It always takes some getting used to being back in the city.  One of the things I get used to quickly is the constant noise.  I only realize just how noisy it was when I get back  Upstate and experience the quiet.   I guess going to the Opera made me even more sensitive to the sounds of New York.  I was thinking about sounds/noise and lines when I made this video.

Last night at the Metropolitan Opera

I grew up listening to Opera.  On the radio and when my mother would play her records on a Saturday afternoon.  I didn’t like it or dislike it, it was just a part of life.  Opera was the only thing I saw my mother get really passionate about.  She would sing along and cry and sway to the music.  She was a 1960′s housewife, who didn’t have friends or hobbies. Her life was given to the idea of family, but the Opera belonged to her.  It was a secret window into who she was as a person not a mother or wife.

Before she was married she would get standing room tickets at Lincoln Center.  The music  initially drew her but she soon learned all the stories, made a friend waiting on line, and  would go whenever her favorites were being performed.  Once married she stopped going to the Opera.   In the late 1980′s the idea of  hearing  Luciano Pavarotti live  inspired her to go back again .  She’s gone off and on since then.

Last night I took my mother to see Tosca at Lincoln Center.  I liked everything about it, the music, the sets, the costumes the drama, watching the people and being able to bring my mother there.  But I didn’t experience it like she did.  For her it goes deep.  It touches a part of her I’ll probably never know.

Rebecca sent me this photo of her cat Abby laying in the sun on Red Garden, one of my quilts.  My streaming pillow Open Your Heart is in the background.  It’s so fulfilling to see one of my quilts in use and not just by people.

Oh, and it seems sunglasses was the consensus on Zombie Goddess.  But a few people wanted her just as she is.  One of them will take her home.

This is obviously one of the potholders that didn’t work out.  When it happens,  I either realize it right away or  get the whole thing done before I know it just doesn’t work.  Sometimes I know it won’t work but I just keep at it hoping I’ll feel differently about it when I get done.  Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t.

This Everyday Goddess’s eyes were wrong from the beginning.  Then when I tried to fix them I turned her into the walking (or dancing) dead.  It’s actually very telling how important the eyes are.  The thing is, I was having so much fun making her.  Her hair looked great, and her shoes… they were the first ones  I made with laces.  But as much as I liked them (I’ve found that I like doing their hair and shoes most of all, I’m beginning to become the stereotype of a girl, something I never saw myself as) those Zombie eyes just turned  it all bad.  She looks crazed instead of dancing for joy.

But I’m not ready to trash her yet, I’m not sure why, it may be her enthusiasm.  She does have personality, even it it is creepy.

It’s true, she does have that Cindy-Lou-Who, cute, modest and vulnerable look, but she’s also has a bit of “I’m so pretty” (as you all picked up on).  But she’s  honest about it, all of it.   She is what she is and isn’t afraid to be it.

I woke up with so many words in my head this morning and Stand in you truth were the only ones that stuck.  I knew who  they belonged to.

I mailed out some potholders and a pillow this morning then went to a Gallery 99 meeting in Glens Falls.  At home I put some straw in the pole barn for the donkeys to lay on then went to my  studio.  It was 16 degrees out  and the wind was blowing, but the wood stove had been going all morning so it was warm inside.  I knew I had a streaming pillow in me so I cut a square from a pink sheet and threaded my machine with purple thread and got to it.  Today the images came more easily than the words and when I was done with the pillow I had one more picture in me.

Yellow and blue seemed right and that goddess just flowed out of me.  I don’t know who she is yet, the words didn’t come.  But I have a feeling  that by tomorrow morning she will reveal herself.

Minnie Mouse's shoes

By the time we got to the hall where Jon was giving his talk at the Veterinary Convention in Orlando, on Saturday night,  most of the seats were taken.  I sat down next to an older couple and had a shoe conversation with the woman on the other side of me.  We went through the whole thing, comfort, style, how we used to wear high heels and won’t anymore.  (What is it about shoes?  The next day at Disney World, with all there is to see,  I found myself checking out Minnie Mouse’s shoes).

Then the woman who was there with her husband turned to me and said “I knew that was you Maria, I’m so glad you sat next to me”.   A fan of Jon’s,  she also reads my blog.  She told me she was 70 and didn’t know she was a goddess until she saw my Goddess Potholders.  I wanted to kiss her, I hope I thanked her enough.

The idea that we are all goddesses in our everyday lives  is just what I’m trying to convey.  And the thought that I was able to change the way someone thinks about herself with a potholder…well, it doesn’t get more everyday than that. It’s that place were we connect with others that I’m really drawn to.   That connection can come from common interests, or geography, or tragedy and sometimes  through art.    I’m so glad I sat next to her too.

Getting ready for Gallery 99

Yeah! Vacation,  a little business, but mostly vacation.  Jon and I are going to Florida tomorrow for five days.  He’ll give a talk about his book Going Home Finding Peace When Pets Die  on Saturday night at the Veterinary Convention, then we’re off to Disney.  It’s been a mild winter here, but I’m still looking forward to the sunshine, 70 degree weather and It’s A Small World, which  always makes me feel like I’ve walked into a children’s book.

When we get back I’ll be focusing on the next Gallery 99.   I’m planning on making some  potholders and small streaming wall hangings.  I did the  practice piece above to see how the size would work out.  It’s about 9 x 11 and I think a central image and one phrase will work well.  I like the dancing ladies so I think I’ll use them.

Diane Swanson and I will be hanging the show at The M Dolan Jr Building, 3 Broad St in Glens Falls NY on the 31st.  The show will run for 3 days Thursday, February 2nd thru Saturday the 4th.   Some of the artist from the last Pig Barn Gallery exhibit will be there including, Diane, Nancy Bariluk-Smith, Chung-Ah Park, Robin Blakney-Carlson and Jon.

So I’ll be busy when we get back, but for the next five days……rest and sunshine!  See you all Thursday…

So I’m working on a streaming pillow and I need a piece of blue fabric for the border.  I pull this crumpled piece of fabric out of my box of blues and start to iron it. It’s been in a tight ball for so long I have to spray it to get the wrinkles out.  And as it’s  getting flatter, I see a figure emerge.

The half head is suggestive of something unseen rather than something missing.  The posture, why she looks like the Statue of Liberty!  One arm is missing like a statue of an ancient Greek Goddess.  And the other arm, well of course it doesn’t make sense, after all, it’s just a piece of fabric. What’s left after someone laid out and cut a pattern from it.  But it’s more than that, I mean, it has personality… to me anyway.

My whole life I’ve seen faces and figures in patterns on fabric and furniture, in nature.  The girl with the big head in the marble bathroom tile, you know, the duck in the cloud.  This is no different, except, there’s something striking about this one.  It’s true, after taking her picture,  I cut her up for the border of the pillow.  But I have a feeling she’s going to stay with me, maybe come out when I least expect it, in a pillow or potholder.

  Last week, in the Salvation Army, I found a jumper that I used to own 20 years ago.  It wasn’t mine, of course, but it may as well have been.  Like a time machine, it took me back.   I got it on sale at the Gap and  wore it  for years, I wore it thin.  Finding it on the clothes rack, hanging with all the other dresses,was like seeing an old friend.  I couldn’t resist it.   But I knew I didn’t  want it hanging around my studio too long  (really, who needs all those memories).   Then, remembering it was 100% cotton, I realized I could use it for potholder backings.

It seemed fitting, like reclaiming the past.   There was something transformative about using it in the way that comes most naturally to me now, which is to cut it up and make something out of it.    Because we can change the past in the way that we think about it in the present.   Three years ago, that jumper  would have evoked painful memories in me for days.  Now I can smile knowing I had some good times in my jumper and then let it all go.  Knowing, also,  it was all somehow leading to now.

My jumper as potholder backing