You’re a creative person. I know that you are, because we all are. So, as a creative person, my question to you is, have you noticed how your life follows your art? No, not that art imitating life or life imitating art debate. Rather, follows, as in comes along after, or maybe tries to catch up with, or, more often, lags a step or two behind.
What happened is, I was re-reading The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. She explains how artists are particularly vulnerable to what others say about their work, their efforts and their ideas. She cautions against sharing ideas too soon; that ideas must be protected like seedlings. I imagined this as a little seedling stepped on, plucked by a bird, or, worse yet, tossed away as a weed. I read her essay, and congratulated myself on being a tough plant, hardy like the Cape Honeysuckle that each spring threatens to envelop the shed where I store dyes, tools, fleece and weaving tools as well as all sorts of unnecessary, but wonderful, items. Yes, I thought, I’m a hardy, tenacious plant. And, I thought, what a great post for the blog. I dove into the studio closet, looking for a certain weaving to illustrate my point, and even though I unearthed weavings, drawings, samples, and scraps that I have not seen in eons, I could not find THAT weaving. Instead,I found a different weaving of that same series:
Kali Ma; cotton and synthetic warp; fabric and collaged image weft; plain weave; 18" x 26"
I know, she’s a bit scraggly. But you probably wouldn’t be looking your best if you’d been stuffed into a closet for a couple of decades either. But here is the interesting part: I found her, and could not blog about her. And it wasn’t just her, I couldn’t blog about anything. Could not. On the wall of my studio, she has hung for a month now. Waiting. Waiting. Staring. That eye following me. (The “I” following me.) And still waiting. Until it finally hit me. I was being stonewalled by a comment made to me twenty years ago. Twenty years!
Over twenty years ago, I did a series of weavings using one inch wide strips of drawings and collages as wefts. Here’s a closeup. You can see the wide horizontal weft strips:
These weavings were prayers and homage to the Goddess, in all of her aspects. This one, Kali Ma, is the Goddess as Destroyer. I loved these weavings. Not every one, of course. Some worked better than others, but at last I had found a way to integrate my drawings, collages and weavings. My idea was that, together, they would tell a story. I was so excited. Wanting to share these with colleagues, I finished a series of three, tidied them up, and showed them in an instructors’ exhibit at a local summer arts program where I and several friends were teaching. The evening of the Opening Reception, people told me the pieces were innovative, even daring, thought-provoking, unusual, and that they were anxious to see more. I was encouraged, felt good and knew I would continue on this path. Then, a mentor, a man who had known me since my student days, took me aside and cautioned me. Be careful, he said, this was not a good direction. Better to stick with the “trajectory” of earlier pieces. These works, he said, opened me to all of the criticism of weaving as art, because, he hesitated, chewed his lip a bit, and then said it: “While you’re a good weaver, Linda, these weavings are not good art. The craftsmanship is questionable, and well, the drawings just don’t work.” And with that, the weavings took a left turn into the closet, so well hidden that today I can’t even find the ones that were the subject of his comment. I can only find these, the ones waiting for me to come home from teaching that summer and do the necessary final steps to bring them into the realm of “finished pieces.”
And so this weaving, Kali Ma, has hung on my studio wall ever since I read that page in Cameron’s boundary-breaking book a few months ago, and ever since I thought to write a post about it. And life followed creativity. The post I wanted to write waited. My garden waited. A trip to Los Angeles to do some research waited. My life waited, while this weaving watched me. My life, and my creativity, diverted while that criticism hovered in the air.
It’s a bit embarrassing to admit to being so vulnerable, so susceptible to others’ thoughts. But, there it is. That’s what happened. Until I remembered that one reason I want to write this blog is to get to know me, and my creativity and art, better. I guess it’s a matter of being careful what I pray for, because that has certainly happened. For the last twenty years one of the things I have wrestled with is how to integrate my weaving with my drawings and my storytelling, not realizing how close I was to that when I was diverted, more than twenty years ago.
So, I take a deep breath. I’m telling you the story. Because, you know what? I am a hardy plant. I am like the scrambling, blossoming, bursting-out-orange honeysuckle. It may have been twenty years, but I’m still here. I’m still weaving. And, I’m still growing. And that weaving is on the wall, no longer stepped on, plucked away by a comment and tossed in the closet. It’s out now in the sunshine, breathing in the creativity that it deserves, and, like all good art-making, it is reaching out, surrounding and demanding attention from that place of materials, supplies and wonderful, out of the ordinary thoughts and images that I know is the source of creativity and art.
