Category: stitchings (Page 22 of 37)

Today is the first drawing in the second journal Nancy drew in on Saturday. With a total of 167 drawings, I’m counting today as the halfway mark.

As often happens, I see one thing when I look at the drawing (usually awe), something else as I stitch (usually a feeling), then I spy a third thing (usually something that tickles me) when I snap the photo of the stitched version. As I stitched this drawing, I was struck at how it resembles my life right now. I tell you what: my house is in such a state of disarray (and that may or may not be a metaphor). Then as I looked through the lens of the camera, I saw a face. Complete with wrinkles cause having spent today at the cardiologists’ office, taking our daughter to lunch, fetching the dog some antibiotics, then trekking back up the mountain, I am too tired to starch – even lightly starch – and iron.

(Hubs is fine, by the way. Goes back in a year. Though we’d rather have two years or even a year and a half, we’ll take a year. So glad we’re not yet old enough to take pride in our health being of serious enough consequence to require doctor’s appointments closer together on the calendar. Waiting rooms have not yet become the stage for our social lives.)

~~~~~~~~~

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.

It is perhaps possible to say that what verbal concepts are to the conscious life of the intellect what internal objects are to the unconscious life of instinct and phantasy, so works of art are to the conscious life of feeling without them life would be only blindly lived, blindly endured. (159)

Psychic creativeness is the capacity for making a symbol. Creativeness in the arts is making a symbol for feeling and creativeness in science is making a symbol for knowing. (148)

This effect of vitality will be enhanced if the symbol states no more than the essential features, 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. (44)

Quotes from On Not Being Able to Paint by Joanna Field

~~~~~~~~~

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.

Art does not lie down on the bed
that was made for it;
it runs away as soon
as one says its name;
it loves to be incognito.
Its best moments
are when it forgets
what it is called.
~ Jean Dubuffet ~

~~~~~~~~~

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 draws:

Then I stitch:

One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.
~ Jack Kerouac ~

~~~~~~~~~

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’s drawing, and I’m stitching in her wake:

Photographed with a painting my daughter did.

Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.
~ Mary Oliver ~

~~~~~~~~~

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.

Nothing restores my soul
like the Blue Ridge Parkway.

We took ourselves to the Folk Art Center
on the Blue Ridge Parkway today.
to Heritage Days
where all sorts of artists
demonstrated how they create.
Tatters tatted,
weavers wove,
carvers carved
sheep were shorn, and
border collies herded.
Among other things.
There was food
and music
and lots and lots
and lots of eye candy.

There was a time when Nancy
was a veritable chatterbox,
getting quiet only when
we took her to ride
and turned on the radio.

She doesn’t talk nearly as much
these days,
speaking only when
there’s something she
really –
and I mean REALLY –
wants to say.

I wish more people were like Nancy.

~~~~~~~~~

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 draws something that looks like a flame atop a candle.
Or maybe a cupcake.
Or maybe a gnome, my husband says.

And I stitch it,
not wondering so much about
what the drawing represents
as I wonder if she ever feels
trapped
or imprisoned
inside her disability.

Last summer
I got a call that Nancy
was peeling off her clothes.
“She’s having a hot flash,” I said.
“Lord knows, when I have a hot flash,
I’d love nothing more than to pull off my
clothes.”

And sometimes I wonder if maybe I’m the one
who’s imprisoned
inside my so-called ability,
with all my layers of
culturization
and education . . .

~~~~~~~~~

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 draws:

I stitch:

Once again I’m participating in Nina Marie Sayre’s Off the Wall Friday when instead of showing something we’ve finished, we take our cloth projects off the design wall and look at them in a different light, try something different, maybe even move a little closer towards completion.

“Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.”

Annie Dillard

I spend at least an hour a day on In Her Own Language, and today I spent about two hours clipping cloths to trees, snapping some photos, then removing the cloths, knocking off the spiders, and bringing everything back inside. More than two hours if you count the time spent going to town to fetch more clothespins. And as I hung the cloths in the woods today, I thought about time and how at one point in my life, my identity was based in good part on how busy I was, on how little white space there was on my calendar. As a career Mom, it made me feel needed and special and important that people asked me to do things, to take leadership positions here and there. I felt visible and appreciated. (Didn’t take me long, however, to figure out the difference between being needed and being a sucker.)

Then came the (ridiculous) stage of feeling like I had to justify any expenditure of time in terms of (a) how it would benefit someone else and/or (b) how much money it would become.

Sigh.

Eventually came the stage in my relationship with time when (and we could really call this a thunk on the head moment) I realized that my clock looks just like everybody else’s. I have just as much time as everybody else, the only difference is: I get to choose how to spend my clock. Right then, I stopped saying “I don’t have time” – stopped cold turkey – and replaced it with “If not now, when, Sugar?”

So here I am, choosing to spend hours every single day stitching Nancy’s drawings, writing my books, going to walk. I have several books and plays yet to be written, and I am gathering things for three or four installation pieces I’ll soon begin. Oh sure, I still have responsibilities to tend to, but my job is to live as wide open as possible. And I’m all done with feeling selfish about that.

Oh, I’m using the clothespin bag that belonged to my maternal grandmother. I love that, don’t you? Kinda’ takes me back in time . . .

~~~~~~~~~

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 am fidgety. Probably from sitting so much. Sitting last Wednesday as we flew across country, East coast to West coast. Sitting as we drove 3 hours from LA to Trona. Sitting as we drove 5 hours two of the days we were there. Sitting as we drove an hour at least twice a day for food and internet. Sitting as we flew back across country yesterday. Sitting as we drove up the mountain today. You get the picture. Tomorrow will have windows of walk and dance amid writing and stitching (I have two new Envoys – perhaps you’d like to be one, too?) And we’ll turn the furnace on. Over 100 degrees in the desert yesterday morning, high 40s today atop the mountain. No jet lag yet, and it usually hits me hardest coming East. Took some homeopathic jet lag remedy – maybe it’s just the ticket.

It’s good to cut thread with real scissors instead of fingernail clippers. Thank goodness they allow travelers to take nail clippers now, though. Otherwise I suppose it would have been the age-old teeth trick.

~~~~~~~~~

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.