+ Her Barefoot Heart
Jeanne’s personal creative pursuits of stories stitched, written, and spoken
Here’s what Nancy drew on the 131st sheet of paper:
and the 131st stitching I did on cloth:
I tell you, the more I think,
the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic
than to love people.
~ Vincent van Gogh ~
~~~~~~~~~
She is my developmentally disabled sister-in-law, Nancy,
and I am Jeanne, the woman who flat-out loves her.
Go here to start at the beginning.
She draws:
Then I stitch:
Mix red and blue, you get purple. (This is not a political statement, by the way.) In horticultural circles, purple is called “blue” or “horticultural blue”. In World War II, the Japanese used a secret code called the Purple Code. They didn’t know till after the fact that Allied cryptographers had broken the code. Purple auras represent a love of ritual and ceremony. In the Star Trek universe, Klingons had purple blood. Once upon a time, purple was reserved for royalty. In liturgical terms, purple is the color of Advent, a season of looking forward, of anticipating. In this project, purple represents Nancy’s favorite color.
There’s no purple, that’s true, but driving through these mountains we now call home is like driving through a box of crayons
through a painter’s palette
through a basket of fabric scraps.
~~~~~~~~~
She is my developmentally disabled sister-in-law, Nancy,
and I am Jeanne, the woman who flat-out loves her.
Go here to start at the beginning.
The dahlias waited till the very last minute to get all dressed up and flaunt their beauty.
Such delicate beauty that unfolds
and unfolds
seems a perfect companion to Nancy’s drawing.
The touch of the natural and timely frost
creates a stained and withered look, a natural and timely beauty.
Next year we will plant them in a different place,
a spot that’s easier to get to, perhaps.
We will put them in the ground earlier
and we will get sturdier, taller stakes to support their sizable blooms.
We are learning.
~~~~~~~~~
She is my developmentally disabled sister-in-law, Nancy,
and I am Jeanne, the woman who flat-out loves her.
Go here to start at the beginning.
Once upon a time
there was A Wee Small Palace
(because Palaces come in all sizes, you know)
perched at the tiptop of a mountain.
Though nice enough by certain standards,
it was considered A Palace
because of the waterfall on which it sat.
A waterfall that went down
and down
and down
all the way into a magical lake.
Inside The Wee Small Palace,
two kitties lived side by side.
Though he could fool you because he primped a lot,
obviously concerned with his appearance,
the one named God
(which is dog spelled backwards, you know)
could be a bit of a bully.
Even in her beautiful coat of many colors,
our girl Pipp
was skittish of anything that breathed
(which often made her the perfect target for God.)
Despite her generalized and pervasive cautiousness,
Miss Pipp did love and trust one person:
the woman called Jeanne,
often showing her affection
by running figure 8’s around Jeanne’s feet,
something that caused Jeanne to stumble
and trip
and cuss.
Though annoyed at not being able to walk
through her own house without incident,
Jeanne knew that as a baby,
Miss Pipp was attacked by a predator,
and she just always assumed
that the memory of that
rendered Miss Pipp unable to play
or love
or be loved
in the usual sense.
One gloriously temperate fall day,
our Miss Pipp was so besotted
that her figure 8’s took her right ouside with Jeanne,
an act that surprised everybody,
including Miss Pipp.
As Miss Pipp walked around,
trying to get her bearings,
it became increasingly obvious that God was not just surprised,
God was annoyed.
God was upset.
God was quite possibly even concerned.
“Maybe you haven’t noticed,
but MISS PIPP IS OUTSIDE.
This is not good.
This is not right.
DO SOMETHING,”
God begged Jeanne repeatedly.
Jeanne,
whom God now considered an Absolute Fool,
simply went to fetch her camera.
God paced
and he perched
and finally he just stopped and stared.
Once over her initial shock of being outside,
and realizing that God couldn’t get to her now,
Miss Pipp decided maybe it wasn’t so bad being outside and on her own.
She explored a bit
then she just laid down to enjoy catching a few rays
in her newfound peace.
Understanding how a girl often needs to be outside by herself,
Jeanne went back inside and set about doing the laundry.
Or something.
Eventually Miss Pipp knocked on the door
saying she was ready to come in now, please
and after an initial rumble
that sounded for all the world like God was saying
“WHAT ON EARTH POSSESSED YOU TO DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT?”
though it could have been that he was actually saying
“What was it like out there, Miss Pipp? Tell me everything”
sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference
between scolding and relief, you know,
the two kitties are back together again.
And while Miss Pipp
settles down by the warm breeze
from the ice maker
and dreams of being a jungle kitty,
God sleeps the sweet restorative sleep of knowing
that disaster was avoided
and all’s right in his world again.
The End.
Though maybe it’s really The Beginning . . .
Once upon a time, I learned hand-built and slab-work pottery from a fun and talented woman named Janet MacGregor Dunn in the cutest free-standing studio that her son built for her in her backyard. Every Monday morning would find us meeting there, closing the door, and slinging and shaping mud (both literally and figuratively). Though I never really got the hang of it, Janet works with the grace and near-nonchalance of a woman who is at one with the clay, a woman who mastered the basics long ago and shoved them aside to go beyond, way beyond. Be sure to poke around her online gallery, see where she’s going next, maybe snag a beauty or two for yourself or others. (Tis the season to be shopping, you know.)
I met Janet eons ago when we worked together on a fundraising event for the American Heart Association. Janet continues to be active in local fundraising events and art shows. She took her Nancy cloth with her to several art shows and asked fellow artists to hold it. They obliged, and I get goosebumps thinking about Nancy’s drawings being in the presence of professional artists (shown here in alphabetical order by first name because that’s the way my computer prefers it) like Janet and . . .
Allen Quandee
Bob McGill
Charles Pickney
Don McWhorter
Gary Curtis
Jesse Duke and Friend
John Martin
June Shellnut
Larry and Pamela Smith
Lynn Mersinger Reader
Marc Villanueva
Mary Lynne Robbins
Matt Bolton
One Ring at a Time
Patrick Henrickson
Paula Lansford
Randy Ayers
Sally Austin
Santoria Monica
The Living Sculpture
A heart Thank you to all you creative people and to you, Janet, for making this happen.
~~~~~~~~~
She is my developmentally disabled sister-in-law, Nancy,
and I am Jeanne, the woman who flat-out loves her.
Go here to start at the beginning.
I continue to rest after weeks of travel, and today I began gathering materials needed for a new project I’ll start tomorrow, or the next day, or next month. You know how it goes. This project begins with deconstruction. Perhaps it’s age, perhaps it’s all the historical documentaries I sometimes play in the background as I work, and the motivation(s) don’t really matter. What matters is my commitment to making a serious commitment to creativity. Productive creativity. And presentation ideas for this creative collaboration begin to come around.
Honored to be included here today.
~~~~~~~~~
She is my developmentally disabled sister-in-law, Nancy,
and I am Jeanne, the woman who flat-out loves her.
Go here to start at the beginning.
i’ve been many places
in the past several weeks,
traveling for many reasons,
all reasons involving other people.
some folks are quick to divide people
into two groups:
those who like people
and those who don’t like people.
i continue to bump up against
that categorization,
but i no longer spend time and energy
trying to explain that i, too, like people
just in different doses.
defending and explaining is time and energy better devoted
to what my soul must have
as nourishment:
space,
silence,
solitude.
To understand what it feels like to look at Nancy’s art, you can not look at it with a logical mind. My daughter said it best, “It feels free,” and how does one capture freedom? As a flag flapping in the wind? You do that already with these. So I brainstormed and hunted the web looking for images that made my spirit feel free. And instead of taking a picture of the stitching in an organic place, I placed it upon the images that reflected most to me what it makes me feel when I looked at it, the joy and openness…
Today’s Envoy is my friend Illuminary. The first time I read her writing, I was smitten, absolutely smitten. Then next thing you know, we’re tucking each other in at night with stories about our day or how we wish our day had been or how we hoped tomorrow would be – a ritual that continues to this day. Beyond giving me a sweet, soft place to lay my head every night, let me tell you: this woman is amazing. She gets more done in a minute than I get done in a week. She home schools Little Moon (my special name for her special daughter), makes pottery, sews, quilts, makes dolls, reads the best books, tend a garden, writes, makes brooms, paints, and I don’t know what all. Seems to me there’s nothing this woman can’t do. Simply said, she is an artist – an artist in various creative mediums, an artist at life, and an artist at friendship. And she’s as generous as she is talented. This week found her holding class for the Empty Bowls project, and I know she donates some of her mugs as a fundraiser for an animal shelter. Go visit her blog and be captivated by her writing, by her special way of looking at the world, then visit her etsy shop and let her become your favorite elf. Thank you, MoonGlow, for this beautiful collage and your beautiful words that accompany it. I’ll talk to you later when we tuck ourselves in under the moon that holds you, me, and Nancy, too.
~~~~~~~~~
She is my developmentally disabled sister-in-law, Nancy,
and I am Jeanne, the woman who flat-out loves her.
Go here to start at the beginning.
3 states
+
12 hours on the road
=
tired
it was a good two weeks, and now we are home.
no unpacking tonight,
that’s what tomorrow is for.
3 clues to what this drawing makes me think of . . .
1
2
3
~~~~~~~~~
She is my developmentally disabled sister-in-law, Nancy,
and I am Jeanne, the woman who flat-out loves her.
Go here to start at the beginning.
This work by Jeanne Hewell-Chambers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://www.TheBarefootHeart.com.
© 2026 Jeanne Hewell-Chambers
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