses of what we might become before we’re fully committed to the change we’ve embarked upon. Rarely do transitions propel us suddenly into a whole new world. More often, they’re gradual, with bits of the old and bits of the new mixing together along the way. You’ll find a lot of that in Transitions.
Technology dominates life today. We modern humans think this is all brand new; before the computer and cell phone, we like to believe technology wasn’t a thing.
I say, that’s not actually true. To our distant Ancestors, the button was a piece of high technology. In Tech Evolution, I’m exploring the idea of how technological growth has been with us all along. With each passing shift in technology, the stuff that was once novel becomes common place. Although the overall feel is of paintings on a cave wall made in our distant past, I’ve included images of buttons almost as if they’re a kind of science fiction of the day.
What would early homo sapiens have thought if they’d been introduced to such evolutionary technology?
Have you ever caught yourself on the edge of sleep in that space between dreaming and waking where you can see those strange faces peaking out of the shadows?
That’s where the Tree Divas live. Just out of sight, yet right there unmistakeable. They help us slip between the worlds, for better or for worse. Spend too much time with them, and you’ll forget where the edges of reality are. Let go, and you’ll be stuck in the flatness of purely the five senses.
Balance your Day and your Night…and you’ll awaken to the true magic of our world and theirs.
From seeming thin air, new ideas are born like flowers blooming into being. They start off a little wobbly, perhaps, but soon find their stripes and bound forth into our world. Some are quiet, cool, and collected. Others inspire Passion, Fire, Change. Those are the truly Great ideas, the ones that Coalesce into a Life well lived.
Bone Yard is both playful and serious, drawing on the crow and human skeletal system as symbols of the mystery of Death. Death is the point that connects us to what was and what has yet to be. It is the gateway for Birth, for that which dies in one place is reborn in another. Boneyard’s use of commercial fabrics to frame the four central panels is symbolic of the transition my own artwork is undergoing as much as it’s symbolic of the communal nature of the Graveyard. We all step through that doorway at some point; no one avoids Death.
Raven’s Yard is about the place where we stand, poised, seeing what has finished and what is just beginning to rise. How we tell our story defines the shape it will take. Raven helps us recognize our truth amid the chaos. It’s good to spend a little time in Raven’s Yard as you navigate Life’s Transitions.