Showing posts with label story telling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label story telling. Show all posts
Friday, January 6, 2012
Bad Raps, and Bad Wraps
9:53 AM | 
Posted by
Ellen Anne Eddy |
I grew up reading the Jungle Books by Kipling, so I've always loved wolves. The wolves take this baby in and raise him as one of their cubs. Like most adoptive processes, there's a bit of cognitive dissonance about the whole thing. He doesn't fit in well.
So this video touched me. It's about perception and reality. For all of her obvious concern when she sees the wolves, they scatter when she says "Git!" The wolves are not evil. They're just wolves.
This last year I've been working on the issue of bullies. I really don't want to go to my grave grieving over things that happened when I was seven. And like all really good emotional issues, the opportunities come back again and again until I can find better solutions. There's two schools of though on this. "Oh no! Not another learning experience!" And, "There you are again!"Bullies function on a wolf perception.Someone has to be perceived either as a wolf to be driven away or a wolf who will probably eat you. Like most binary systems, it has some serious limits.
It occurs to me that two things have to happen to create a wolf perception. We have to give someone a bad rap. We give ourselves reasons why they've done what they've done. Maybe it's true. Often enough, that's a fantasy too. We just convince ourselves of their bad action and intent.
And then we dress them as villains. Give them a bad wrap to wear: a black hat, a swirling evil cloak, an evil glint to their eye.
I've had it happen to me as well. I've had people hand me my black cloak and hat and tell me why I'm a danger.
It's not that I believe there is no evil in the world. It's there. Nor do I believe it my job to change people's choices. I wouldn't take someone's path away from them like that. If we don't walk our path as best we can, we won't learn from it.
But after years of dressing people in bad wraps and giving them bad raps and being dressed in the same, it occurs to me that they might just scatter if I said, "Git!" My perception is power I give or take, all by myself.
You'll find the Jungle Book at Amazon.com. Skip the Disney copies. They're cute but a completely different story.
You'll find people who want to dress up in funny black cloaks and be icky and people who want to dress you too in all kinds of odd places. I hope you can say "Git!" to them too.
Monday, December 26, 2011
The Sprinkles on the Donut
I'm not that good an actress.
I was at church for Christmas day. The choir at this church takes off for Christmas. I could have sat in the choir pews, but I ended up in the general congregation.
I'm not an alto as a show off. It's simply where my range is. I can't sing the high notes reliably. It happens occasionally, but like Tuesday, anything could happen. So I was singing the alto line, against the bulk of the congregation on the melody.
It's different within the choir. You expect to hear the part above and below you. The blend is planned and it's where you belong.
This was much more separate, and more isolating.
At the end of the service it occurred to me that much of my life is that way: a counterpoint to melodies I can not reach. My plans for the holiday collapsed and I ended up more alone than was comfortable.
I was speaking afterwards to the choir director who said, "You know, you'll never be the donut. You're the sprinkles on the donut. And that's why we want the donut anyway.
I don't get to eat donuts either, but I've learned to appreciate allergy foods as a visual experience. And I'm an edible color chart! There are worse fates and worse goals.
Friday, December 23, 2011
The Wizard of Odd
Lately, they've been playing the Wizard of Oz again. It occurred to me just how much of our language comes from that amazing movie.
Most movies are a cultural moment at best. They expand on a moment in time. What is a classic changes with the wind, but I think we can say that it's about how it changes the way people think.
I was going through the number of phrases that the Wizard cemented into my verbal landscape:
- "If I only had a brain."
- "Ding, dong, the witch is dead."
- "Over the rainbow."
- "And your little dog too."
- "I hope my courage holds out. I hope your tail holds out."
- "I'm melting."
- " Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
That being said, I take heart in this. When someone says, "You quilt, right? Can you make me a bed quilt? In beige?"
I remind myself that my glory and my crown, my hope and my consolation is that I be as gloriously odd as I am. And that if I do it well a small part of the world will shift for it.
Those of us doing our art shift the archetypes. Not purposely, or with cause, but simply by bringing our vision to the world. It's not something one picks and chooses. It's simply an act of trust to bring what your heart demands into being. We bring it all to the table and let time sort it out.
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Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Maharishi of the Vacuum Cleaner
No one actually cleaned much of anything in my childhood home. We lived in a pleasantly shabby small house carefully insulated by mountains of books. So once every five years or so, someone would put some effort into finding the floor and once found, vacuuming it. Of course that took in my case, huge quantities of ice cream. In my mother's case, similar quantities of gin. Either way we never faced it chemically unimpaired. It may explain why she thought it was funny to chase me around the room with it. It may also explain my complete dread of them.
But at a certain point you decide that your childhood is past. The floor is in shambles and it would be nice to see what color the rug is. So I went on the search for the vacuum I wouldn't hate.
This was not easy. We went through a Royal, several Hoovers, a Eureka canister that lasted a week.We have a dog cookie under every rug and mattress and wisps of thread escaped from the studio. Some of them whole and some in crumbs. Admittedly, this is a hard life for any vacuum cleaner.
OMG did this thing whirl fur and fluff around. So it was with tears in my eyes I watched it die today.It was almost a whole month old. Could I find the receipt? Of course not. So I went online, and found the manual. While I was looking for the belt, one of the hoses fell off spewing crumblies everywhere. When I looked in the hose there was a small plastic bottle.
What could it be? I poked at it with broom handles, my croquet mallet handle, the fire poker, the skewers we use for roasting marshmallows. It finally gave it up for particularly long mop handle.
So I am now, by right of my passage Maharishi of the Vacuum Cleaner.Chief bottle washer too. And I know where I put the Sewer's Aid. Life is good. Now where did I put the floor?
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
The Distraction Faction
I live in dread of distraction. So it is with serious fear that I face the holidays. I have a really low attention span, and I multitask unmercifully, but I know I will leave three out of five of those tasks in the dust. So when the holidays come, I know I really ought to find the floor.
This year we had a particular reason why that was vital.
This is Tom and Sarah.
This is Tom and Sarah with munchkin. It's astonishing how something so small can hold your whole heart that tightly.
Keira is at seven months, a bright sunny soul who likes soft boiled eggs, bee bop music, and is working on toy tossing as an Olympic sport. We had visions of what she'd do when she found the dog bones so we at least had to clean that much up. After that it became the search for more suction in vacuum cleaner land.
The weirdest thing has happened to me. It was bad enough at the baby shower. I actually made a baby quilt. Since it's out of all my apron prints, it includes ghosts, tigers, hawks, spiders, and beetles. We thought we ought to start her early on those things.
But I'm knitting...............................!
I was really worried about having been distracted in this way and then it came to me. I won't really have to have someone pry the knitting needles out of my hands. They come in pairs and I'm bound to lose one sooner or later.
Either way, I've been given the ultimate delight of a tiny hand waving wet spoons and toys at me as I sing her bee bop. Pretty good for a maiden fairy godmother.
Keira lives in Austin with my God kids, Tom and Sarah, They better bring her back soon or, God knows what I'll knit.
This year we had a particular reason why that was vital.This is Tom and Sarah.
But I'm knitting...............................!
I was really worried about having been distracted in this way and then it came to me. I won't really have to have someone pry the knitting needles out of my hands. They come in pairs and I'm bound to lose one sooner or later.
Either way, I've been given the ultimate delight of a tiny hand waving wet spoons and toys at me as I sing her bee bop. Pretty good for a maiden fairy godmother.
Keira lives in Austin with my God kids, Tom and Sarah, They better bring her back soon or, God knows what I'll knit.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Fat Girl Boot Camp? I Don't Think So!
 |
| As Good as it Gets |
Another thing I was blessed with was a small birth defect. My mother, being Irish and collecting tragedies the way other people collect Hummels made that into a huge issue. After being a March of Dimes reject, being fat is a cherry on top. It's almost a non-sequetor.
So I was appalled today to run into a blog that suggested Boot Camp for fat ladies. It was suggested that if you had extra punishments you carried with you at all times to remind yourself of what horrible thing would happen if you ate something other than a celery stick. As if you would miraculously not eat. They suggested you decorate a sign with your goal weight with glitter.
I will not give you a link to this site. I consider it toxic.
I'm tired of aversion fads, and I'm particularly tired of the fat aversion fad. It's like punishing people for having a birth mark. It's about fear and self loathing. The science isn't all in yet, but it's beginning to show that although no extreme is good for you, being fat is not a death sentence. The attitudes about it are faddish, not necessarily fact.
But most of all, I'm tired of the attitude that says you should do it to yourself. Pour that kind of hate on yourself.
 |
| Renoir's Two Girls |
The difference in me gaining weight and losing weight is my ability to hear when I'm full. That translates to three extra bites on my plate per meal. Once I've been that mean to myself I need that extra three bites just to cushion myself from the sore spots on my butt from having been emotionally spanked.
I think I'm going to decorate my butt with emotional glitter. I think I'm going to say it's all me, and love it the way I love my sunflowers and morning glories, even when they grow way out of proportion. Then I'm going to love every bite of food I take and try very hard to listen lovingly when my body says, "Thanks that's enough!"
Friday, August 26, 2011
The Secret Life of Symbols
When I was teaching in Tampa, at Keep Me in Stitches, I had the pleasure of talking with an old student.
I've been teaching now for almost 30 years, so it's not uncommon to find people who'd had class with me teaching, writing, creating amazing art and winning awards. Students in the quilt world are not like students in other places. They're often experts in their own right. They're there in class to pick your brain, but they've already got amazing skills. So it's not like that student owes you very much. They're another traveler, perhaps out ahead, perhaps a step or two behind. But you've showed them a cool trick or two and they may well have showed you as well. It's more like meeting a pilgrim on a similar path.
My old student asked me if I was still giving badges. I think I had him in class 15 years ago.
It still mattered to him.
Every so often, someone would stop me and tell me they lost their badge. I gave them explicit permission to make another for yourself or for someone else.
Perhaps the badges need to come back. Am I as brave as I need to be? Are my students? Are any of us?
Should I start making badges again?
Do we need the lunatic fringe rampant?
Would you stand in the lunatic fringe?
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Musings: Art outside the Box:Other People's Stuff
And I would have said that was written in stone if I hadn't gone back to making baby quilts. One of the ministries we do in my church is make quilts for babies and shut ins. I swore I would never do that kind of quilting again. Of course, that kind of quilting is only a little bit about blankets. It's about caring for people and learning how to give to people. It's about building community. It's a whole other art form, and absolutely vital. We forget that in our mothers' time so much of the world ran on what we called "service organizations". In a world where people are struggling to make things work with two jobs, volunteerism is almost impossible. But it covered a great deal of need, in giving to the community and in being able to have something to give. Both those states are a vital ying/yang of basic human existence. We give, we take. Hopefully we live in a balanced world where both of those things are possible.
So I found myself finishing a quilt for a lady with a brain tumor. We'd shopped specially for that quilt. Lots of Kaye Fasset, an amazing cat fabric, and some contemporary abstracts. I showed it to a friend. It was nothing but nine patches. The people I'm working with have some pretty limited skills. We tend to keep it simple.But she said"You're fabric's doing the work for you here." She was so right. With fabric that pretty, who cared? The lady loved it. She's been taking it along with her for her treatments. That quilt is busy doing it's job.
That being said, how much of our art is totally ours?Certainly when we use commercial fabric, it's easy to forget that there's a designer in a back room who it really belongs to. It's their art. But what we choose to do with it is ours.
Ever since the first calicoes and Jacobean prints came from India, we've redefined, reworked, undone, redone and embellished other people's art into our own. I don't often use other people's fabric. But I do look at photos for anatomic information about animals I draw. All art is derivative. It all comes from somewhere. Perhaps the question is, are we honest enough to fess up to saying from where? I won't use calico. But I do find I have a weakeness for brocade. And when I'm done with it, it doesn't much look like what I started with
So the next time you see an amazing piece of fabric that is the work of someone else's hands, celebrate it. Buy it. Cut into it. It's only fabric. It only bleeds in the wash.
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Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Musings;Art Outside the Box-Symbols I have known.
Symbolism doesn't work that way. It's not a matter of what you like. Images are taskmasters. They grab hold and won't let go until you somehow dance with them. Work with them. Run them through the mill of the mind. Do what you will. Somehow that image will come around again and again until you've found a way to flip it into a different place internally.
Every so often I run into some bright eyed youngster who tells me their totem is the wolf, the dolphin, the eagle, etc. I loved the young man who told me his was the great brown bear. He didn't know enough to know that that image is usually viewed as female. He was trying to follow indigenous religion and thought. He thought it was cool. I think I would have shocked him had I told him, but perhaps he was improved by a female totem.
I've been writing art statements long enough to be aware of where much of my imagery starts. The frogs and bugs come from some fairly deep seated body images.The fish are about life in the stream of life. The birds are about the mix of feral wisdom within a bird's life. And in the midst of all of it, I know with certainty, I'm quilting people I know. Most often it's about me. It's mostly social commentary. I'm trying to make sense of my life.
At one point when I was constantly on the road, I couldn't leave the dragonflies alone. Then it hit me. They live a transitory life, flitting from place to place. It was like they'd read my itinerary.
I often don't understand my own imagery except in retrospect. That's fine. If I pay attention, listen to the images that drive me, they will fuel my art.It may heal the bruised bits of ego and id that rule the internal chaos.Art is causative and purposely for transformation. Good art changes the relationship between the artist and whatever symbol they're in action with.
Perhaps what each of us have to give that is most precious as artists, is the unique view that spills out of our art. The symbols are a vocabulary. It makes sense if each of us is an island, a separate and distant country, that that language not be the same as anyone elses. What is most miraculous is when someone else sees that land from their distant shore, reaches it to view that different county, and can make the translation of it for themselves. When that happens, art breaks all boundaries, changes people's thought's and minds and hearts.
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Saturday, September 26, 2009
Musings: Art out of the box. The Egg Fu Young of Design
Every so often someone asks me if I start with a background or with an image. It's probably cruel when I turn to them and say, "Yes!" So sorry. It's true. The chicken and the egg question is always part of the process of art.
I know when someone asks me that, they want a formula. Wouldn't that be nice? A simple clean pathway that always produces something wonderful! Do a and b, finish with c, dust it with a dash of e.d.f and pat on the head. All artists have some kind of map like that but it's always got huge territories within that are marked off with the ancient warning, "Here there be dragons." We don't know for sure that there's a dragon in there. We just know it's uncharted territory. Anything could be in there.
Now we don't have to go into uncharted territory as an artist. Not every day. But if we never go near,we're stuck strictly with what we know. That's sometimes very limited. And when you go into that uncharted area anything really could be in there. The mental quicksand of fear. The cure for internal cancer of doubt. A beauty not yet conceived. Uncharted art may be the last unexplored territory, the last frontier, with all the riches and terrors attendant.
But the nurture of any living thing is uncharted land. A child, a dog, a love, a passion, and a piece of art work are all living things with their own rhythms, needs, flows, patterns. We can extrude our own druthers upon them, but they crack off as a living thing grows like a bad veneer.
Other times the images are so strong that I form them first and then shop them around one background after another looking for the right home.It's like selling real estate to an image. we drive up to a piece of fabric, walk around in it and see it 's the right neighborhood and if the schools will be good for the kids. All jokes aside, there's a place that clearly right within a piece of fabric or it won't fit in.
Hunter's Moon was completely image driven. In fact, the owl had been made for another quilt entirely. That quilt involved all kinds of images I couldn't quite master. As an demo where I needed an embroidered appliqué to show, I pulled it out of a pile and made a background for it.
It was a fairly simple thing to pull to pieces together and strip piece them to make filtered moonlight, powered by an Angelina fiber moon.In a way, image focused quilts are simpler. You finish your image and then you simply slip it into it's home, nestled into layers of stitchery and sheers. I added bats and moths because they too hunt the night by moonlight. They're part of it.
Background based imagery takes more of a leap of faith. The background for this quilt fairly squished with the kind of marshy land that grows calla lilies and extra large frogs. The frogs weren't exactly an afterthought, but they came after the callas. The butterflies came after that as a way to move the eye through the background.It built up in layers until the butterflies soared around the edges.
If art is alive, if it is a quivering, living thing, then it makes sense that we can't make a formula that works each time. We can't really paint by numbers without somehow losing something in the process. Instead, like every living thing, it grows accordingly to it's own inner map and clock. Like egg fu young, the chicken and the egg are both there, both present. But only in their own way. I can only be present myself, and lend myself to their growth.
I know when someone asks me that, they want a formula. Wouldn't that be nice? A simple clean pathway that always produces something wonderful! Do a and b, finish with c, dust it with a dash of e.d.f and pat on the head. All artists have some kind of map like that but it's always got huge territories within that are marked off with the ancient warning, "Here there be dragons." We don't know for sure that there's a dragon in there. We just know it's uncharted territory. Anything could be in there.
Now we don't have to go into uncharted territory as an artist. Not every day. But if we never go near,we're stuck strictly with what we know. That's sometimes very limited. And when you go into that uncharted area anything really could be in there. The mental quicksand of fear. The cure for internal cancer of doubt. A beauty not yet conceived. Uncharted art may be the last unexplored territory, the last frontier, with all the riches and terrors attendant.
But the nurture of any living thing is uncharted land. A child, a dog, a love, a passion, and a piece of art work are all living things with their own rhythms, needs, flows, patterns. We can extrude our own druthers upon them, but they crack off as a living thing grows like a bad veneer.
I've maintained for a long time that art has a life entire of it's own. I learned long ago that it extends past my intentions, particularly once it's in the public eye. It often goes places I will never go. It has jobs of it's own to do. And hopefully, as one wishes for one's children, it has a life that goes out, past and separate from my own.
So perhaps it's not odd that I can't say for sure that the chicken always comes first .It simply can't be proved by practice. Sometimes you just end up holding the egg end of it first. Sometimes a background insists on an image and there you are. Insist back if you like, but art will demand what it demands. Whether you're up to it or not. Start with the background and listen carefully. It will take you in, layer by layer.
Other times the images are so strong that I form them first and then shop them around one background after another looking for the right home.It's like selling real estate to an image. we drive up to a piece of fabric, walk around in it and see it 's the right neighborhood and if the schools will be good for the kids. All jokes aside, there's a place that clearly right within a piece of fabric or it won't fit in.
Hunter's Moon
Hunter's Moon was completely image driven. In fact, the owl had been made for another quilt entirely. That quilt involved all kinds of images I couldn't quite master. As an demo where I needed an embroidered appliqué to show, I pulled it out of a pile and made a background for it.It was a fairly simple thing to pull to pieces together and strip piece them to make filtered moonlight, powered by an Angelina fiber moon.In a way, image focused quilts are simpler. You finish your image and then you simply slip it into it's home, nestled into layers of stitchery and sheers. I added bats and moths because they too hunt the night by moonlight. They're part of it.
Balcony Scene
If art is alive, if it is a quivering, living thing, then it makes sense that we can't make a formula that works each time. We can't really paint by numbers without somehow losing something in the process. Instead, like every living thing, it grows accordingly to it's own inner map and clock. Like egg fu young, the chicken and the egg are both there, both present. But only in their own way. I can only be present myself, and lend myself to their growth.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Musings: Art outside the box
Years ago, I had a friend tell me, "Sometimes your art is your life. Sometimes your life is your art."
I don't think I got it at the time. I had this fire in my head that made it impossible to leave the machine, the fabric, the sewing room, all of it alone.
Lately I find myself sewing in words. I'm crafting words and I can't seem to leave that alone. So my machine sits fallow much of the time. It's productive. I've self-published 4 books this year. But it's not making any quilts.
If art is a product, then I'm not doing my art. Is art only a product? Is it only a painting, a quilt, a pot, a weaving. Is it a performance? Something that only matters if we show it? What does art do, other than to be something made and show to others?
What if, instead it's a day to day process, a transformation of what we take in?
There's an old saying."Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so."Perhaps art is that process of rethinking the flotsom and jetsom of our lives so that it coalesces into a more sensible whole. We take our stories, our bruises, our tears, our rages, our hopes and dreams and dress them up through the process of what we make out of them. And somehow, they change our thinking. What was good is better. What was unspeakable is at least funny. Or speakable. What is agony is something that came and went and like the fairies left both good and bad presents.
I think that part of my art gone out of my box, my sewing room, my studio might well be the quilt I'm afraid of. I have a large lizard quilt drawn on my wall. It's komodo dragons, dancing in the moonlight. Is it odd? Well, all of my romatic life is odd or non-existant, but no more than what I see on tv which doesn't even start to define odd as reality.
The actual image is them fighting, in nature. But it looks somehow like a romatic dance. This may explain why I live with cats and dogs.
Will this quilt change me if I make it? Of course. All art changes us. That is what it does. It is the philosopher's stone. It changes lead into more precious commodities.
So today I'm going to pull my art out of the art box. I'm going to make my life my art. Which means the making of my life through small actions into a place of change for good.Wash the dishes. Find the bottom of the kitchen floor. It's in there somewhere.
And go and look at the lizards and see if I'm ready to dance with them yet.
Here lizard, lizard , lizard.
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