No Visuals

I've been working all week, in bits of time here and there, on my Fiberactions "environment" quilt...but I won't be posting it until reveal day on January 15.  I'm really happy with the way it's turning out.  The fabrics have been on my design wall for at least a year, hoping to be a quilt with a similar theme but larger, that never quite came together.  This piece, then, is obviously the fabric's intended use.

Even though I said earlier that I didn't intend to have a list of plans and goals for artmaking in 2011, I have been making a list of things I hope to get back to at some point.  Funny, next year's list looks a lot like this year's list did a year ago!  That means a lot of techniques to revisit.  I always anticipate spending more time on a technique or at least getting back to it again sooner, but life inevitably gets in the way.  And the years roll by. 

I haven't quite solved the dilemma of where to leave printed fabrics to batch overnight, now that I'm living in my studio.  Once I have that figured out perhaps I'll jump back in.  One idea might be to do a smaller number of pieces at one time, but do several sessions of that technique over a week or so.

This is promising to be a rainy weekend and I'm looking forward to it.  I'm hoping for a wave of creative energy to motivate me to action on a bunch of work in process plus several things I want to try.  Once I get into that flow, the activity feeds on itself.  It's the effort of getting my feet wet again that periodically holds me back.  I can't really blame it on the time of year, because the holiday season makes very few demands on me or my time.  Rather, I think I'm still working my way back from three months of nearly constant change in just about every area of my life, reacquainting myself with my creativity and my muses.

I like to be productive, it's satisfying, it feels good.  I have to remember this particularly at times when I lament the fact that I make far more work than I sell and I'm not sure what to do with all of it.  The acknowledgment of that can be enervating...you know, why make more stuff?  The thing is, I'm a maker.  In truth, I have to make art for the joy of making art, of working with materials, of trying new techniques, of challenging myself to articulate my responses to the world with my chosen media.

And when I worry about having too much finished art tucked away in the nooks and crannies, I'll remember my dear friend Joan, who has a huge studio with stacks of work on every flat surface and something hanging or pinned up to every square foot of wall space -- how absolutely engaging and inviting it is, how I could lose myself for weeks exploring everything there is to see there.  I should have so much finished or in process art!

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