Creative Life Sampler

Celebrating Summer Many people travel to water for the summer, so I thought I'd share this classic pattern: Storm at Sea.  Stars Over Tempest was finished in 2003. Storm at Sea is a great example of a pattern that has many "layers", or shapes within shapes. Depending on how your eye gathers them together, you can see different motifs. If you focus on the white, stars emerge. But, there is a diagonal motion across the quilt, undulating lines that give the feel of waves. From a distance, you might not realize that the individual pieces are diamonds, triangles, and squares- there are only straight lines in this pattern. The position of the shapes creates the curves. You may actually even discern large circles, if you look closely. So cool. Viewed from the corner, the waving lines might be more obvious.   The pattern appears to expand and contract.  Quilting on the rather large border of this quilt mimics the feeling of waves in the center. My version of t

Challenges Civilizations, I believe, come to birth and proceed to grow by successfully responding to successive challenges. They break down and go to pieces if and when a challenge confronts them which they fail to meet. Arnold Toynbee 1889-1975 Let me tell you how I came across this quote. This morning the word “challenge” came to my thinking. It’s a familiar word, but I’ve learned to dig deeper when I assume I know what a word means. challenge n : a call or summons to engage in any contest, as of skill, strength, etc.                       difficulty in a job or undertaking that is stimulating to one engaged in it                       to have a claim to, invite, arouse, stimulate                       to question, dispute, inquire, search out Webster’s Dictionary I wondered if anyone had written about this subject and that’s when I ran across Arnold Toynbee. Toynbee was a prolific historian, researcher and philosopher of history who analyzed 26

Cheerleading for Creativity After my college graduation, I was given the opportunity to teach two classes, one for children and one for adults, at our local art guild. It meant working with students at opposite ends of the spectrum, from a chronological point of view that is. From a skills perspective, I may have made a few assumptions. But four years of creating in art school had been exhilarating and I was excited to share what I had learned. It was a joy to design a class for children to introduce them to concepts and drawing skills that would engage their creativity and help them successfully translate their vision onto the paper. Working with them brought out my natural “creativity cheerleader”. It seemed easy to encourage and nurture these little artists as they were being introduced to new ideas. The adult class was on figure drawing, with which I had good deal of experience and wonderful professors to emulate in teaching. I anticipated that they would be easy to

Linen Closet- Bi-Coastal Quilt Color Experiment Color Experiment was pieced on the East coast in 2000 and quilted/finished when we moved to the west coast. It measures 94.5 x 96.5 inches My goal at the time was to see if I could transition smoothly through the color wheel and somehow incorporate a gray scale. "Transitions" continue to be a theme in my quilting. I enjoy hunting for the right fabric to bridge colors or to complement pattern designs; basically incorporating what is available into the creative challenge I've given myself. Of course, I ended up with remnants which were put to good use in the backing on this quilt.

Still Balancing at the Beach Back at the beach for a therapeutic walk along the shore. The rock balancing artists were at it again. These configurations reminded me of a quilt I'm working on; one with appliqu éd circles, of course. We were especially impressed with the balance of this very large rock on such a small stone... and then this one! There weren't that many people about when we were at the beach this time, but we had to wait our turn to take pictures of these creations. When you stumble across them, you just have to stop and appreciate the work of the unsung artist.