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an additional factor

so far i have been preoccupied with color and shape in the last while.   and suddenly,  with the  occurance of this little eye experiment,  i am thinking about

context

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there were a few different takes on what this might represent in its original form yesterday when i began it.    actually, when i placed the orange and yellow fragments over the eye,  my first thought was that i would make a flower energy….and as i typed those words, i thought….of course.  i am using a Flower Essence.   smile.   but then,  when it appeared to many to be a rooster, i paused.   how interesting, and yes, i could see that, but no.  it wasn't and i didn't want to be stitching a rooster, so…what to do?   the first thought was to just set it aside.  begin from the beginning with a different eye and try to understand what causes the interpretation of  "flower"  instead of rooster.  a challenge.    but somehow, this particular cloth with the flowerrooster wanted to continue.   so here we are so far.  i don't know what will be translated by the wonderful variety of Us,  but it had become  an image of some kind of   "Sun love",  whatever that means to me.

and then i began putting different bits of cloth with it.  under the eye, around it, as a background,  and i am now wondering about     context.   how will  it change with different  context.    and also,  would i want to  leave it kind of open to interpretation ?   it made me think of the devas  they talk about at Findhorn.  maybe it's a garden diva to somebody?  isn't that a good thing?   do i need  "you"  to see what i see?   hmmmm.

 

 

 

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37 responses to “an additional factor”

  1. Susan Avatar
    Susan

    I think what people see in what you make – what anyone makes – is what is inside of themselves, not what is inside of you. So to try and make it so someone else sees as you do – well, they still may see something else – and then something may have also been lost for you. But I do see “her” as a sun – flames for hair. Lovely. But I also really liked the reds as the beginning of a larger spin as Jude had mentioned…
    it’s been fun to catch up on what you have posted – I seem to be in and out of things, here and there for the summer…

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  2. deanna7trees Avatar
    deanna7trees

    it looks like flower energy to me but does it matter what it looks like to others…i think it’s fun to hear other people’s interpretations of what you create even though it might not even come close to your intention. the more interpretations there are indicate to me that it has interested a wide audience.
    you could ‘green up’ the bottom to make it look more like a flower with a kind of stem.
    love the stitching.

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  3. Valerianna Avatar
    Valerianna

    I see the flower-ness now… and I LOVE the textural stitching with it. I wonder if its just me, but I am so taken with your work when there are creatures in it – the raven or crow cloth, the lizard, eyes – you capture life in the cloth…..
    And about the luna moths – another two this morning. One was eaten and one that I saw alive yesterday, but not doing so well is now dead in the fern where I moved him to see if he would recover. I know they only live a few days, I suppose I might be honored that he chose my fern to die in…

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  4. lynda howells Avatar
    lynda howells

    love the eye..no matter what it eventually becomes. x lynda oh..forgot l love the coloursx

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  5. eva Avatar
    eva

    It reminds me a bit of one of those beautiful Venetian masks…
    Love it!
    eva

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  6. Nancy Avatar
    Nancy

    This eye as such depth and fire. I love the stitching. I also thought adding some green somewhere may flower it up some. Mmmmm…
    Anyway, it’s beautiful.

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  7. Vicky Avatar
    Vicky

    my first thought was ‘fairy magic’, but like the others have said, that’s what I see. i also want to touch it.

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  8. nance Avatar
    nance

    just keep going….

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  9. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    in and out Susan, SO happy to see you here…i understand
    always your here/there ness….
    yes, to all your thoughts. but most often i stay “true”
    to my own sense of things. it’s interesting to look at
    this cloth from other points of view…….
    xoxo

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  10. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    i liked the stitching a lot too…and liked that there
    was no effort to make the uhhh, protrusions “nice”. they
    just were what they were.

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  11. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    V, i think when we love what we try to portry that love
    comes through most clearly….and thank you for saying that.
    i do think, yes, very much that your safe and quiet gentle
    space was chosen. that short life is such a given for
    a moth, i think. it’s really very very beautiful.
    thank you for telling me how it unfolded.

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  12. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    thank you, lynda
    sent more Warm Wind to you again

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  13. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    eva…i thought of that too, but especially the first
    version. it’s turning out to be quite a teaching cloth.

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  14. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    flower it up….great image

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  15. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    ahhh…touch it.

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  16. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    ok

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  17. Jill Avatar
    Jill

    mmm i had the same thought as others – a venetian masquerade mask – it is very beautiful already – the stitching is just lovely

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  18. Linda Avatar
    Linda

    well, it definitely isn’t a rooster anymore. I am really impressed with your stitching. All that daughter quilt really perfected your art. the eye is so real, i kept thinking you hadn’t stitched it, but maybe drawn it. it is beautiful with the petals around it. a lovely piece

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  19. Acey Avatar
    Acey

    this jolted me as i read it. My oldest friend (since age three, growing up on the same street, going to same schools, etc.) nicknamed me ‘flower rooster’ in our mid-teens. we are both born in the year of the fire rooster and felt so much alike (and almost ALways out of synch and thus super annoying to our peers around us)that we wanted empowering code names. Now he just calls me FR. A very powerful writer (i refuse to name drop …) once advised me to always remember that if i wrote with my focus on whether or not other people would “get” me, I’d never be creatively satisfied or emotionally fulfilled. Oh. all these connections just helped me understand why it bothers me so so soooooo much to witness blogging that quite obviously panders to readership (or how-to-blog formula) and lets others define what is or is not expressed. Funny. others don’t seer a rooster anymore but i see it more profoundly. like my soul is looking back at me from the mirror on the water’s surface in an essence bowl. Confirmation. and a very good day to have it, too.

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  20. Acey Avatar
    Acey

    forgot to add another interesting synchronicity – my name for him is warroo (yes … warrior rooster) and also left out the thought shift that turns verbal to visual in terms of why we might express ourselves in this first place. IS it to be ‘understood’ via seamless inter-personal translation(s)? For me this answer is a resounding NO but i think that is primarily because my life experience tells me it would be a perpetual roadblock to work from that motive. I do, however, enjoy being ‘grokked’ (deeper than just understand i think and sometimes the understanding per se isn’t there it’s a lot more vibrational than it is concrete)and this can happen quite easily without being ‘gotten’ at the ego-fulfilling level. The challenge in it all comes back to how I react, respond, or simply accept what others see. Far more important to me is how they feel and what those feelings evoke in my own emotional field. and so on.

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  21. nance Avatar
    nance

    acey, i enjoy getting a glimpse at how you “see” things… which is often on a vibrational level. i think i grock that. and i am in the same boat when it comes to how others perceive my work… which hasn’t been much in visual terms lately thought there has been a lot of work internally. however i do like it when other people get it, i also don’t want to depend on that because we all see with our own filters. this rooster imaging has been a great example… some see a rooster., plain and simple, some do not. it wasn’t an intentional rooster but you saw what had deeper meaning for you alone. the fact that an image, important to you, appeared in grace’s work unintentionally, or at least on a conscious level, and since i don’t really believe in coincidences… is interesting especially after the use of the flower essences. i do love all these connections. i think we are all here for a reason.

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  22. eva Avatar
    eva

    “teaching cloth…”???? What do you mean?
    By the way, nice talking to you!

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  23. eva Avatar
    eva

    “Teaching cloth…” ??? What do you mean?
    Nice talikng to you!
    eva

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  24. eva Avatar
    eva

    I tried to comment … didn’t get through. I’ll try again. Don’t bother if you are receiving 3 more or less identical comments on your website.
    “Teaching cloth…”?? What do you mean??
    And… again …. nice talking to you!
    eva

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  25. eva Avatar
    eva

    Okay, stupid me!!
    eva

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  26. Eva Ucgatwork Avatar
    Eva Ucgatwork

    I succeeded! I can post via facebook!
    Hi Grace – and as always: nice talking to you!

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  27. handstories Avatar
    handstories

    just back to town & loving your eye- it’s stitches, rawness & this discussion. my 2cents…first saw flames/sun burst fairy. Filter is the word i thought of too. we all see through our own experiences, preferences, wishes-thank goodness. I don’t mind when others see my work differently than me, so long as they realize it’s their seeing & leave room for other’s. I appreciate so much when others “see” the power/motivation behind the work & it touches something in their own world.

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  28. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    eva…it’s actually cool that your question comes a
    couple of times…it means it’s a good question, to me.
    so i thought about it as many times as it was asked and
    more.
    teaching cloth…what does that mean to me???
    well….
    all the cloths i’ve worked on so far have been teachers
    for me in different ways. because i am new to expressing
    things through cloth and stitch only.
    but i think what i mean when i refer to a cloth that way
    is that it feels to be about much more than the cloth
    itself. that the making and continuing of the cloth,
    the working on it, seems to be about “spiritual”/emotional/ developmental components
    that the problem solving of the cloth work offers me.
    so the metaphor of the cloth Teaches me as i
    go along. causes some internal dialogue, maybe, allows
    me to look at myself, my Place in my life in a new way?
    i’ll have to read this later and see if it’s “true”.
    when i write these things, they are off the top of my head, free association, just what comes. as it comes.
    but as with this roosterflower, which is a great example,
    it began as just wanting to work with the symbol of an eye.
    and it kinda went from there, in a way that was not
    familiar, colors that were not the usual, and then when i
    posted it, and read that it appeared to be a rooster, my
    first response was to just set it aside. i don’t make
    roosters.
    well, i “couldn’t” set it aside. something wanted to
    continue and as it did, i began to understand something
    deeper and “more” about following….uhhhh, not even
    intuition, but following
    instinct.
    i am still very NEW to cloth making. i’ve done other
    things but nothing really like this at all. and as i
    am Jude’s student day after day, i am learning from her,
    yes, but i am also learning from the cloth, the thread
    itself. it IS , to me, as if the doing of this cloth work
    is teaching me things i’ve prepared to learn all my life.
    EVA: tell me if this is a kind of answer to your question?
    and tell me what YOU think, if you feel like it???????
    Thank You for coming here and talking to me…xoxo

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  29. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    Jill…the stitching, i love. it was new stitching.
    coming about because of the ummmm, well,
    because of the demand of the “petals”

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  30. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    oh Linda…well…the Daughter Cloth was the ultimate
    Teaching Cloth* so far…how great, that oh so prolonged
    effort of that Daughter Cloth.
    AND, i think…not sure, but i think, that it will
    travel with her in August. i type that with both a great
    sigh of relief and an equal sense of anticipation.
    but the cloth is made. the cloth will go.

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  31. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    Acey.
    confirmation. mirroring. seeing ones’s soul mirrored
    back. triple mirror
    about blogs…really, Spirit Cloth is, as i have said to
    Jude, my “Mother Ship”. spirit Cloth was truly the first
    blog i followed. ever. and continues, really, to be.
    i go now, as i have said before too, to other blogs that
    are connected to Spirit Cloth in one way or another, because they feel to me like family. i go to SEW because
    that is family. but this is the extent of it. it is
    totally enough for me. so much, just close by.

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  32. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    this is a beautiful order of words. i guess sometimes i
    want to know what other’s see because from one day to another, i am the only one to look at what i am
    making. so, sometimes i ask. and always, i am so open to anyone’s thoughts…either about the cloth itself or anything else.
    and with the roosterflower…what a truly great example.
    i stitched it, and sat here in my little tin home in
    Polvadera, New Mexico and thought….huh?????
    so i posted it. and how instantaneously everything began
    to flow. without knowing anything about it eliciting the
    image of a rooster, it Did! and my response….and then
    my continuing….and then the validation, the confirmation that just FLOWED!
    so…i learn.
    and
    i don’t know what kind of rooster i am exactly, but
    on the placemat at the Chinese restrauants, i am a
    rooster
    big love, g

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  33. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    Cindy…i am answering you and as i am
    THUNDER
    THUNDER MAN!!!!!!! i got so excited that i popped the
    comment off the screen…
    and ran outside!!!! yelling
    yelling up to the sky
    THUNDER MAN!!!!
    like i used to do when the kids were little and then
    on going…THUNDER MAN!!!!!!
    he is the other face of Wind.
    he is WIND that brings something more than learning how
    to live. he brings
    water.
    eeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! oh yahoo!!!
    need to go back outside. am trying to call jenny. she’s
    on message.
    wha
    xoxoxxo

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  34. handstories Avatar
    handstories

    WOW! I love the thunder too…is it bringing you any rain? I’ve yet to add the drops for you on the cloud, but they’re coming….
    sometime I’ll tell you the story of my thunder breakdown- it was wonderful.
    Don’t stand under anything tall!

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  35. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    Valariana….real quick, because Thunder is Lightening!!!
    but i ran out and the sky, oh, the sky
    the sky!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    is like an ink wash!!!!!!!!!!!!
    you can SEE storms coming from a hundred miles here and the
    SKY
    is like your ink washes
    just so so so so so so endlessly beautiful
    oh…i might faint.

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  36. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    no rain yet…but it is in the far distance, but the
    trees are whirling in circles and the rushing sound of
    Wind and as i said above, you can SEE the rain falling
    miles away and not here yet….
    and maybe it won’t come,
    but Thunder Man talks of it, talks of his doings far
    from here
    which is where the fire is around Los Alamos where they
    house the NUCLEAR junk…
    north
    oh…
    i don’t know how to tell it. it is just so perfect.
    and Eva, this is more about the Teaching Cloth.

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  37. Linda Avatar
    Linda

    that must mean she has found the land. that is exciting and much anticipation..
    we will wait to hear..
    i am so excited for diaries to start .. a little disappointed to wait another week. so i am stitching..

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