“I Am Enough” My Fabric Painting

I Am Enough, is sold.  for sale  in my Etsy Shop.  She’s $400 + $20 shipping

It was when Jon and I were talking on our Podcast that I came to see what the fabric painting I was working on was about.

Horror vacui is the art term meaning, ” fear of open space”.  So often in my art I have a need to fill the surface I’m working on so that no one part of the piece stands alone.   That there is something lacking in me, that I’m never doing enough is a constant refrain for me.  Often when I’m doing one thing, I feel I really should be doing something else.

I think sometimes I’ve tried to hide in my imagery.  To divert attention away from one image with another.   As if I’m covering my eyes with my  hands, hoping no one can really see me.

When a friend suggested that during an Open House I have a one person exhibit of my work in my gallery, I cringed at the idea. Besides that I want to support other artists, surrounding myself with them and their art feels much safer.

I was seeing this goddess in my mind before I  began creating her and she was always standing alone.

I didn’t realize that this was the first time I made a  fabric painting so large and so singular before, until I was talking to Jon about her.  Then it came clear that she, like me, was comfortable standing on her own.

And she’s even more that comfortable.  She is confident and determined.  There isn’t room for anyone or anything else in the space she occupies.  She herself is even too large for it, her legs too long, her elbows jutting off the surface, a halo of stars circling her head.

She is definitely enough.

So often when I’m making a piece of art it tells me what to do. When I looked at my goddess filling up the space around her, I heard the words “I Am Enough.”

I Am Enough is sold.  for sale.  She’s 21″x53 1/2″.  She is $400 + $20 shipping and you can buy her in my Etsy Shop, just click here.  Or you can email me here at [email protected] if you want to send a check.

I’ve been documenting my process of making I Am Enough from the beginning but now that she’s done, I wanted to show you  the original quilt that was the first step in that process again……

The piece of quilt that I Am Enough is made from.

I cut this piece from a larger quilt that someone sent me. As you can see it’s worn and torn, and in my finished piece, there are still some places where the old cotton batting peeks through the fabric.

I pulled out thousands of hand quilted stitches to create this piece, always thinking of the woman or women who sewed them.   I then used the same fabric I removed  and  hand sewed those  pieces of fabric back onto this piece of quilt in different places.

I hand stitched every part of I Am Enough except for the eyes, nose and mouth which I drew with my sewing machine.

You can see how the original design of the quilt influenced the shape of my goddess.

One of the places on I Am Enough where the old cotton batting peeks through the worn fabric.

Here are a couple of close-up photos  of I Am Enough.

Her festive and fecund pubic triangle.
This is what is left of the quilt that I used to make I Am Enough. I know I will use the rest of it in other pieces on my art.

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I Am Enough, Thinking Big

I’m calling her I Am Enough.   

Today I went into my studio unsure of what to work on.  I was thinking I should make more potholders to insure some money coming in next week.  But before breakfast I picked up the book Ninth Street Women, Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler:  Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art, that Jon bought me yesterday.

I can’t wait to start reading it.

I’m familiar with the art of these women, but have read little about their work and it’s influence on painting.  I was looking at the photos (I always go to the pictures first) and in one Helen Frankenthaler is standing in front of one of her paintings.  She’s really small compared to the canvas which is hanging from what looks like the ceiling of a warehouse.  The painting has two shapes on it, one taking up much of the canvas the other small and bleeding off the canvas.

I was awed by the photo.  That’s thinking I big, I thought.

It reminded me of one time when I was in art school and I had cut out a bunch of shapes I was working with in my painting class. The shapes were about half my size,  and I was using the wall in the painting classroom  as my canvas to hang them on.  I was up on a ladder when my painting teacher walked in.

I just expected him to tell me that I couldn’t use the wall or to be careful on the ladder or not to get paint on the wall.  But instead, with a smile on his face, he said,” It feel good to work big doesn’t it?”

I never forgot his encouragement or how good it actually felt to have all that space to myself even if just for a little while.

So when I walked into my studio this morning, and saw my goddess, hands on hips, staring straight at me, I said to myself “Think big Maria”.

Big isn’t just about size, and “thinking big” is a state of mind.

Always lingering in the back of my mind when I make a fabric painting is the thought that no one will buy it.  That I’ll have done all the work and put all the time into it and then,  when my health insurance  comes due, I won’t have the money to pay it.

That’s the essence of small thinking.

I’m calling my goddess I Am Enough.  A phrase I’ve used in my work in the past, but is once again relevant to me.  She is standing by herself, hands on hips, determined and sure of herself.

I’m almost done with making her.  Today I worked on her skirt, cutting some of the stars in half from a part of the same quilt she is stitched on, to define and decorate it.  I still have to sew down the pansy chain on her pubic triangle, festive and fecund as it is.

The wall in my studio isn’t close to the size of the wall that was in my painting class.  But my I Am Enough goddess is big in attitude and meaning,  if not in size.

I Volunteered At The Cambridge Food Pantry Today For The First Time

The “Backpack Bags” at the Cambridge Food Pantry filled with breakfast, lunch and snacks for kids.

As many of you know Jon has been working with the  The Cambridge Food Pantry for the past month.  They have an on-going Amazon Wishlist that Jon has been posting on his blog everyday with the food they need.   Thanks to all of you who have already fed so many people using the Wishlist.  If you’d like to donate food you click here for a link to the Amazon Wishlist. 

There’s a long table with jars of peanut butter, jelly, Cheerios, individual cartons of milk, a box of apples and servicing size packages of Oreo cookies.

At one end of the table are plastic shopping bags marked with the number of children in each family  who need food.  The boxes of cereal don’t fit in the bags, so we take the bag of Cheerios out, fold up the box  then put it all in the bag so parents can see what their kids are eating.

There are three woman who have been filling the “Backpack” bags for a year or more.  Today Jon and I are helping them.   Harry stands at the end of the table taking the bags we fill, tying the handles and putting them on another long table.

It’s more confusing than it seems,  a bag for more than three kids gets a big box of cereal.  Four kids  or more get milk cards from Stewarts.  There is one bag of micorwave popcorn for every two kids.

But Joan who has been working at the food pantry for seven years says when in doubt, always give too much rather than too little.

Later in the day someone from the food panty will bring the bags to the school parking lot which is across the street.   A group of  fifth graders will come out with wagons and help distribute the bags to the kids who they were packed for.

I’ve put food in the box at the Village Market and Dollar Store in town for the food pantry regularly.  A jar of peanut butter or a couple of cans of tuna fish.  But the first time I was ever actually in the building was a few weeks ago with Jon.

We got the tour as Jon took pictures and began his work with the Army of Good helping to buy food for the people in and around our town who need it.

I know that a lot of people don’t have enough food.

I hear about it on the news, how people with two and three jobs can’t afford to feed their families.  I see the requests from our own food pantry on the sign outside the building when I drive by.  I see the parking lot full of cars on Saturday morning when then pantry is open.

But this morning, when I opened a plastic bag with the number 2 written on it in black marker and put two packages of Oreo cookies in it,  I though about the two kids who would eating them.  I imagined the kids opening the packs of cookies, gobbling them up and wishing they had one more. Or maybe they savored the cookies, trying to make them last.

That number “2” written on the bag brought me a little closer to the kids who were going to be eating what I had placed in their bag.  And even though I’ll never actually meet those kids, they no longer felt anonymous to me.

I was already there intellectually, but filling up those bags brought me closer emotionally.

I have a little ice in my heart.  I keep it there to protect me. When Jon asked if I wanted to volunteer with him at the food pantry, I was reluctant to commit.  I have enough to do with my work, the farm and the volunteering I already do.

But I didn’t expect to feel what I did today.

Actually doing the physical work of packing up the bags allowed me to imagine the kids who would be eating the food I was putting into them.  I felt a direct connection to them.

And that melted the ice a bit and opened me up to wanting to  give the Food Pantry some more of my time.  Which means I’ll be back at the Food Pantry next Thursday morning, packing up more bags with breakfast, lunch and snacks that will help feed a lot of kids for a couple of days.

Naming The Birds, Or Not

The bird flew over the apple tree and and landed in the stand of trees on the edge of the pasture.  Two smaller birds flew from the branches and one stayed, keeping its distance.

I don’t know what kind of bird it was.  The curve if its wings looked different from a hawk.  And it let out a small  scratchy sound as it flew.  Maybe some kind of falcon?

I tried to get a closer look by zooming in with my iPhone, but it was still too far away.  And then I thought that I didn’t need to name to bird.  That just seeing it, watching it was enough.

Like getting to know the trees in the woods, sometimes its enough to just know which are different and which are the same.

I have a friend who said  when she was young she would look for pictures in the stars and make up names for them.  She never learned to name the constellations.  But that doesn’t diminish her love of looking at the night sky.

I would guess the bird in the photo above is a Raven.  I don’t even remember taking the picture.  I just came upon it in my photos and thought the shape of  long black bird in the tangle of white and gray branches was striking.

It’s as much about the branches as the bird.

Just as the feeling of awe I got watching  the bird flying over the farm this afternoon seems more important to me than knowing what to call it.

Ramshorn Snail Family Portrait

Rami is getting big.  Big enough for me to see without having to enlarge his image using my iPhone.

I have no idea how quickly a Ramshorn snail grows. So it’s been fun watching Rami getting bigger every week. A few days ago I took a the video below of Rami meeting the biggest Ramshorn snail in the tank.

I have  three grown Ramshorn snails and they all lay eggs, so I have no idea who Rami’s parent is.  (Ramshorn snails are hermaphrodite, when they mate both snails lay eggs.)  And I don’t know if it makes a difference.  After the snails lay their eggs they’re don’t seem to pay any more attention to them.

I contine to scrape the snail eggs off the plants and rock in the tank where the snail lay them.  I don’t want the tank over run with snails.

My Ramshorn Snails Are Mating and Laying Eggs

Two of my Ramshorn snails mating

My three ramshorn snails seem very content in their new home.  It’s not big, but it has what they need,  clean water, a rock, and a couple of plants and a snail food every few days.

One of the ways I know they are content is that they are mating.

Ramshorn snail are hermaphrodite.  When they mate both snails are fertilized and both snails lay eggs.  I’ve been keeping a close watch on the snail eggs which are laid in clusters and look like a little, long lump of yellow jello.  I’ve found them on the leaves of the plants, the rock and on the side of the bowl.

Ramshorn snails are excellent at procreating in the right conditions.  And it seems my little snail bowl is just that.

But I don’t want more snails.  The three I have are just enough and if a cluster of snails hatched, my bowl would be overrun.   Then I’d have to figure out what to do with all the baby snails.

So I’ve been scraping the snail eggs off the leaves and rock when I find them.

Yesterday I spotted a cluster of eggs on the shell of one of the snails.  I couldn’t’ help but think that maybe the snails laid them there intentionally.   Since all their eggs keep disappearing, isn’t it safer to carry the eggs around rather them leave the alone on some rock or leaf?

I did feel a little bad scraping the eggs off the snail shell.  But not bad enough not to do it.

And for all I know the snails might be happy not to have a bunch of baby snails crowding them out of their snail bowl.

You can see the eggs on the top of the snail in the bottom left corner.  I wasn’t able to see them with my naked eye.  It was only when I took a picture that I saw them.

The Rat That Came Up From The Basement or Rat Haunting

I was struck by the haunting feeling of this photo that Jon took of the dead rat in the trap.

It was 4am, the house was dark except for the light in the bathroom where I was.   Thats when I saw the  dark shadow out of the corner of my eye.  It hovered near the bathroom door then disappered around the door frame.

It was big enough to spook me.

Maybe it was because I was reading  A Haunting On The Hill by Elizabeth Hand.  This is the book that is that takes place in Shirley Jackson’s Hill House.  The Mansion from her classic novel The Haunting Of Hill House.

Hand sets the book at the haunted mansion.  The story and characters are contemporary, but the history of the house is the same with a few more incidents since Eleanor crashed her car into the tree in the driveway.

Shirley Jackson is one of my favorite authors and I’ve read The Haunting Of Hill House several times.  Hand did a great job of keeping the feeling of the Jackson’s story.  Like Jackson, the hauntings are both psychological and physical, but without the gore and violence of so many contemporary horror stories.

When I saw the shadow in the bathroom, I immediately thought of the giant black hare (with an eerie human smile) that shows up in Hand’s book.

It was later in the morning when Jon told me that a very big mouse/rat ran over his foot when he was in the bathroom.

For me a rat in the house is almost as bad as a giant smiling hare.  Especially when I saw the teeth marks in the bar of soap on the bathroom sink.

I’d rather not kill the mice that come into the house.  But I do.   I don’t want them scurrying under my feet and leaving their dropping on the counter tops.  And I feel the same about rats.

When we first moved the farm Minnie cleared it of all the rats.  I haven’t seen one since.  But Minnie didn’t do much hunting for at least the last six months of her life.  And it looks like the rats knew it.

I don’t know if Zip will help keep down the population.

We caught the rat this morning, but when we got home from picking up my wool there were more teeth marks on the soap (rat not rabbit sized).

So I plugged up the hole in the bathroom floor where I believe the rats are coming in.   And we put down another trap just in case.

But I can see that Elizabeth Hand’s book is working on me.

Today when I went to the bathroom in the Restaurat in Brandon Vermont where we had lunch, I saw the little door in the baseboard with  knob on it.  It was close enough to the portal in A Haunting On The Hill to make me open it up.

I’ve been in that bathroom before,  and have noticed that little door, yet it wasn’t until today that I thought to see what was on the other side.

But like the shadow in my own bathroom that turned out to be rat, not a witches familiar,  the door only concealed a water pipe.

I guess I should be grateful.  As much as I love Shirley Jackson’s stories, I wouldn’t really want to live in one. (Although I have been able to relate to Eleanor in more ways than I’m comfortable with)  And a rat coming in for the winter is easier to deal with than a haunted house.

A Wool Weekend At Bedlam Farm

I was throwing the ball for Fate and Zinnia when a rainbow arched over the pasture.  As I looked up Biddy, Socks and Suzy were looking back at me.

It will be a wool weekend at Bedlam Farm.

On Saturday Ian will come and shear five of the ten sheep in my flock.  The wool is only long enough for shearing on Kim, Constance, Merricat, Lori and Robin.  I’ll save their wool in plastic bags and bring it to the mill when I have all ten sheep shorn next May.

And on Sunday Jon and I will go to the Vermont Fiber Mill and pick up the wool I dropped off in the spring.

Because I had so much wool this year it took longer to process.  But the timing is still good for winter knitting and spinning.

I’m planning on posting my wool for sale on my blog and in my Etsy Shop on Tuesday.   I’ll also be making dryer balls during the week.  I have a long list of people who asked for them, so I’ll be working off of that list and if I have extra I’ll sell them in my Etsy Shop.

As always I’m excited to get my wool back.  I never know what the colors will quite look like since the dye lots vary as does the color of the natural wool that is being dyed.  But I’ve never been disappointed with the yarn and roving I get from Deb at the mill.  And since so many of you buy my wool (Thank you!) I imagine it means you’re happy with it too.

Always Enough Time….

 

My work day ends early on Bellydancing night. I have to do my studio work and get my blogging done by 4:45 so I have time to change my clothes and leave at 5:00.

There are always things left undone, but I’m learning to think of them as things that I will do tomorrow instead.  Bending and stretching time is not something I know how to do.

All of this used to me make me very anxious.

I’ve been working on it for years, this idea of not having enough time.  As far as I can remember it has plagued me since I was in school, responsible for doing my homework.

A few years ago I came up with the mantra, “I have an endless river of time before me.”  I would repeat the words to myself as I meditated and pictured that winding river that went on forever.

Maybe it helped.  I don’t know for sure, I do know I kept working on it.  And it was just last month that Jon suggested I write the words “I have enough time” on a piece of paper.

So I did.  I put the paper on the dining room table and every time I sat down to eat I would see it.

I think that helped too.

But I can’t say it was just one thing.  I imagine it was the years of work I did, in therapy and on my own, piled on top of each other that finally pushed me over the edge on this particular anxiety.

When I am done writing this, I will post a picture of my Zip Potholders that are for sale in my Etsy Shop.  I will not be posting the picture of the new Shawl that Suzy sent me (as excited as I am to do that)  I will wait till tomorrow.

And, as I am finding out, that is okay.

I don’t have to work up till the last minute to get my work done.  I don’t have to fill in every moment of my day with work.  I’ve discovered that its just the kind of thing that actually contributes to my anxiety.  This behavior  reinforces the  belief  that I never have enough time to do everything that needs to be done.

It’s not that there isn’t enough time.  It’s that I don’t actually have to do every single thing I think of.  Some things can wait and other things  probably don’t really need to be done at all.

But I’m the one who gets to decide that.  And as for the voice in my head telling me otherwise.  Well, that’s my voice too and I can choose not to listen to it.

I bet eventually it, like my anxiety, will go away too.

Some Of The Other Animals On Bedlam Farm

The monarch caterpillars aren’t just growing longer, they are thicker too.

The one in the video above is an inch long and unlike a few days ago, easy to spot.  That’s a couple of dew drops on its back.    It was windy when I took this video, but you can still see the caterpillar eating the milkweed leaf.

The Bullfrog

I’ve been trying to get close to the frog I’ve seen on the edge of  the pond for over a week.

It looked different than the Green Frogs I saw earlier in the summer and I thought it might be a Bullfrog.

It’s bigger and has less definition to its body.  Also, that line that goes from the eye all the way down the Green Frogs side, simply wraps around this frogs ear.   And it doesn’t squeak when it jumps into the water.  It leaps silently and lands with a loud plop!

I don’t know why it tolerated me getting close enough to take its picture this morning, but it sat still long enough for me to get a good look at it too.  Now I’m almost certain it’s a bullfrog.  I’ll have to listen for it’s distinguishing call.  I’m more familiar with the sounds a bullfrog makes than what they look like.

Fishfly

Last night what looked like a very big moth was flying around the living room. When it landed above the window I got up to try to catch it and let it out.  But it wasn’t a moth at all.

It was a Fishfly.

I only knew what this insect was because I had seen one the day before on the barnyard gatepost.  It was at least 2 inches long with serrated antennas. I walked in and out of the gate several time and took it’s picture, but it never moved.

The one on the wall stayed too.

I was easily able to scoop it up in my hand and gently make a fist so it couldn’t fly away. Not that it wanted to.  Once I was outside, I had to nudge it off my hand onto table.  And still it didn’t fly away.

That’s how I was able to see that unlike the Fishfly on the gate post this one was a male. I could tell by the furry antenna compared to the thin comb-like antenna of the female.

Fishfly’s  live near bodies of water (they are an indication of healthy steams) and spend most of their life as larvae eating plants and small aquatic animals like tadpoles.  They don’t eat as adults and only live about a week, long enough to lay eggs.

I read they can pinch humans with their mouths, but are harmless.

 

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