Marks Everywhere

In a comment to my last post, Grace asked that I pass along anything that has "marked" me from my experience with Dorothy Caldwell.

So here's something. 

Now, I see marks everywhere.

I'm going to take my camera around the house and yard now.  Try it.

Human Marks: Part Two

Ok, where was I? Oh yeah. The "final project" of Human Marks.

We made a bound book showcasing our marks. It rests in a black cloth wrapper decorated with an entire week of kantha stitching. Dorothy asked that we model the many incredible examples she showed us from India,ie,fill in every possible space, explore direction, and take a stab (hee hee) at a border from her handy-dandy handout of options.

We stitched these covers slavishly. While waiting for the lectures to start....after yet another glorious home-cooked meal on the deck...beneath the bedside lamps that should have been switched off hours before. It went like it has always gone with stitching since the Beginning...idle meditative musings when alone, sharing of stories when in each other's company.

Here's how far I got, with a deep bow to Jude Hill's Patchwork Beasts class.

And just look at what emerged around me, from those wonderful strangers-turned-colleagues...turned friends.

On the last day, we worked our marks into stitched signatures, adding  in the various personal items we brought from home or collected while on the farm. I brought handmade papers, anonymous journal pages and letters rescued from flea market, and tiny 100+ year old newspaper pieces I unearthed outside of an abandoned mine in Death Valley. I also made rubbings of interesting words on the gravestones in the cemetary that borders the farm and, at Dorothy's uncharacteristically strong push, worked them into the pages.

In retrospect, had I known how all the markings would be asked to work together, I probably would have done it differently. But that would have been in the service of a final piece and completely against the process of process that brought me to the class in the first place.

Which brings me to what I learned:

#1. There is nothing like the completely satisfying--and creatively productive--process of just making something. For its own sake, or to learn what it feels like to do it. Without an image of a finished project looming overhead like the shadow of a black pterodacytl. When I came home, I immediately gave birth to perhaps 25 little stitched pairs. They went into the wooden box, where they will jump out when drafted in service of #2.

#2. You get a much richer final project when you choose to do one if you've spent time exploring the components. Or collecting them from Places around you.

#3. I have a deep but totally unexplainable affinity for the artifacts of the American West in the 19th century. (So does Himself, leading us to wonder whether we were together in another life back then. I say I was Butch Cassidy and he was a Dance Hall Girl.) I need to remember that when creating new work, because everything I saw that week shows me that Deep Affinity gives birth to Heart in one's creations.

#4. Black India Ink stays under the finger nails for a long time.

#5. It is infinitely easier to create when you are surrounded by creative souls who support one another, give and receive critiques and opinions without judgment, and show their work with conviction and without apology. Whether they make ceramics, fiber art, woven dish towels, or quilts, everyone around me was committed to making stuff.

#5. I was one of them.

Human Marks: Part One

Here's the best way to view the physical magic of Nancy Crow's Timber Frame Barn. Although it does not really show you the intentional atmosphere of creative support that is the air you breathe there.

And here is where you can find the facts about our teacher, Dorothy Caldwell.  But this link does nothing to reveal her quiet majesty, teaching mastery, and the sparkle in her eye...just look at her!.

Reading through book we made for her at end of class

Class started Monday morning. A group of strangers, we set up stuff at our own long tables and put our names on our own design walls.

So far, I was keeping up.

Don't laugh. I came to the class with more than the usual amount of performance anxiety. You see, I made the mistake of googling the names on the class list we had received several weeks before. I had to stop halfway through when the level of artistic training and the work I saw left me completely intimidated and one email away from cancelling. And my anxieties only spiraled when we each received a bundle of different papers, several Micron pens, and a chubby graphite pencil. At that point, I had to have a very serious talk with myself about letting go...of fear of Being the Worst in the Class, of expectation and planning, of overthinking...all the things I find cripple my creative spirit.  Fortunately for me, I was a very persuasive arguer and a very good listener at the same time and to my complete surprise, I jumped in without looking back.(Mostly.)

So,without any real context,we spent the first few days just making marks according to her simple directions.

Make a mark with your Micron brush pen, put it with the others on the wall and tell us where you were born.

Use your fingertips dipped in India Ink to make marks on the paper. Then, find one pattern you like and fill the other side of the sheet with it.

Sit on the deck and burn holes in your piece of organdy with the tip of your incense stick. (There were twenty of us, it smelled like my dorm freshman year of college.)

We made marks with smoke,with hammer and nail,with wax resist, with paintbrushes taped to the end of a long stick.

And then it started raining, creating the most exquisite washes you have ever seen.

We stitched with blindfolds on, while she read words to us. And then compared our interpretations.

My design wall was becoming very full. And the strangers were turning into colleagues.

Between our activities, Dorothy shared her stories and her slides.  She is devoted to PLACE...and how to translate her sense of that in marks. She spends weeks at a time with her good friend India Flint in the Australian outback, she meanders barefoot in the Artic Circle,she sits side by side in a women's kantha collective in rural India. In each of these places, she rubs and touches, collects rock and rusty trash. She listens to stories, both from nature and from the people she encounters. And when she returns to her studio in Northern Ontario, she creates a visual memory of that aura. 

And her perspective in turn informs our mark making. We learn that we are now going to assemble all these various marks into several books!

Take the scrap piece of Canson paper that has protected your desk and cut it up like this. Stitch the tiny signatures together with a stab binding, like this. Now, weave them together,like this.

My book tells the story of me: lots of spills. Or should I sell it to the American Dairy Association?

My book making friends with the rest of the class.

Take the giant rain painting and fold it this way and that, cut here and there. A two-sided book.

Our third and final book was the culmination of the week's work. Let's go get more coffee and I'll show you.

I Made My Mark

Sometimes, you leave a place a different woman from the one who first walked in.

That's how I feel about Dorothy Caldwell's workshop at the Crow Timber Frame Barn.

I made my mark and will tell more as soon as I process it all.

Off to Make My Mark

Its finally time for me to head out to Dorothy Caldwell's week-long class called "Human Marks." Here's a bit from the course description:

The marks we make record time and human energy. Working with paper and cloth this workshop will examine different kinds of marks including stitching, resist and batik, discharge, drawn and painted marks and more unconventional marks such as burning, piercing, and mending.

Which explains why the required course materials look like this:

As if all this cool stuff wasn't enough, the workshop is in Nancy Crow's timber frame barn about 8 hours away, in Ohio. With a cook who serves lunch and dinner.

I will take lots of pictures, when I am not burning, piercing, or mending.

See you in a week.

Being Like a Pea Plant

I always thought I was a zinnia or sunflower plant...a single stalk, growing straight up. Maybe in a garden of like-minded plants but an independent stalk all the same.Getting enmeshed with other plantings made me feel like this peony, moments before I rescue her from the morning glory vine that is snaking around her throat.

But lately, I've been thinking about being one of these...

A sugar snap pea plant. Growing straight up, but seeking out support.

Sometimes with two hands...

You remain an independent plant, but you know to find your place against the fence.

You still grow tall.

You just don't need to do it alone.

Thank you, E.

Clutch Goes to Work

Defying the unemployment statistics for non-college grads, Clutch got himself a job!

He is excited about having a photo ID, but thinks the uniform makes him look fat.

My ultimate goal in getting Clutch his TDI certification is to work in the Tail-Waggin Tutors program. Kids who are poor or self-conscious readers find it less threatening to read to a dog and Clutch is happy to curl up to anyone who wants to cuddle him. There are several schools in my area who have the program in place and we will start there in the fall. Meanwhile, TDI sent along a list of nursing homes in the area who welcome visits from dogs, so that will be one of my summer adventures.

While I am generous in volunteering my time for behind-the-scenes action, I generally feel nervous  being out in front with those in need. So I like the idea of hiding behind Clutch as I take some steps out of my comfort zone. 

Clutch likes the idea too,mostly because he will do anything to get out of those 5-mile walks.

A Walk in the Yard of May

It is the end of the weekend of planting. Seeds and plants are all tucked in their beds and covered with a blanket of straw.

Except that in the early morning, Billy apparently chased a critter through a row of tomato plants into the bush bean seeds, through the cucumber seeds, back around into the middle of the carrot seeds and out through the spinach plants. I saw him through the window, trotting around the fence line with a mass of fur hanging from his mouth and before he could leap through the dog door and deposit said fur on the Persian rug, I ran outside. He was all "la di da, good morning, Mom, nice to see you...." I'm no dummy, I saw enough of this "What, me?" attitude from my children, who at least would have known how to conceal the shards of straw hanging their snouts.  Sure enough, when I peeked into the  open bale of straw, there was a possum too damaged to even play possum.

While surveying the damage (to my seeds, not his possum), I tapped into my awareness of what it must have been like to have been a homesteader (or today's agrarian poor, for that matter). What if I had cared for those seeds for an entire year...what if I were dependent on their yield to feed my family?

I am lucky. I can be back in the garden tomorrow morning, with the extra seeds I have in my new, handy-dandy seedbox that Himself made for me.

So while we're waiting for the sun to rise, come walk through my yard with me. I really love how Grace at Windthread gives wonderfully descriptive names to different parts of her property and even her furniture. I decided to do the same thing...the names were vivid, funny...

... and I can't remember a single one.

 So never mind that. Here is how the onions see my house:

As you can see, the crop of tomato stakes is doing beautifully...

As are the freshly pruned and staked raspberry bushes. 

 I actually remembered to get in there before the real growth started and after watching more You-Tube how-to videos than I think should even exist in the universe (but thank you, all you nice people who feel compelled to take videos of yourselves pulling up dead raspberry canes), I pulled out the old canes and gave the younguns something to lean on. Someone remind me to check at the end of the season if this made a difference in their berry power.

The concord grapes are coming in.

The vines were here when we moved in 18 years ago and most years, I get enough for incredible grape jelly. And after Thing One went to Fancy Culinary School, I even made grape granita (that's the culinary word for a grape slushie). We have to fight off Japanese beetles to keep the leaves, which you need to shade the fruit, and then we have to outrun the yellow jackets to keep the fruit...one day too late and you have a gorgeous crop of raisins. At this moment, all is so promising. But that's the bitch about gardening, right? Nature is such a tease.

We've got lots of flowers right now. You can tell why its called bleeding heart:

But even with all the Torah study I've had, I don't know why this is called Solomon's Seal:

Before the dogs took over, I used to feed the deer my tulips. Every season, they got a different flavor, till I finally gave up. But one hardy lady survived. Must be what its like to be a very old person who has outlived every one of her friends.

The Great Tulip Fiasco Years taught me to always include extremely hardy specimens in my garden, too.

That concludes our tour...time to go home.

Three Appetizers and a Main Dish

Golly, I just have so much to say that we better sit down for a full course dinner here.

 

Appetizer #1 

The joy seems to have settled into my bones. Last night, I noticed how absolutely thrilled I was when Himself came home from work. Just that very thing...that the weekend begins with the sun still in the sky and the grounds deliriously green, that he walks into the kitchen, gives the dogs their treats, and gives me a kiss hello. (Just the fact that is not the other way around is enough to elicit gratitude, no?)

I felt a little weak in the knees when I saw him. I told him that lately, our lives have been so simple and peaceful yet full of merriment and all-around good cheer that I feel, well, like I have a boyfriend. His brow furrowed a bit in distress. Then his eyes opened. "Oh. Am I the boyfriend?" 

 

Appetizer #2

I turned the bright new fabric from Kaffe Fassett and friends at the shop into a little baby quilt called "Playland."

Pattern and fabric pack available at Gloriouscolor.com

I listened to The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt, while designing, sewing, unsewing, and resewing this baby. The reader of this first-person saga is remarkable and the story is just perfect for hearing rather than reading because it most definitely is a long tale.  Also, Boy Alone in the World is an unnerving proposition at times and I know I would want to leaf ahead just to make sure all will be well and thus ruin the experience. This way, I have to sweat it out, meaning I probably am losing weight, right?

 

Appetizer #3

Speaking of audiobooks, see if your libraries carry "Overdrive," which brings audiobooks or even e books to you for absolutely free. I love this way of not having to buy books I know I will never read more than once and also, getting someone to tell me a story at the same time.

The Main Course

 

Ok, the entree is for me, to document process. No, sillies, you don't have to leave.

A few days ago, I wanted to do some hand stitching but felt rather clueless. Perhaps to give the rods and cones in my eyes some respite from the colors of Playland, I just started working in neutral grays and off-whites,on a little 8 x 10 inch scrap.

This felt right, so I looked in my shelves for a background for it. I tried all the usual culprits and then found this, a printed fabric from Marcia Derse called "Calendar."

And that turned into this.

I thought I was making a garden but when I moved it into its new neighborhood, it turned into a house in a village. The supporting structure of the print was very rich in possibility but I kept stumbling into the body of an elephant two rows above my house. So what else to do with an elephant body but bring it to life?

With that, all the other printed shapes started making noises. I grabbed my handy box of pairings that I learned to make from Jude and suddenly, I landed on Noah's Ark for Singles. Single beasts, that is.

Ms Pac Man

The Wizard of Id?

I know this is from some childhood cartoon, someone help me remember

Identity TBD

So this is how it looks at the moment.

I'm ready to stitch for real now and it helps me to remember that sometimes, its the proverbial long and winding road to find that space.

Ok, who wants dessert?