Hand-crafted life
My friend and colleague Jorge often expresses great satisfaction in learning to live simply, to live “a hand-crafted life” with few ambitions of career and less longing to acquire more stuff.
My community of friends celebrate creativity through painting, photography, music, dance, words, textiles, food, garden--the usual array that has been used for as long as humans have been human. Only a few are famous at what they do.
I think this is what Gary Snyder meant when he said in an interview that the ambition of a Taoist was to become a melon-grower. Or what Carolyn Myss meant when she said that maybe your “job” is simply to be “a light in the neighborhood”.
My Surface Design Association magazine arrived in the mail yesterday. I am in awe of what is happening in the textile art world. My pieces look simple and unformed next to the work of Lauren Camp, Jane Dunnewold, Joy Stockdale, and so many others who are really pushing the possibilities of expression through cloth. I am a late-bloomer who does not have time, energy, or ambition to reach their level of technique and brilliance.
But I don’t wish for it to be otherwise. I don’t wish, as I once did, that I had had the courage to major in art in university, or that I had thrown over work or relationship to pursue the illusive role of writer or artist later in life. I like my slow, simple hand-crafted life. I like that my engagement with cloth these days is great fun and without goals. I just plain enjoy the process of stitching and seeing what follows.
Yesterday I took a short walk with a friend. “There is where a friend lives with her elder-dog, who I go to visit when she is at work. And here, meet my friend who started taking care of the feral cats. And that is the Tibetan center, right next door to the busy liquor store. And there is the woman who sells honey on Fridays.” I’ve unwittingly landed in a neighborhood where people talk with one another and know something about one another’s lives. It’s refreshingly ordinary.
Local members of Surface Design Association are gathering for the first time next week. We are invited to bring some of our work to show. I feel a bit nervous to share my simple beginnings, but on the other hand, I feel deeply happy to have arrived at a point where I am doing something for sheer pleasure and curiosity. It is truly this latter that I wish to share more than the things I have made. These hand-crafted objects are simply offerings of beauty and praise, no less than the purr of cats, the song of birds, the sound of snake sliding across grass, the turning of leaves to the sun.
My community of friends celebrate creativity through painting, photography, music, dance, words, textiles, food, garden--the usual array that has been used for as long as humans have been human. Only a few are famous at what they do.
I think this is what Gary Snyder meant when he said in an interview that the ambition of a Taoist was to become a melon-grower. Or what Carolyn Myss meant when she said that maybe your “job” is simply to be “a light in the neighborhood”.
My Surface Design Association magazine arrived in the mail yesterday. I am in awe of what is happening in the textile art world. My pieces look simple and unformed next to the work of Lauren Camp, Jane Dunnewold, Joy Stockdale, and so many others who are really pushing the possibilities of expression through cloth. I am a late-bloomer who does not have time, energy, or ambition to reach their level of technique and brilliance.
But I don’t wish for it to be otherwise. I don’t wish, as I once did, that I had had the courage to major in art in university, or that I had thrown over work or relationship to pursue the illusive role of writer or artist later in life. I like my slow, simple hand-crafted life. I like that my engagement with cloth these days is great fun and without goals. I just plain enjoy the process of stitching and seeing what follows.
Yesterday I took a short walk with a friend. “There is where a friend lives with her elder-dog, who I go to visit when she is at work. And here, meet my friend who started taking care of the feral cats. And that is the Tibetan center, right next door to the busy liquor store. And there is the woman who sells honey on Fridays.” I’ve unwittingly landed in a neighborhood where people talk with one another and know something about one another’s lives. It’s refreshingly ordinary.
Local members of Surface Design Association are gathering for the first time next week. We are invited to bring some of our work to show. I feel a bit nervous to share my simple beginnings, but on the other hand, I feel deeply happy to have arrived at a point where I am doing something for sheer pleasure and curiosity. It is truly this latter that I wish to share more than the things I have made. These hand-crafted objects are simply offerings of beauty and praise, no less than the purr of cats, the song of birds, the sound of snake sliding across grass, the turning of leaves to the sun.
posted by Forgive the Dream at 7:45 AM
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