Whatever It Takes

This weekend I will be an artist-in-residence at Allegheny College in Meadville. Two talks, four classes, one workshop makes for a productive experience for all of us.

My visit is part of The Year of Sustainable Communities at Allegheny College, a series of activities, workshops and events aimed at inspiring the campus and community to examine what provides a good quality of life for its citizens and enables them to be resilient in the face of challenges. For our quilting inspirations we will look to the Quilters of Gees Bends.

To be a full time professional artist requires many different income streams. Traveling, exhibitions, commissions, consignments, lectures, teaching, and writing all work hand-in-hand. If it sounds like a juggling, it is!

It’s exciting, it’s creative, it’s lots and lots of hours and it’s what I do best.

The Quilts of Gee’s Bend

In 2003, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York introduced American to the dynamic quilts created by a group of women who live in the isolated, African-American hamlet of Gee’s Bend, Ala.

Gee’s Bend is located in southwest Alabama on a sliver of land five miles long and eight miles wide, a virtual island surrounded by a bend in the Alabama River.

Gee’s Bend was named after Joseph Gee, the first white man to stake a claim there in the early 1800s. The Gee family sold the plantation to Mark Pettway in 1845. Most of the approximately 750 people who live in Gee’s Bend today are descendants of slaves on the former Pettway plantation and many of the unrelated quiltmakers have the family name Pettway.

Isolated geographically, these inspirational quilters transformed the necessity of warmth with whatever materials were available into some of the most brilliant, improvisational approaches to quilt composition I have ever seen.

While I am the artist-in-residence at Allegheny College this weekend as part of The Year of Sustainable Communities at Allegheny College, a series of activities, workshops and events aimed at inspiring the campus and community to examine what provides a good quality of life for its citizens and enables them to be resilient in the face of challenges, we will look to the quilts and the quilters of Gee’s Bend for our inspiration.

From Anger To Affirmation

In August, I discussed the importance of creating an anger list to uncover the many repressed emotions that lead to self-sacrifice, self sabotage and self blame. Now, being so successful at list building, I find myself overflowing with spontaneous anger that often feels explosive and unregulated.

Enough! I am ready for the middle way where I will channel my anger using this definitive list of personal rights to engage actions, feeling and behavior that are as positive as they are assertive.

My Personal Bill of Rights:

  • I have the right to be uniquely myself.
  • I have the right to make mistakes and not be perfect.
  • I have the right to follow my own values, standards, and beliefs.
  • I have the right to ask for what I need.
  • I have the right to say no to requests I can’t meet.
  • I have the right to express all my feelings, positive or negative.
  • I have the right to say no if I am not ready, it is unsafe, or it violates my values.
  • I have the right to determine my own priorities.
  • I have the right not to be responsible for others’ actions, feelings or problems.
  • I have the right to expect honesty from others.
  • I have the right to be angry with someone I love.
  • I have the right to feel scared and say I am afraid.
  • I have the right to say I don’t know.
  • I have the right to make decisions based on my own feelings.
  • I have the right to my own personal space and time.
  • I have the right to be playful.
  • I have the right to be healthy.
  • I have the right to be in a non-abusive environment.
  • I have the right to make friends and be comfortable around people.
  • I have the right to have my needs and wants respected by others.
  • I have the right to be treated with dignity and respect.
  • I have the right to be happy.
  • I have the right to be assertive as long as I do not violate another’s human rights.
  • I have the right to be left alone.
  • I have the right to change my mind.
  • I have the right to be successful and independent.
  • I have the right to make decisions in my best interest.
  • I have the right to change and grow.

Transformed Remnants

Many years ago, I caught Steve going though my garbage removing the discarded ends of t-shirts cut away in the process of making memory quilt commissions. He thought it was a crime for all of that unused fabric to go into a landfill.

That brought me to the potential of these remnants and with that I began my personal mission to make productive use of every single t-shirt commission leftover.

I’ve made functional quilts, art quilts, yoga bags, purses, shopping bags, and pillows from the bits and pieces but as compulsion rears its ugly head, my remnant piles continue to multiply beyond the space I have to house them.

With continued determination to use every piece, I am always on the lookout for new products, so I was thrilled when my daughter Sarah showed me a shrug from American Apparel. This summer I made a first sample in white.

Last week I made a second shrug using the black remnants and included the American Apparel Circle Scarf. Stay tuned for many many more. This is the tip of the iceberg!

Rejection

I really wish I were less of a thinking man and more of a fool not afraid of rejection.

Billy Joel

The business of an artist is a tough road fraught with multitudes of rejection. Artists have to have tough skin, not take it personally and keep searching for the right showcase for the work.

And so it is with mixed feelings that I introduce you to the book: Jewish Threads: A Hands-On Guide to Stitching Spiritual Intention into Jewish Fabric Crafts with thirty Jewish fabric craft projects to celebrate milestones. Among the projects showcased in the book are quilted challah covers, a knit seder plate, biblical Purim hand puppets and wall hangings for various holidays.

The one project not chosen for inclusion in the book was this Rail Fence Signature Table Cloth that you can make before and take to a big birthday, wedding or anniversary celebration for all of the guests sign. After the event the cloth stays with the recipient as a usable permanent keepsake sustaining the memory of a fleeting event. You can commission me to make one for you or you can use this pattern to make one for yourself.

Project: Rail Fence Signature Table Cloth

These instructions make a 54” table topper. The number of blocks may be increased to accommodate a larger table. Rail Fence pattern is a simple one to make. It is a square divided into three equal rectangles. It has a great 3-dimensional look when constructed with the right combination of light, medium and dark valued fabrics.

Supplies for a 54” square table topper:

  • 1 ¼ yards of light cottons
  • 1 ¼ yards of medium cottons
  • 1 ¼ yards of dark cottons
  • 2 yards 60” wide 100% cotton flannel
  • Sewing thread to match cotton flannel
  • Assorted permanent ink markers

Directions:

  1. There are 81 6” rail blocks. Each rail is cut 2 ½” X 6 ½” and finishes 2” X 6” using ¼” seam allowance. To cut the rails cut 2 ½” strips across the width of the fabric and then cut those into 6 ½” segments. Cut 81 rails of each light, medium, and dark value fabric.
  2. Piece the rails into blocks, each block with a light on the left, a medium in the middle and a dark on the right.
  3. Piece the blocks into rows alternating the direction of the rails for every other block. There will be 9 rows each with 9 blocks.
  4. Using the quilt-as-you-go technique, sew the rows together and at the same time sew them to the backing.
  5. To bind the quilt, trim the backing to be 1½” bigger than the patchwork on all four sides. Turn the backing in to meet the patchwork and then again to cover the raw edges and stitch through all of the layers.
  6. Gather friends together to sign your quilt. Be sure to include your name, a date, and a blessing of your own on the quilt.

The Loss of A Mother

Today, my cousins are here from California to bury their mother in our family cemetery. This is also where my parents, our grandparents and our great-grandparents are all buried. Having a family burial plot is an important part of our legacy binding us together.

If we are fortunate enough to live according to nature’s cycle of life, we will inevitably experience the profound life-changing event of losing of a parent. There is no substitution for that first human relationship that becomes the foundation for all others. When she’s gone, there is nothing that can replace her. Age doesn’t matter. I know. I lost my mother ten years ago when I was fifty-one and I still think about her every single day.

The grief is wide and deep. We need to allow the pain and express the heartache with understanding and compassion, to accept that this loss will impact our relations with remaining loved ones and everyone else. We will have to find the mother within us and learn the overwhelming skill of self-care.

Without a mother, mortality begins to rear its ugly head. It is our time to step up to the plate and take our best swing. If we are fortunate to have this opportunity, we must do our very best. It’s our job, it’s our humanity and it will make Mother proud.

The Good With The Bad

Here’s the good news: My “Tree of Life” quilt from Quilt National 2011 was purchased by one of the jurors, Eleanor McCain. It’s great to sell a piece and particularly exciting that the person who judged the competition picked my work to be worthy of her collection.

It reminded me of time in 1984 when Nancy Crow selected me as an “Emerging Quilt Maker” and in the early 90s when I received a juror’s award for this “Auto Quilt” from Tim Harding.

Nu, what could be bad about receiving recognition that validates the work?

Because in an anti-container fashion, it fuels my desire to create more, to find more, to buy more, to seek more, and to do more all in the effort to out do the latest accomplishment and receive more.

What’s in a name?

This is my life and I’m going to live it. I never liked the middle ground, the most boring place in the world.
Louise Nevelson

I never liked my given name. I always thought it was out-of-date and dull. On paper it was often mistaken for Lousie or Lois or even Louis. Most of my adult life, people who meet me would be shocked that someone so youthful and modern was associated with some thing so old-fashioned as quiltmaking and with the name Louise.

As a child it was embarrassing to have the same name as the maid in Danny Thomas’s “Make Room for Daddy”. Things didn’t get any better with Louise Fletcher playing the very nasty inflexible Nurse Mildred Ratched in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

As a young adult, I discovered Lake Louise in Banff National Park, Louise Hays and her Hays Publishing House Self-Help Movement and the American Author, Louise Erdich but these had little impact on a deeply ingrained negative image. Then came the very discouraging movie Thelma and Louise where two friends end up driving off a cliff as the only answer to their life dilemmas.

Much later, I came to know and admire the works of Louise Nevelson and Louise Bourgeois who used their personal trials and tribulations to make truly great art. Most recently I discovered Louise Story, a young business reporter for The New York Times who appears very comfortable in her name.

After sixty decades, it feels okay to be a Louise-come-lately among the likes of Nevelson, Bourgeois and Story.

It’s All in the Process

The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.

Julia Cameron

These days I’m writer as much as I am a fiber artist. I write the blog BubbeWisdom three times a week. I work on this Container Blog, and I’m creating a novel. No matter which product I’m engaged with my efforts flower when I flow with and through my creative process.

Every act is a creative expression of the desire to know and to be known.

The creative process informs the spirit.

Clinging to traditional belief systems limits possibilities.

Leave common assumptions and past practices to enter the realm of limitless possibility.

Self-organization to allow for big vision that generates greater options.

Intent is the energy-well for change.

Insight into new ideas allows for the emergence of creative evolution.

Being organic is the dynamic flow that empowers process.

Love of purpose leads to discovery of the authentic self.

Do the work and stay on the path.

Reflect, React, Renew 2011/5771

Here we are having completed Rosh Hashanah, Taslich and the Fast of Gedaliah processing our way to Yom Kippur. At our Rosh Hashanah we adapted the 10 questions from Reboot a network working toward the rebooting inherited culture, rituals, and traditions to make them vital and resonant for today’s life. After you answering, treat yourself to something sweet.

Is there something that you wish you had done differently this past year? Alternatively, is there something you’re especially proud of from this past year?

Describe a significant experience that has happened in the past year. How did it affect you? Are you grateful? Relieved? Resentful? Inspired?

Think about a major milestone that happened with your family this past year. How has this affected you?

Describe a world current event that has impacted you. How? Why?

Have you had any particularly spiritual experiences this past year? How has this experience affected you? Spiritual can be broadly defined to include secular spiritual experiences: artistic, cultural, and so forth.

Describe one thing you’d like to achieve by this time next year. Why is this important to you?

How would you like to improve yourself and your life next year? Is there a piece of advice or counsel you received in the past year that could guide you in this project?
Is there a person, a cause, or an idea you want to investigate more fully in 2012?

What is a fear that you have and how has it limited you? How do you plan on letting it go or overcoming it in the coming year?

When September 2012/5772 rolls around and you look back at your answers to these questions, how do you think you’ll feel? What do you think/hope might be different about your life and where you’re at as a result of thinking about and answering these questions?