Creating color and pattern a jar at a time
One truly amazing thing about acid dye is the way it completely exhausts its color into the fiber, if the calculations and weights are done correctly. When the jars come out of the pot, there are soft floating jewel toned forms of wool roving floating in a clear water bath. The chemistry complete, the water is a neutral ph of 7, the acid of the vinegar and the household salt diluted in clear water and safe to pour back into the earth to nourish the lawn or garden.
The god Siva dances a dance of creation and destruction, an endless cycle of life, death, and rebirth. So, too, over years, my own growth resultant from both external and internal loci of control has waxed and waned. A well known author wrote that the human mind does not run on logic. Although this may seem like an oxymoron — after all, the human mind is designed to think, is it not? so how is the idea that it does not run on logic, on easily parsed and decoded clear paths, one we can accept? — but my experience bears evidence to this statement.
Like the color in my jars, each each individual memory and experience that make up who I am is an isolated incidence of transformation and transmutation. This past year, I have been isolated here in my home and studio on the hill. Like millions of other humans across the globe, I have found loneliness and solitude both, although as an artist, the solitude and peace I find in my stitch and dye work offset the loneliness that I share with all fellow humans(after all, humans are classified, to the best of my knowledge, as social animals).
I truly love my work. When I feel overwhelmed or bombarded with all of the strident voices that seek to penetrate the strenght of solitude, stitching can ground me.
I have shared a free stitching meditation for anyone who wants to try it.
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