Upheaval must happen before Renewal begins. It’s not pretty or clean. It can be quite beautiful.
Sometimes, tearing apart what was is energized with great joy and delight in the chaos created. Those are the Kali-moments, when you look about you seeing all that you’ve ripped apart still hanging in the air in a maelstorm of confusion. The beauty is Terrible and Awe-inspiring. Then, it’s gone.
After that, The Dust Will Settle. The pieces will fall in the next breath and Renewal can begin.
But until that happens, until the thousand bits settle, there is beauty.
- Materials: Hand-dyed cotton, cotton-polyester thread.
- Series: Renewal
- Size: 30 inches x 33 inches (76 cm x 84 cm)
- Completed: 2023
- Current location: Private Collection
My Thoughts on the Work
This whole series has been transformative for my process. I began as I have past series, with a vague idea. I created some colored fabrics and sat with the idea. I pinned stuff onto my design wall and stared awhile, moved it about, stared some more. It felt like a lot of work trying to connect ideas to imagery to inspiration.
There was a moment, mid-series, when I realized that Renewal is more than the growing of new stuff. There’s a before and an after to it, too. The Dust Will Settle is part of the beginning. Before you can truly Renew anything, you must tear apart what was. That’s how you make space for something new. It’s like clearing a field before planting in spring. In this work, I tore apart the way I’d been working by cutting apart some of my building blocks. Just the energy of that destruction opened me to something new; I saw the beauty in the chaos for a moment and it all clicked into place.
The Dust Will Settle before Renewal surfaces. Why not enjoy the chaos while it lasts?
