700 - Breathing On My Own

Up until a week ago, I was dreading this 700th posting. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you already know that every one hundred postings I take the opportunity to evaluate how my creative life is going and make adjustments. It wasn't going well. I didn't want to write about that. Now - post workshop - everything is different. I have so much to say that this posting is an overview with more to come.

When Caroline and I talked about how we wanted to celebrate our 50th birthdays, we talked about going to San Francisco and then I suggested tacking the workshop with Marcy and Diane onto our trip only she couldn't take that much time off work. Given a choice, I wanted to go to San Francisco but Caroline really wanted to go to the workshop so that's what we ended up doing. Is it coincidental that the workshop was exactly the shot in the arm that my creative life needed or was that divine intervention, the answer to prayer? LOL - I guess you know what I think!

The happy picture above was taken as Caroline was experimenting with silk screens and stamps and making marks all over the pieces of a denim jacket she'd cut out earlier. Her enthusiasm was such a relief that - me being me - I had to (over) think about why. The answer? On some level, I felt responsible for her experience and I'm not. While I can support and encourage others, the only person whose creativity I am responsible for is ME.

On another level, I was scared that our creativity was going in different directions, that I had "outgrown" my friend, and how would we communicate and would our friendship cease to exist if we didn't have what and how we sewed in common? What silly fears. We spent the drive back to Portland discussing what each of us had absorbed in the workshop, what we were taking forward, and how we would interpret that inspiration in what she views as sewing clothes and I view as creating a body of work.

Caroline and I are the same but different which is a line I have said so often to my students. Every day, in every lecture, Marcy and Diane would say things that I have said to my students. My voice echoed in their words. Diane demonstrated her way of working and it was the same way in which I'd approached my textile art. Marcy showed her clothing and the many interpretations of the same pattern and it was the same way in which I'd approached my textile art. When I looked at my inspiration pictures, I saw their inspirations and the way in which they applied those inspirations was the same way in which I applied inspiration to my textile art. Design = textile art = fashion sewing. It's possible.

Why did I need these two women to connected my dots, to take me past grieving, past boredom, and on to a creative path that appears so exciting I find myself wondering how I'm going to fit in all the ideas I have now never mind the ones just beginning to formulate? Who knows? Who cares? I'm just thrilled to be moving forward. As I expressed in the closing circle, I breathe in fabric only it has seemed like I'm on a respirator for a long time. How wonderful to be breathing on my own again.

Normally after a workshop I head straight home and into the studio and get to work and that's exactly what I wanted to do only we'd already planned for Howard to meet me in Portland and spend some time together along the Oregon coast. Today, we walked in the black sand of the Pacific Ocean as the sun shone, the breeze blew, and the waves rolled against the shoreline. We held hands. We walked slowly. We talked. It was peaceful.

I'm in the enviable position of having a lot of time and I'm aware of the need to not waste that gift and yet too much time is as difficult to creativity as not enough can be. They are flip sides of the same coin. In the fall of 2004, I started what I refer to as The Year of Play. It was a twelve month span in which I attempted to answer the question do I still like fabric and if so, what direction am I moving in? The only criteria I set was that I had to go into the studio every day. That year had a profound impact on my creativity. When I get home, I will be starting The Year of Play Two not to answer that same question but a new one - within the framework of creative everyday wear, how creative can I be?

Although it's a year of play, I would like a way to earn enough income to pay for studio supplies. There's a certain pressure in knowing that Howard would like that too although he's not pushing me to get a job. The workshop was one of those ah ha experiences in which I could see how all the learning and all the experiences I had in the past came together into the experience I was having now. There's a reason. I have no idea what it is but I trust that God will bring what needs to be brought together and I choose not to manipulate, control, or attempt to make happen some thing when I have no idea what that thing is. I choose to be open to God's leading and to His provision. God doesn't have a money problem. He knows what I need.

In one of her lectures, Marcy talked about having a creative council and how important that is to creative growth. Knowing the truth of that statement, I spent years trying to organize or structure or make happen some kind of creative group for me to be a part of and then I spent a few more years trying to let go of that attempt. When I started to talk to Marcy about that time in my life, I was suddenly feeling weepy. It's an emotional subject that's true but after months of acupuncture and having my food issues under control, this attach of emotions instead of calm felt like a regression. It was a relief to get up the next morning with a hormone headache and a gift from Mother Nature and realize there was more going on than I thought AND... to grasp something Marcy said. That if I move in my creative direction I will draw to me the people that need to be in my life. Don't attempt to make it happen, be open to it happening.

Over the next days and weeks and months I will support and encourage my creativity by showing up in the studio and by doing the work because we learn to do by doing and then this fall I'll join the Arts Council. Perhaps this time I'm more mature with a different perspective, that of living a creative life. I'll be brave. We'll see what happens.

Talk soon - Myrna

Grateful - black sand, holding hands, natural pedicures