Giggly Mama

Shannon has long been a friend of this blog.  I’ve written about her before, but she deserves a little more praise than I’ve been giving her.  Shannon is an amazing person.  She kind and smart and creative.  She’s sweet and it’s not saccharine.  She’s just plain adorable.  I’m really lucky to have her as a friend.

Art therapy doesn’t have to be literal, though that’s how I do it.  When Shannon feels bad, she makes these abstract designs to self-soothe and release.  You don’t have to use special images.  This isn’t voodoo.  The act of moving one’s hands to create something is an act of beauty and self-care.

She has tons of other exciting things to look at on her blog.  She has fabulous portraits of cult classic heroes, art deco pieces, 70′s funky owls and birds, etc.  You can see them all together on her Flickr stream.  Stop by and say something nice to her.  She deserves it.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, originally uploaded by alexcateye.

Here is my self portrait. Some yarns are hand spun and dyed. The rest are commercial crewel wool. It also contains hand spun buffalo down in the hair. (I collected it from tree trunks while camping in Montana, Wyoming, and Utah.) The bottom half is covered in English paper pieced hexagons of repurposed ABU pixelated camo. They were scraps from my husband’s USAF uniforms. (The insides of pockets are sometimes cut out and sewn flat to give a neater, more professional appearance.) This measures 11″ by 14″.

The juror in a local fiber show gave me a stinging comment about my bad design. I know the formula for a perfect composition. I’m pretty sure that most high school freshman art students know it, too.   Edit:  My point is that I choose not to follow rules and formulas.  I make what I want to make. 

I hope that you can see a sharp disconnect between the head and the “body.” That disconnect represents the friction of being a military spouse. The heart and the head aren’t together. The head must soldier on in real life while the heart must stay flat. I hope this is making sense.

Soldier on, friends.

Another One

Stormin' Norman

I hate this part.  I hate looking at what I’ve made and feeling like a failure.  I hate feeling like I’ve made a mess that I should hide from everyone.  I hate looking at that brown clump on the right side and wondering if David is right, that it looks wrong, that it’s too much brown, that it won’t look right, that it won’t look like a face.

When I was in grade school, I was the type of kid who tried so very hard to get things right, that I’d tear up my paper for the slightest error.   I watch my 7-year-old daughter struggle with pencil and paper the way I did at her age.  I could never make the pretty cursive that pretty girls made, so I didn’t want to try at all.   The leap from child to artist means that I have to live with uncertainty and imperfection–hoping for something more meaningful in the end.

My hand makes imperfect letters and imperfect stitches.  But I know my handwriting from anyone else’s and I love it–just like I love the exact color of my eyes–because it’s mine.  My artwork is marked with my hands, too.  It’s as personal to me as my fingerprints.  My heavy, clumsy hands have been all over it and it’s mine.   It means so much to me, it’s so beautiful, because it’s mine.  A thousand stitchers with a thousand embroidery kits couldn’t make what I made because it’s mine.  It comes from my very personal hands. 

It’s an Alexandra Walters.  I will work on it doggedly.  I will fuss and worry.  I will stare and regret and worry more.  When it is done, it will be fine.  It will be mine and it will be beautiful.

Beefranck on Sylvia Plath

, originally uploaded by beefranck.

If you love embroidery, you probably know Beefranck. She shares a blog (http://www.mrxstitch.com/) with some of fiber art’s most influential people.

Here is what she had to say about this piece:

“I’ve had this idea floating around in my head for awhile. It seems fitting that I finished it this week, which marks a year since I was laid off.

This is my problem with unemployment. If I’m not busy enough, I have time to think – and that never ends well.”

As much as I enjoy a snarky cross stitched quote, I usually just read it and move on. What I really love about Bridget’s stitching is that it holds you. Her quotes are pensive, her backgrounds are interesting, and I find them very emotional despite their geometric appearance.

You can just imagine her frustration as she stitches every bit of this background.

See her Flickr stream here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/beefranck/.

Ode to a Spoon

Ode to a Spoon, originally uploaded by alexcateye.

“Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.”

Zen Proverb

My life is full of simple tasks that bring me joy. I make art. I keep house.

Thread needles
Start washer
Wipe tables
Read stories
Brew coffee
Pour soymilk
Scrub toilets
Cook dinner
Nag children
Plan artwork
Sew dresses
Stir batter
Take asprin
Charge cellphone
Make clutter
Lose scissors
Play Tetris
Pet dogs

That’s my version of Zen. I’m not really calm or enlightened, but I enjoy my small tasks and appreciate what I have.

Mapping my life.

Since I finished my Promise of Pills series, I’ve been a bit lost.  I decided to make a map.  So much of my identity has been tied to illness and depression for the last 20 years.  How can I find the person underneath?

I’ve decided to start celebrated the unique markings of my physical self.  The black lines of this map are the lines on both of my palms.  While I don’t believe in palmistry (or any type of fortune telling) I want to find the depths of my self.  I want to document where I’ve been and dream of where I am going. 

 

Have you ever studied a lover’s body to the point that their freckles are constellations, their fingerprints beautiful etchings, the folds of their ears a secret landscape?  Why not do that with your own body?  Celebrate yourself.  Find each fleck of gold in your eyes.   

You have a universe of beauty to find within yourself. 

This series will use the markings, scars, lines, etc. of the physical body to explore the emotional self.  I hope it’s interesting.

 

 

The Outside Looking In–Exploration of Perceptions

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my perceptions of my body.

I still plan on doing a lot of knitting, but I’m going to be working a lot of stuff out in my head with embroidery for a while.

I’m thinking beyond “body image” to the mental pictures I carry with me of my own inner workings–bones, organs, chemicals.

After the deaths of my brother and two of his children in the last year (and also the recent death of my brother-in-law) I have really wanted to know what it means to have a body, especially my own. I also want to think about how my perceptions of my body affect its function and how its function affect my perceptions.

I used to work in a medical laboratory. When drawing a woman’s blood once, she was greatly concerned about the color of blood in the vial. “Is it that dark because I drink too much?” she asked. I told her that it was venous blood and the dark color was normal. “What color would it be if I were drinking too much?” she asked. I told her it would probably be the same. I couldn’t, however, convince her, even after showing her specimens from other people, that her blood looked normal. To her, it looked dark because she drank too much beer.

How do I see my own body systems? I mostly picture them as two-dimensional drawings. I picture brightly colored digestive organs–a bright green gallbladder with a dashed outline indicating that it has been removed. My brain is always a sideways pen and ink drawing. (As seen in my last post.) Chemicals and hormones are always candy colored.

Today’s exploration is dedicated to my lungs. Due to panic attacks/allergies/asthma, I always think of my lungs as tiny and funereal blue. The perfect little baby balloons that fill with air are missing. The diaphragm is always a thinly sliced sliver instead of the strong sheet of muscle.

Thinky Thoughts

I’ve been bitten by the Embroidery Bug. Actually, I think it’s more of a needlestick injury, something I’m familiar with…something impossible to forget. (Now I want a complete social history on Embroidery. Where has she been and who has she been doing it with?)

I’m not sure what to do with the brain. I just know I had to stitch it. My poor little head is exploding with ideas. It’s, well, convoluted.

Maybe I’ll sew it into a drool bib to wear when I’m thinking my deep thoughts. Hmm…I shall see.