journey

i can't remember for the life of me why, but sometime in high school i decided that i wanted to learn how to quilt. which is kind of odd, because up until then i had never really had any desire to learn how to make anything. (i thought about learning how to knit once when i was 16, but it's really hard to figure it out using just the encyclopedia.) so my mom broke out her box of scraps and we put together the red, white and blue dealie in the picture. and then that was it for several years.

fast-forward to college.

since my sister was always the 'artist' and i wanted to be as different from her as possible, music had been my thing since early childhood. at one point i taught myself how to play nearly a dozen different instruments. i went into college as a music major. and within the first semester realized that i may have had the technical ability to play instruments, but did not have the inner passion to create music. but as i looked around i realized that all the friends i had surrounded myself with were art majors. i had found my soul mates.

one of these artists in particular encouraged me to go back to quilting, since it was the only creative process i knew. so i created the multicolored dealie pictured below. it was the beginning of a long and sometimes difficult creative journey.

i ended up taking more and more art classes, since they seemed to be the only ones i really enjoyed. i took ceramics for the first time my junior year and made 4 times the number of projects as anyone else. i was hooked. but i still did not consider myself an artist. artists were pompous, intellectual creatures who made completely incomprehensible works. artists were people i admired, like jackson pollock and alexander calder. i made blankets and bowls.

i ended up taking so many art classes that i realized it would only take 2 more and i would have a degree. but those included making a portfolio and having a show. i didn't really see the point, since i was not an artist, but i went ahead and signed up for the classes. september and october rolled by, the date for my show was looming only a month ahead, and i had not made a single piece for my show.

and then my life fell apart. a 4 year long relationship ended, and i was completely devastated. and for the first time in my life, i turned to the creative process to help work through my heartache. i hung my pieces up for everyone to see, stood back and looked at what i had done, and finally realized that yes, i am an artist.

in the 8 years since that first show, i have struggled with learning what it means for me to be an artist. but i have also struggled with the place of 'crafts' or 'domestic arts' in my life. besides quilting i have learned how to knit and cook and bake and sew, and i love those processes. (which my friends still think is funny, because i am so not a domestic person. being a housewife would be my own personal version of hell.) somewhere in the back of my mind, those processes are not art. and i feel bad about the time i spend on them, because i could be using that time to make 'real' art.

i guess the next phase of the journey is finding the place in my life for all these processes that i love and making things because i enjoy it and not because it has to be 'art'.

having said all that, let me introduce you to my first new quilting project in nearly 6 years. my mom's paternal grandmother was an avid quilter. when she died she left one of her last projects at the phase of cutting out the pieces. so i have a pile of pieces that when put together will make an entire blanket of these figures.

at the pace i quilt at, it should be done in the next 7 or 8 years.
don't hold your breath.