Stitching, again

After a long fallow period, I’ve been working on some textile art pieces again. Anyone who’s read A Savage Art might guess that there’s some wish fulfilment going on, and it’s absolutely true. I would love to be a textile artist, like my heroine Kate.

I don’t have her talent, and yet, I do enjoy it. It’s a kind of meditation, I think. Doing something practical with hands and brain that requires care and attention, slows me down and gives my unconscious mind time to ponder on other things. It works the same way as walking, I think. There’s something about repetitive, rhythmic movement which just works. And embroidery I can do when I’m not well enough to walk.

So thanks to Marion Barnett – find her blog here – who got me started again with a prompt of “Unfolding” here’s a traditional Crinoline Lady who has become a little rebel…

I may share some pictures of some other recent work sometime, and I do have another more political piece in process.

But for now, I shall finish with the words of Kurt Vonnegut

“If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”

Ann

P.S.

I wish that it wasn’t necessary to have nerve, any more, to be openly gay. Obviously it still is in some countries and in some families. In so many ways the world seems to be slipping backwards at the moment as petty tyrants of all kinds want to constrain people’s freedoms in all kinds of ways.

Make Art.

You know it pisses off the authoritarians.