Breathe in, breathe out

Bowman Bay, Washington, USA 2006

I have been in miraculous solitude for the past week. My family is gallivanting around beautiful, fabulous Paris and having a total blast. I am also having a blast right here at home. I am convinced that part of the reason that the universe conspired to keep me here at this particular moment in time was to help out a dear friend who is facing a crisis in her marriage. But mostly, it's just breathe in, breathe out and I am loving it. I worked on the Purple Rain quilt most of yesterday and hope to finish the quilting and binding today.

During this peaceful interlude I have been thinking about setting some goals for my quilt making over the next two years. The first order of the day is creating a body of work with intention. This might mean setting about to make roughly a certain number of pieces, or perhaps it will just mean a commitment to spending a certain number of hours each day in my workroom. In turn I will have to find someone to come and play with my kids while I work/create. It's doable and most importantly will take intention and a solid commitment on my part to do the work, no matter what I am feeling on a given day. I would also like to be part of an exhibition of work, in a gallery, restaurant, show or other venue. This is also doable, and again will take intention on my part.

It seems that my innermost voice is holding out an important concept to me today. The concept is intention: live with intention. Let's see where that takes me, once all hell breaks loose again here in my peaceful world. Smile.

Something very pleasant happened recently which relates to putting my work out there to be seen. A local quilt artist who saw a small quilt I was working on asked me if she could write about it in her e-newsletter where she includes a column entitled 'Featured Artist'. It was a revelation in some sense for me to have someone like my work enough to do that and I was very pleased. Along the same lines, something has been happening often these days: friends ask me "have you been quilting?" At first I didn't notice it much but at a point it hit me and I realized that my creative work is on their radar, is meaningful and interesting to them and they want to know about it. That speaks to me about how my soul is interacting with people who care about me, and I like it.

I end with these words from Sonji Hunt who this week wrote:

Worrying about whether something is "good" or "bad" corrupts creativity and growth. I can't stress that enough. I am so not about patterns or copying or having a number of items to complete. I am about experimenting and guiding. If you don't make something that is "crappy", how will you know what "good" is? That's my philosophy and my practice.

Sonji is obviously a very wise woman and perhaps one day I will have the opportunity to take a class with her. You can read the whole post on her blog.