the muse is back…

A weird thing happened on the way to the pandemic..my creativity came back. A lot of folks are saying theirs has completely dried up, they are filled with anxiety and/or the only sewing they are doing is mask-making.

My creative muse has been MIA since my dear friend and project partner Marion died, nearly a year ago. How that year has flown, with my missing her all along the way. When she left my excitement for art-making went with her.  I mostly have just leaned into it, spending my time doing hand-stitching a ‘morning walk’ collage, and reading, which for me is truly foreign.

We have now been in isolation for 4 weeks tomorrow. I realized during the first week that in order to maintain my sanity I needed to not take in too much information. The nightly news, plus the “breaking news” plus the pandemic specials plus the “news” conferences plus the local news, plus all the scary stories online all became just too much. Besides hubs is watching enough for the two of us!

We all know what to do by now. Stay home, wear a mask when you do go out, wash your hands, and keep social distance from others. I don’t know about you, but it does not do me any good to be more any informed than that. It just scares me. It makes me anxious. It make me angry. It gives me nightmares. It kills my creativity. And so I simply stopped listening. Just tell me when it is over!

As my right brain creativity was awakening I was hard at work on a left brain task. That was resizing and uploading images of my work, for 7 days straight as my website was being redesigned. The timing could not have been more perfect; for once my schedule was free. It needed a contemporary makeover and I am very pleased with the outcome. I was daily reminded of just how prolific I have been at making art. And that did not even include at least 30 early works for which I had no images, other than quilts on clotheslines!  I debated how much of the Tall Girl Series to put up on the site, whereas before I had three images, and the book, which is now out of print. Finally I decided this was not the time to be shy; after all this work has been shown far and wide, in six exhibits, so I uploaded all 23 pieces.

As I was finishing that job, I began to ponder… what is next? I work best when I have the next piece (following the one I haven’t made yet) in the pipeline. So as I was taking a break from PhotoShop, I went to the basement and began to paint cloth for two new pieces. Additionally just before we went into isolation, I ran to Kinkos and made copies to create screens for printing several new works, so those were ready to go.

Today I played around with sewing letters by strip piecing ala Chawne Kimber. It was a bit of a challenge, as sewing strips of anything is not my best work but I kept at it, while watching/listening to a recorded program. The jury is still out as to whether I will use them or not, but I kind of like them and will continue to play around until the wording is finished, before I decide.

Everyone is coping with this history-making time in their own way. I say yes! Find something you love to do, whether it be sewing masks for thousands of first responders, working in the garden, bingeing on Britbox or Netflix, baking till the cows come home, or painting anything, just do it.

And stop listening to so much news, because like it or not the anxiety and stress are not good for you either.

Be well…