So much fiber and art and gallery

I have been ever so negligent in getting to my Blog. The new gallery has been such a great space and lit the creative candle for me. Seems that everything else I do still needed to be done. I am hoping to get some older shots of the previous monthly shows uploaded but suffice to say this June I had a swell time shooting some photographs of my lovely nieces in my hand dyed and manipulated fabrics. They were great and generous models.
The leg piece below is called Mikaela and won an award in the RAA photo show in July. I was very happy to have it positively reviewed by an LA juror.

I have been in a conversation about texture and the natural world for a few years now. I have yet to find the vocabulary for explaining my relationship within the natural environment that feeds my soul on a daily basis.

It is crucial for me to walk out into the birth and decay of the woodland. I am held up and reunited with my own inner self when I kick fallen leaves or trim the dying branches of a favorite shrub.

With plenty of friends and family passing on, it is nature that has held my attention and shown me that there is another day and another birth about to take place if I am patient. It has shown me that there is a new beauty worth waiting for, worth getting out of bed for, and worth a beating heart.

I have also in this long process of watching life cycles move on into aging, realized there is beauty in decay. Perhaps it is my own desire to courageously walk into my finale that pushes my intrigue. My eyes are newly opened on many levels. In seeking life I find joy and beauty. In looking around me I see that age brings depth, texture, color, and new surfaces that surprise and adorn.

I am seeking to explore the cycle of life and to show the beauty and common thread within it.

In this photo the girls are wrapped in a few different fabrics and sitting upon their maternal great grandmother's couch that has been redone in hand painted white linen. They have a playful 'boa' around their necks that had wrapped a treasured corset and the orange fabric is still in process for its next stage.

The ideas of the chrysalis,  cocoon, metamorphosis, change and emergence challenge and inform my creative thinking a lot these days.
I like to push the use of things and reinvent. And I would like the reinventing to be of some 'poetic' and universal themes or constructs.

It all feels a bit heady...in so much as I am still trying to explain and explore with not enough time and focus to really create the imagery or words. But I will get there and perhaps publish something to reflect the journey.

For now I am gathering some ideas into the little gallery space and its monthly shows. I hope you can come by and see the next show. And I look forward to having the discussions about what the purpose might or might not be to any of it.

Thanks for your viewing.
There are loads of photos of this photo exhibit should you be interested in more. Just let me know...