a dove is born

Bird1

Talk about living in the realm of unknowing, that’s where I seemed to have pitched my tent today. This piece of my altar cloth started out as the image that appeared as a response to Pablo Nerusda’s poem called An Ode to Ironing:

Poetry is white
it comes dripping out of the water,
it gets wrinkled and piles up.
We have to stretch out the skin of this planet.
We have to iron the sea in its whiteness.
The hands go on and on
and so things are made
the hands make the world every day,
fire units with steel
linen, canvas and calico come back
from combat in the laundry
and from the light a dove is born
purity comes back from the soap suds.

I saw a sky filled with clothes (probably dirty) falling to earth, forming a dove. But somehow in the stitching, my hands created this, and because I have no idea what my hands are trying to tell me, what they wish to convey, I will leave you with this:

Creating art is like dreaming; there are a multitude of layers that can’t be exhausted with just one sitting.

and this:

In creating altars, we fill a personal space with the power of our own intentions and longings. We take seriously the deep desires of our hearts.

both from the pen of Christine Valters Paintner.

More about 365 Altars

4 Comments

  1. Angela

    Jeanne, this is so beautiful. And I love the Neruda poem. I’ve said it before but I love these cloths! Trying to keep my exclamation point usage under control here.

    • whollyjeanne

      Thank you, Sugar. As for exclamation points, remember the Seinfeld episode where Jerry took a message for Elaine? She read it and asked about the tone of voice (don’t we all want to know that, don’t we all never get that?) and ultimately the inquisition led to a plethora of exclamation points? So funny.

  2. Karen Sharp

    oooh, beautiful, intriguing, filled with promise….. 😀

    • whollyjeanne

      well, sugar, if you see something with your deeply intuitive spirit, i sure wish you’d tell me cause i’m kinda’ clueless here. i know what my hands want me to know will become clear in time, but i’d still be interested in what you see. (actually, i think my hands are just telling me what i already know in a visual language that speaks to my soul instead of the language of words that speaks to my brain.)

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Hey, Sugar! I'm Jeanne Hewell-Chambers: writer ~ stitcher ~ storyteller ~ one-woman performer ~ creator & founder of The 70273 Project, and I'm mighty glad you're here. Make yourself at home, and if you have any questions, just holler.

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