The Artist Studio: The Work
At the end of January of the year of my masters thesis show at Rhode Island School of Design, I lifted one too many overly heavy dye pots and landed in the hospital with both an umbilical and an inguinal hernia. I say this because that experience propelled me into the stitch and dye methods that I have been using for the last twenty plus years.
Today I put the last stitch into the piece you see here on the table. Every stitch is done with intention. At the time that I shot this photograph, I thought this piece was done. I meant to ship it out two days ago. But, when I got it home, I had to do one more thing to it; I had to sew ends onto it.
What does the surgery experience have to do with the unfinished ends? Well, both were impediments of a sort; the first, at the time, appeared to be an insurmountable obstacle — the second, an annoyance that turned into a discovery.
This piece will go out day after tomorrow, now, after its washed and blocked. What is a day or two, when the result is work that I can look at with the knowledge that I have left nothing undone.
I am planning to teach anyone who stitches and dyes how to do this, too; not only the methods of stitch and dye I use, but also, the way to get joy out of the work through all obstacles that may come.
Carol LeBaron
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