Category: Jeanne’s Barefoot Heart (Page 53 of 99)

Every day for the past 8 weeks,
it starts with one of Nancy’s drawings. Today, #57:

And every day I stitch the drawing du jour:

Here are the 7 I stitched this past week:

Last night
my moonsparkle friend
sent me this quote from Don Quixote.
Said it made her think of Nancy:

Maybe the greatest madness is to see life as it is rather than what it could be.

~~~~~~~~~

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 and read your way current.
And there’s a pinterest board, too.

“The condition of vitality next involves the emphasis in each symbol of the living forces, the vital character, of the thing represented, in preference to mere surface qualities.”

“This effect of vitality will be enhanced if the symbol states no more than the essential feature, if it states them clearly, and if it states them swiftly,”

“for the very swiftness of the execution will convey a sense of power and liveliness to the spectator.”

“This vitality must also be accompanied with the tenderness and subtlety born of long and earnest insight into nature, or the symbol, though spirited, will be shallow . . . ” C. J. Holmes, Notes on the Science of Picture-Making

There are 2 pen strokes in her 56th drawing.

~~~~~~~~~

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 and read your way current.
And there’s a pinterest board, too.

She goes first:

(The faint lines are bleed-through from the previous page.)
(There are two pen strokes in this drawing.)

Then I stitch:

The act of sewing is a process of emotional repair.

~ Lousie Bourgeois

~~~~~~~~~

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 and read your way current.
And there’s a pinterest board, too.

Nancy’s hands:

My hands:

I stitched today’s drawing while sitting in waiting rooms at Emory with my mother – the Center for Dizziness and Balance in the morning, and the Neck and Spine Center in the afternoon. (She is fine – going to take some cortisone and therapy for her neck and shoulder then later this year or maybe the first of next year, do some therapy for balance. She has pinched nerves and arthritis in her neck, and she grows more and more afraid of falling . . . which of course increases the likelihood of her falling.) Before stitching each drawing, I trace it with my finger, always intrigued and impressed with what Nancy has done. #54 has 4 pen strokes. I happened to have some pink thread in my bag, so I defined and delineated the 4 pen strokes in this one. I am in the process of adding the number of pen strokes to each post. I don’t know why it’s a big thing for me, but it is. A medical student who saw mother today – her name is Tate, not sure if that’s her first or last name – noticed me stitching and asked me about it. (That’s how I knew she is a student – she made eye contact, engaged with me, expressed curiosity, and listened to what I was saying.) I told her several things about Nancy, including how good she is with puzzles – how she puts them together without using the box top as a guide and can finish a 750-piece puzzle before I can get all the pieces turned right-side-up. “Why are you doing this?” she asked. “I don’t really know,” I told her, “I’m living a deep mystery. I can’t tell you why I’m doing it, only that it’s important. I only know I’m doing it because I can’t not do it.” When she heard that, Tate smiled and said, “So Nancy’s drawings are your puzzle.”

“Why do you paint? For the same reason I breathe.” e. e. cumming

~~~~~~~~~

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 and read your way current.
And there’s a pinterest board, too.

Nancy’s 53rd drawing (she is 53 years old – did I mention that already?):

My 53rd stitching:

Eggs have no business dancing with stones. ~ Italian proverb

The first thing that caught me about this one as I sat with purpley-threaded needle poised, ready to pierce the fabric was an egg. In the center. An egg, traditional symbol of creativity, spring, regeneration.

Creativity.

Whether it is rearranging furniture or writing a book of fiction or painting or designing a garden or drawing what at first might seem to be indecipherable shapes or weaving or making jewelry or taking photos or stitching what at first glance might seem indecipherable shapes into fabric, creativity is as necessary as oxygen. I’ve seen it, I’ve felt it too many times to count: creativity is a veritable fountain of youth and one powerful tonic.

Making the new familiar and the familiar new – that’s a favorite type of creativity. Resourcefulness – making do with what’s on hand, that’s a type of creativity, too. And fertility? Well, that’s creativity in a class all by itself.

When Nancy was a young adult, her mother called me several times to talk about authorizing a hysterectomy because Nancy was living with adults, many of whom are like Nancy – they simply don’t recognize the concept of personal boundaries or possible consequences of raging hormones. She was afraid, Mrs. Chambers, and she was sad. Incredibly sad. Can you imagine having to make this decision for your daughter who would never be able to make this decision for herself? It’s big, and it brings up a lot of stuff you didn’t even know was there.

That egg in Nancy’s drawing – is that a crack I spy at the top? Is it an embellishment? Maybe it’s a beauty mark.

For so many reasons, I was absolutely gobsmacked with the egg in the center of this drawing, so I broke from the standard-issue purple and embellished the egg in colorful beads. Sparkly, glass beads. In springtime colors, of course.

(I have really got to take these photos earlier in the day because twilight casts a decidedly blue light.)

~~~~~~~~~

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 and read your way current.
And there’s a pinterest board, too.

I hand her the pen, slide the paper in front of her, and she draws.

Then I stitch:

And snap photos. Today’s photo is taken on a squash plant in the garden my husband has cultivated this year. Or maybe it has cultivated him. You know how that goes.

Nancy’s daddy – my father-in-law – told me repeatedly that I make too much of things. An engineer by nature and by training, having me for a daughter-in-law was rather a shock to his system, me and my questions like “If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be and what would your leaves look like and how would you spend your days?” (which was one of the easiest, most elementary questions I asked him). He perplexed me, D did, and sometimes he annoyed me, but like any well-written piece of music, by the end of the score, everything resolved into an enjoyable, respectful, I don’t think “loving” would be too big of a stretch, relationship. But every time my fingers hover over the keys that would tell you what I’m seeing and sensing and feeling about a particular drawing or this project in general, I’d hear his voice saying those words from way back before the resolution part of the music, and I’d shush myself and cower.

I dreamed about him last night – D, my children called him. Andy and I were visiting D at his house, as was Donn (Andy and Nancy’s brother). I remember the house being very interesting from an architectural standpoint, and there was conversation, but I don’t recall anything that was said, just that we talked and it was amicable enough. The garage was underground, and ginormous hydraulic lifts – I remember there being three of them – raised the cars to ground level so we could drive off. While we were down preparing to put the cars on the lifts to take our leave, I thought of something I wanted to tell D, but when I looked down at the floor of the garage in the direction I needed to go to go back inside the house, there weren’t just oil spots, there were oil puddles – maybe even oil oceans – and there I was, wearing my size 5.5 white Keds. Every now and then, there was a dry spot of concrete, so I hopped, skipped, and leapt my way through the oil without getting any on me, and as I made my way through, I thought “See, playing hop scotch really paid off.”

And as I woke up (we’re back to real life now), something shifted – or maybe it snapped – it’s hard to tell. I came into the studio and wrote and wrote and wrote about all of this and just as I wrote the last sentence in my declaration, my womanifesto, what do you think happened as I laid the pen down? I looked up to see a hummingbird flying right in front of the window before me and take a seat on the Sunday-Makes-A-Week’s-Worth clothesline. I may not fully understand the dream yet, but I totally get the hummingbird action.

So let me tell you what I see in this one (which may or may not be what you see): I see a woman’s face, her profile, really. She has a pointy chin and nose, interesting lips that are smiling, I think, and eyes on the top of her head (which is not to be confused with eyes in the back of her head). Oh, and she has to-die-for long eyelashes, too.

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL. WATCH THIS:

When I turn #52 upside over (which is kinda’ the way I do everything in life, if you want to know the truth), I see a male with a mustache and receding eyes. His big head sits perched atop his miniaturized body, his head and body supported by his rather large-but-then-they’d-need-to-be-to-support-him feet. He’s talking – loudly, it would seem. Or maybe he’s pontificating or scolding or admonishing. Whatever he’s doing, his lips are moving and he’s putting some real air behind it, but I can’t make out a single word he’s saying.

~~~~~~~~~

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 and read your way current.
And there’s a pinterest board, too.

First, she draws:

Then, I stitch:

No, I’m not going gaudy on you, it’s just that I have this vision of these cloths filling the trees around me, flapping in the breeze from the limbs, but how to get them to stay on the limbs? That’s the question that stymied me . . . until last Friday when the light bulb went off. In the thrift shop. Where I spied these necklaces that will soon become buttons. That will hold the ribbon or thread or strip of fabric or whatever that will become wings. Sorta.

~~~~~~~~~

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 and read your way current.
And there’s a pinterest board, too.

Karen Sharp articulated the distinction between conveying and expressing. If Nancy is trying to convey something, that implies that she wants to elicit a certain response or interpretation from the viewer, but if she’s expressing, she is unattached to the response or interpretation from any viewer. She is unencumbered and able to commit to creating her art without That seems right to me, expression.

Her drawing:

My stitched rendition:

And here’s a week’s worth:

~~~~~~~~~

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 and read your way current.
And there’s a pinterest board, too.