V's Version

I am consumed by the quilt and it is only my desire to share my passion that drags me from the studio to this little white box.

I just finished the shotgun houses - I decided on six of them - each has something special peeking out of the windows. I love it that the lines of the house clapboards are all askew, the windows are off kilter. I have raw edges and frayed blue jeans (from one of the Brother Sun boys) and little clues about the original fabric (boxer shorts, work shirt, party dress..)

Actually the window part of the houses took a lot of time on the little white box as I used Photoshop to take photographs and scanned images from history to print them on cloth. Many photos ended up on the cutting room floor as it were!

Now that the houses are finished, I have moved onto the magnolia crazy quilt panels. Each of the 10 panels has a magnolia in a different stage of development - creating a full life to death to life cycle. I chose the magnolia for a number of reasons. Syd loves flowering trees, I have one in my own front yard and, most importantly, because a magnolia seed germinates best if it is soaked in water. How is THAT for symbolism?

While I wait for the latest pictures to load up so that I can show you, I wanted to talk about that drive that I have as an artist. I am grateful for Dani and Pk who pull me into the everyday world where people eat and converse because I think that there is part of me that would like to disappear for weeks on end with just the whir of the machine, the snip of scissors, the steamy smells of iron bursts and all of the textures of my color coded creations. I would sip on cold coffee and maybe eat a little bit of toast when I remembered.

But there is a new puppy to train and almost 2 and a half hours of commute time each day to get Pk to school. There are soccer games (Pk scored the first goal of the first game!!) and geomeotry homework and dinner to make and a garden to water. So I hold the reins of my galloping passion to create. I train myself to channel it into the many of areas of my rich life.

To love, to nurture and to create. That is my mission. The trick is to balance all three!