so…to continue with thoughts from yesterday.    it's semantics, maybe.  the word legitimate., even real.   but more than that.  as usual, i was just being lazy in describing an ongoing conversation i have with my self.    i am still really new to this clothmaking.  still really Learning.  

so,  i brought down a cloth i made over a year ago that i haven't really looked directly at in a long time.  

 

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i really like everything about this cloth.  everything.  it says everything i wanted to say.   i don't know if you see her immediately,  but there is a face outlined in the bottom right…her eyes are closed,  mouth open,  making sound.  the lizards and crows are in her hair that splays out.

 

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i printed the first pic out and used a pencil here to define the face a little more….maybe it's easier to see?   following are pics of individual parts i like

 

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on the left, the blue….to depict one of the late afternoon storms

 

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tracks.  maybe hers, maybe Something else

 

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All these stitches.  All things i learned from my time with Jude.  ALL of it.  i brought really Nothing into my time with Spirit Cloth but images in my mind.  images,  or FeltSenses of things.  they had tried to find form in the fiber figures and did,  a little,  but not the Whole of it and it's the Whole of it that i need to tell.

So…ok.  all the above.  and then

 

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this one.  so plain.  so plain.  but as i looked back and forth between the two i realized that what i was trying to tell with the woman and the Crow HAD to be as it is.   it is about one single blindingly unexpected moment when something Happens.   One moment, she is solid as always,  waving up at Crow,  calling to him as best she can in his language,  and then….what she always imagined                      HAPPENED    and she is airborne, far above the Earth,  riding his slipstream…..

it is like a scene from One Hundred Years of Solitude,  the Gabriel Garcia Marquez book,  the only work of fiction i could read a million times….it's like a scene from that book…..you know it can't really happen, but it Did….

it couldn't be any other way,  this cloth story.   So i need to understand that and learn to just let them live as they need to.  Get my self out of the way.  Leave them alone.  Let them be.

 

 

 

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16 responses to “Understanding the self”

  1. beth Avatar

    I love this post. They are both amazing cloths. Lizards and crows in her hair… It is hard to swallow past the lump that puts in my throat.

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  2. grace Avatar

    throat lump. life is just that, isn’t it? a throat lump?

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  3. Kathy dorfer Avatar
    Kathy dorfer

    Really awesome .. Me who loves ravens .
    Xxoo

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  4. grace Avatar

    well…there’s Crows and there’s Raven.
    different stories.
    and yes. love Raven.

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  5. Michelle in NYC Avatar

    Looking back and seeing the present–nice–your palette so similar, and the styling so obviously yours. REALLY nice looking post! I love coming over here when I wake in the middle of the night and log on to see my what the day had not allowed time for. Lovely to lie back down with inspiring image and word.

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  6. Marti Avatar
    Marti

    5th photos, the feather grass stitching…that is one technique that I would love to learn to do because in looking at this, I see the grasses swaying gently in the wind.
    Per our previous discussion on technique: yes I understand when you say that technique and skill bring vision to the cloth. Yet there are times when I have looked at cloth, in books, on the internet, in museums and felt the story obscured by flourishes and so many stitch designs that rather than tell me a story, I see a stitch sampler before me. I’m a very simple person in terms of how I react to art, any art whether it be cloth, sculpture, paintings. There is an instant recognition that curls my toes – the story is what compels me, what draws me in and since I am a cloth novice, it is hard for me to appreciate the difficult and fine work of technique sometimes when that is all I see.
    The old expression, “I will know it, when I see it” pretty much sums up my experience with cloth that moves me. I guess that is why when I saw the exhibit of Gees Bend quilts in TN, it felt like a hug to the heart: earthy, colorful, profound – LIFE breathing from the cloth, simple and at the same time, strong and filled with spirit. It is also how I feel when I see your work.

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  7. Mo Crow Avatar

    unless you live in Australia our “crows” are true ravens

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  8. Mo Crow Avatar

    One Hundred Years of Solitude… a favourite book here too
    your crow cloths conjure magic realism
    I loved this line I found from an interview with Audrey Niffenegger back in 2004
    “In Magic Realism (as both literature and visual art) the necessity of fantasy is intertwined with the inescapable condition of the real. ”
    http://www.artcritical.com/studiovisit/DTNiffenegger.htm
    I love that!

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  9. grace Avatar

    here, both.

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  10. Cynthia Avatar
    Cynthia

    one hundred years of solitude, crows and the lighten-ing flight ..the unexpected moment…what a perfect quote Mo has written up there..i do like her work as well..but….how can it be so long since i have read this book that i so enjoyed…how can it be more than 40 years…i love how timeless you have made the combination all of these things that touch me so much right now

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  11. grace Avatar

    how can it be so long…………
    how can it be
    that maybe
    all the things that we had wanted to Imagine to be Real
    might
    BE
    real
    in a way. in a way that we are finally understanding?

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  12. grace Avatar

    like to think of you, “lie (ing) back down” with
    this Place in your apartment…I am Part of Your World…
    like Your World has become Part of Me…

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  13. grace Avatar

    Yvette…yes. love.

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  14. grace Avatar

    yes. Gees Bend quilts. very much Yes. and exactly
    how they ARE does tell their stories…in a way that
    is astounding.
    and how to find the uhhh, middle ground of one’s own
    telling, one’s own making. it takes trying, continuing,
    Just Going… and someday, there is a resonant thrum
    inside us and inside what we make that is the same and
    enough and Good…

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  15. grace Avatar

    you are Such a SOURCE of Reference…!!!…!!!

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