slowly she turned

We had had wonderful weather for most of our week, and finally it rained toward the end of our stay. I kind of liked the change. Our taxi bus driver had to stop for all these sheep in the road. I started filming about halfway through! Colum, our tour guide, told us that every day, sheep were looking for ways to die.

Monday was our last day in the studio. We worked on finishing our projects from the week before, especially the hanging book pages that we planned to give to Lora that night after the final dinner. I finally abandoned my cards and and concentrated on my canvas book. I have two slideshows below. The first shows the group book and one side of a page from each artist. The second shows a few pages from my book.

When I showed Lora my book cover and the flat heart shaped rock I planned to sew to the top, I told her that I didn’t remember where on Achill Island I had picked it up. “You picked it up at the graveyard. That’s the only place you can find them,” she said. “This sounds awful, but the type of stone is called ‘Folk Schist’ (sp?). It brings luck and intuition.” She gave me some gold metallic thread that was perfect for attaching it to the cover.

The covers have pockets that I have filled with ephemera from the trip, such as coasters and business cards.

That afternoon we looked at everyone’s work from the week and talked about it and took photos and cleaned up and packed our stuff. I was sad to be leaving this place but the experience will stay with me for the rest of my life. I learned a lot about intuitive art, mixed media techniques, and myself.

Sandra gave everyone a bookmark in which she wrote each of us a note and gave us a grade. On mine she said that I was “brave.” That means a lot to me because of my past as with panic disorder, and as a recovering agoraphobic I have to periodically push myself to do things that I fear in order to live my life as I wish. Since I’ve been traveling by myself, I have a lot more trust in my ability to figure things out.

She also told me that I was an intuitive artist like herself. It’s funny because tapestry is not really an intuitive art…it generally has to be planned out ahead of time because you have to build it line by line (or shape). To change something you have to unweave, and that’s a slow and frustrating process. In painting you can paint or collage over something you don’t like. It’s easy to change. Tapestry styles are becoming much more fluid with artists pushing the form into 3D and using textures and unwoven areas. I’m considering pushing myself in this direction, but there is something I like about a flat 2D tapestry.

But when it comes to collage, stitching, and painting, yeah, I’m usually following my nose and letting one idea lead to the next as I go and changing course often. So maybe I need both of these ways of composing and thinking for balance. My life has been ruled by a need for logic and order and “the most efficient way,” but in recent years the world around me is in chaos. I’m changing with it.

That night, after the usual outstanding “goodbye” meal, we celebrated and thanked Lora, Lars, and her staff for taking such good care of us and making our stay so inspirational.