Okay... I'm going to try to make this blog thing active, attract energy and get my creative mojo on.
Here's the deal... I'm working on a 1) garden, 2) a new way of working with fabric, 3) making a living and 4) living the good life.
So... on the first count, I don't have much experience with growing stuff. I've always said that I'm a person who makes things, not a person who grows things, but I've come to realize that making things and growing things comes from a similar place, a place of nurturing. To make things,one has to nurture the creative mind. Ya gotta keep an eye out, keep looking, always feel when you're looking, let the visual world get in your brain, and your body, which comes out in your hands, in which ever medium you choose. I'm (hopefully) starting to wake up again and let that feeling come back to my seeing, to honour the things and sights that move me, to let it be okay that what I see moves me. Its okay. On growing... and nurturing... little tiny seedlings which miraculously sprout, then grow into plants with real presence, like the wee beet seedlings that sprout up in their little doublet cutie-pie bow-tie way and grow into hardy, leafy, red/green robust leaves, with that fantastic Deep Red Root down below, that TASTES SO GOOD, especially when roasted. Water, sun, soil, attention, a little education used in the right places... all these elements make the stuff grow.
On working with fabric.... I'm still making quilts. I have always had a bit of a problem with my way of making art. I generally make things that are "craft" rather than "art", but then I make them so they are not really useful. Like furniture that you can't sit on, or scarves that you can't wear, quilts that are too small to sleep under, like that. Then, when I make something useful, like bags from recycled textiles, or aprons from beautiful linen fabric... then, I don't feel like its art. Then its something useful.
Frustrating... right? So, I will make quilts. I may make some big enough to sleep under. I may make them and mount them to a wooden support, much like the canvas that a
real artist paints on is mounted. I may do something else. And.. its okay. I may be a fuck-up (to quote Herb- not that he was talking about
me), but its okay. That's why I am working with fabric in a different way than before, I am doing what moves me and that's that. Art or not, craft or not, that's that.
As for making a living; I will have many jobs, (I have had many jobs). Currently, and hopefully for a long time, I work at the bottle depot in my new small community. My focus there is on types and sizes of bottles, whether they once contained alcoholic beverages or non-alcoholic beverages, and whether or not they contained beverages or some other substance. If a bottle that once contained vinegar comes in, we send it to the recycling centre. Things that come to the bottle depot, in order to be redeemed for a refund, must have once contained stuff to drink. Not stuff to make drinks out of, but drinks themselves. Plastic, glass, aluminum, metal, large or small or extra small, brown glass of a certain shape, glass containers of a certain height, did it contain milk or milk substitutes such as almond "milk" or rice "milk", was it imported from a different place, is it listed in the current list, all of these things must be considered before handing the lovely person in front of me a nickel or a dime. Wow! I love this job too, for the very fact that it just may be erasing, with every transaction, the work I did for the previous ten or so years, that of a retail clerk... charging a customer money for the material goods they felt they had to have. Here, in this job, I total up the # of beverage containers that a person brings in and then.. I HAND THEM MONEY!!! I love this, its like an eraser for all the years of taking money. I feel that with each transaction I am moving towards the light, god help me!
Then, I have a few sewing jobs on the go. I hope to do more of this.... the making of things practical and being paid for it. I dunno why I have always been such a fuck-up (to quote Herb) about making a living. I just don't care that much about money. I like people and I like stuff and I like trees and I've never been able to make the money thing mean tha much, although I lie awake at night worrying about unpaid bills and the future without a "financial cushion". Frustrating, right? Ahhh, well.
Point 4). Living the good life. Its all about living without apology for me. I will do my best.
We're back! We are back home in the forest on the ridge. Cat happy, plants happy, thanks to Rain.
Barb Mortell is a textile artist who has been making colourful original quilts for over twenty years.
