a blessed unrest...

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.
                                                                                                 ― Martha Graham

i'm listening, i'm listening...

i'm making progress...

my heart and mind are as full as this week's moon.

a blessed unrest, indeed.

: : karen anne

"weaving" memories...

another quiet day waiting for spring.

diddling around in the studio, trying to stay warm.

playing with the scanner.

realizing how drawn i am to all things that reference the warp and weft of fabric...

memories of home 

scanned and printed vintage doily, pencil marks, perforation, embossing. 9"x12".2013

it's lovely to have a quiet day to explore and "weave" memories...

: : karen anne

taking time...

5 march 2013 marked the end of my first year dedicated to the daily (almost) practice of making a small art quilt. i ended the year having completed 266 quilts. that's 95 shy of 365, but it pleases me that i took 95 days for living and loving, you know?

since then, i've been taking time to consider what comes next...listening to my heart, allowing the ideas to flow around me, trusting that i will be able to discern the right direction. i've been looking through the quilts that still live with me, honoring them as i reflect on all they've taught me. and now...

i'm letting go.

it's exhilarating and frightening at the same time. much like jumping off a cliff i suppose. the committee is back in action, questioning my desire for change just when i'm realizing a modicum of "success". oh the ego..."how can you do that now???" it sputters...

because i have to. i do the work for me. 

perhaps people will be interested and keep following me, but perhaps they won't. i'm okay with that. i love praise and accolades as much as anyone, and i hope there will be folks who appreciate it and maybe even buy it, but  all that has nothing to do with why i do the work. 

nothing.

anyway, i'm taking things slowly, and, since i knew i wanted to change it, designed the new banner for my etsy shop last night:

the little line below the banner that had read "small art quilts : : made fresh daily" has been changed to  "small works of art : : small leaps of faith".

this banner more accurately reflects my process, as i work in silence most days. the change to "small leaps of faith" acknowledges the trust that is required of me each day as i climb the 35 stairs to my studio.

part of me wants to dive head into some new work, but i don't feel ready. it's more a need to busy than creative i think. 

outside my window it is snowing, but there are the teensiest of buds appearing on the trees.

the landscape reflects how i'm feeling. as the earth warms and quickens, i want to savor this time of gestating. i want to breathe in the possibilities, confident that wonderful things will come if i just give them the space they need until they are ready to be born...

: : karen anne

i can finally share the news!

i've been sitting on this for months - since december, actually! - but i was asked not to share it until i received word that it was okay, and word came today!

i'm so happy to let you know that six of my haiku quilts will be featured in the "series showcase" department of the summer 2013 issue of art quilting studio magazine along with an article. it will be on newsstands 1june. published only twice a year, it's a beautiful magazine with lush stock, color photography, and interesting articles. i'm really honored to have my work placed there!

a senior managing editor at the magazine found my work on etsy and contacted me, asking if she might submit images of some of the quilts for possible selection for use in the summer 2013 issue of the magazine. i agreed and in late january she contacted me again to let me know that the work had been approved. i re-photographed the work, sent it in, and spoke with the writer of the article. it's been a fun process, but it's been hard to keep it to myself!

i should receive a copy of the proposed article in mid-april for my final approval - and then i'll just have to twiddle my thumbs until june!

here's what the current issue looks like:

i noticed that the name of the series showcase artist is on the cover - i wonder if mine will be, too? what a hoot if it is, huh?

my deepest thanks to each and every one of you who have followed my work and offered encouragement, for being on this journey with me! 

: : karen anne

i love a soft smudge...

two new pieces.

both are embossed and perforated.

both have a smudge of graphite that highlights the embossed areas.

one has a bit of cross-stitching and a teensy bit of silver metallic fabric. (risky, yes - but i think it works here!)

both are for sale on my website.

contained #1. 7.5"x9". paper, graphite, embossed, perforated. 2013

shooting star. 4.5"x6" on 9"x12". paper, graphite, embossed, perforated, thread, metallic fabric. 2013

: : karen anne

a treatise on hair...

i got my hair cut on friday. 

the woman with the french braid who could so easily touch the memories of the long braids she had as a child was transformed into the short-haired version of herself. i've gone back and forth between these two versions numerous  times, but for some reason that i can't quite understand, this time has made me reflective about my hair  - and about the way i look - in a way i've not been before.

it all started with wanting to send my family a picture of my new 'do. talk about uncomfortable! who did i think i was to be taking picture after picture of myself, trying to get one that looked like the me i see in the mirror? i'd never taken pictures of myself. certainly i knew what i looked like after seeing my reflection for 62 years, touching my face so many times a day to clean and primp. but i realized this was a face i really didn't know. i was brought up to feel that taking such an in-depth interest in looking at yourself just wasn't something you were supposed to do. no one ever stated this, but i've always felt that it was just plain wrong. vain beyond measure. sinful.

yesterday i gave myself permission to ignore all of that and just snap away. oh the beauty of an iphone that lets you delete the really bad ones right away! and there were many bad one. many. i had to acknowledge that the woman looking back at me had really thin lips and a lopsided face. she tilted her head to the left and had a bit of a furrow showing up between her eyebrows. those short eyebrows. she was more comfortable with her hand near her face than away, and when she thought she was projecting a serious look, she just looked irritated. direct light was less kind than indirect, but any kind of light showed that she was a woman aging. gracefully? accepting of herself? who was this woman??? 

was she pretty? interesting? different? existential angst was setting in...

but what about the hair? i realized that, tress-fully speaking, i have lived at one end of the spectrum or the other; happy only if my hair was short or long, but never in-between. the first time i got it cut was when i was ten or eleven. i was tired of sitting on my braids and wanted hair i could casually toss around. i wanted it to look like shirley jone's hair on the cover of my carousel lp...and like the girl's in the kotex pamphlet about becoming a woman...i wanted it shiny and bouncy. 

my mother insisted that if i got it cut, though, it would be short. and permed. 

oh. my. god.

i don't remember much about how that first haircut looked, but i remember how it felt. how i felt. awful. boyish. odd. unfeminine. uncomfortable. the only thing i liked about it was that it wasn't braids. i grew it out and swore i'd never have short hair again. 

until the next time i got it cut...

peyton place was the blockbuster tv show when i was 16 and when mia farrow got her long tresses shorn i was right there with her. and i loved it! i was mia and twiggy all rolled into one and this time i had the confidence to pull it off. i was creative and a bit of a loner and the hair said both of those things about me. short hair felt like me.

i don't know why i grew it out after that, but i did. then cut it. then grew it. then cut it and grew it again...and each time it was long and in a french braid i felt a certain contentment that i just didn't feel with short hair. but short hair gives me a different kind of contentment. a certain freedom to be daring...

fast forward to me in my fifties and it's 2 in the morning and for some reason i'm still awake and downstairs watching tv. something comes on about sharon stone who was sporting a cute choppy haircut. mine was long at the time. i wanted it short like sharon's and determined to make an appointment the next day. but then i thought - i bet i could do it myself! and i did. marched into the bathroom armed with scissors and cut away. sharon stone choppy. done! the family was a bit perplexed the next morning but never mind. it was short. it stayed short for a couple of years then. (but i did have get it re-cut at a salon to fix my hacking.)

fast forward to this week. i've loved the way a french braid has highlighted the gray in my hair the past several years, i loved that it looked classic and elegant at megan and andrew's wedding, and i loved that i wasn't spending the small fortune every six weeks that short hair requires. but the desire to be free from futsing around with a braid finally became too strong to resist. and seeing sky fall with judi dench looking so wonderful and smart with her crown of short white hair planted the seed for change. again.

i've digressed. back to the picture-taking business that this haircut initiated... 

62 years is a long, long, l-o-o-o-o-n-g time to go without really examining your looks from the outside, you know? i'm happy i spent an inordinate amount of time confronting images of myself yesterday. thrilled, actually. and i'm planning to make it a regular exercise - not that i'll subject you, dear reader, to the results! just me. you know - that woman with the flirty short haircut...

: : karen anne

tenuous...

today i took my bernina in to be cleaned and serviced and, i must say, it's a really strange feeling not to have my sewing machine beside me in the studio. it was making me feel adrift...at loose ends...but it is a good thing to be challenged to create work in a different way every now and then.

so, i picked up a needle:

tenuous. fabric on paper. 4.5" x 7". 2013

"tenuous" describes exactly how i felt when i worked on this. but it worked out well and i'm really happy with it. i sewed the fabrics together first, then to a piece of watercolor paper with the cross-stitching and then glued that to another sheet that is 7.5" x 9". i like that it relates clearly to my small quilts; similar but different. curious where this will lead...

i've also been doing some works on paper, with embossing and perforations, on paper i have printed first with a manipulated digital image. i love to blur the image so that you just get a sense of the image's origin... (a vintage quilt square)

raku bowl. embossing, perforation on digital color print. 11" x 14". 2013

really hard to see, but if you click on the image it will enlarge. the paper is white, but if i lighten the scan too much i loose the embossing... i love the subtleties of these pieces, but its next to impossible to capture and image that's of good enough quality to submit to juried shows or even put on my website. got to figure out how to fix that!!!

: : karen anne

two sides...

being a gemini offers both gifts and drawbacks.

yesterday i did this pencil drawing with machine stitching and while i like the front, i like the back just as much - maybe even more, with its lovely tangle of threads:

dangling participles. graphite on bristol with machine stitching. 11" x14". 2013

 front

back

i scanned these with my new scanner and it seems to work pretty well. i've had a lot of trouble photographing my paler works so thought a scan would be a good alternative.

: : karen anne

dancing to the soul's song...

today marks the end of my first year dedicated to a daily (almost) practice, and i just listed the last quilt of this year-long series in my etsy shop. though more quilts will surely follow (they are such a part of my being now!) other works will stand beside them, hopefully adding richness and depth to the voice i have finally found. i will be taking a month off from listing to do some deep listening, but the shop will remain open and older quilts will be renewed so they might be revisited, enjoyed, and perhaps find a new home.

i am ready to just let the memories of this year wash over me. i want to look at each quilt that is still here with me and mine them for lessons about what this next year will bring. i'm ready to have the space to experiment with new ideas in mediums i have left in the wings, but i daresay they will all probably have a connection to fiber/textiles/quilts.

the rest of the day looms ahead of me and it feels rather odd after a year of knowing what i would be doing the next day. thoughts of my next day have apparently really filled my this days - and that in itself is something to look at and fix...

i leave you today with the quilt i finished this morning:

3.5.2013

where to go from here
the heart's intentions are clear
dance to the soul's song

may your day be spent dancing to your soul's song, too!

: : karen anne