I think sometimes that being able to rest in the mystery, to have faith that something will come of the exploration and to be equally comfortable with the things we call successes as with the things we call either noble efforts or failures, is the Great Good Goal. Easier said than done. [insert a smile and a wink]

The perennial question that comes up in fiber art is this notion of falling between two stools. People like resolution, like things to be one thing or clearly another thing: useful or beautiful, painting or quilt, over the sofa or on it. But it’s a continuum, isn’t it, with many point between the poles.

I started something this morning for which I decided that green is the right color to represent love. Pink/red showed up first, of course, but (aside from the hokum) it’s “not right” in the context of everything else that’s heaped up on the sort-the-fabric table. It doesn’t feel like a decision so much as a realization. I know I could give a list of reasons for the choice because a host of reasons crowded in as soon as the yes-idea appeared, but would they genuinely address the fundamental alchemy– How do you think of these things? Why do you choose these particular things — and not others — to realize the idea so that others see/hear/taste/touch/smell it as well? (however imperfectly)

I think it’s amazing that no one in fibers has tried to suss out the comparison you and I are interested in. I have heard comments (mostly snide) like “Why doesn’t she just paint?” And I have heard lots of (what seems like) blather about being true to the “material” — usually spoken by someone whose work is flat as a pancake, stiff as a board, rectangular, hung on the wall and looks like, well, a painting.

But none of these comments really get at much of anything for me. So do keep me posted! And I will keep circling. I’m thinking about seams and contour drawing at the moment as contrasts to mushy edges and painting from the center out.

I raised the changing mediums question at the SAQA meeting tonight. As it turns out, there are several people who have come to fiber art from other fields (including one sculptor whose practice includes lost-wax bronze casting).

The conversation didn’t get much further than agreement that “composition is composition” and variations on “somehow the aesthetic of fabric is different” and “there’s something about the tactlity of fabric…” Curiously (at least to my naive understanding), there was some disagreement about whether “color is color.” Then the conversation skittered off into the advantages of dying and painting fabric, and moved on from there. But I think it’s the kind of thing that will yield by circling-around. I’ll keep you posted.

Being of similar age, I support my energy by spending time and money coddling myself. Several years ago, I shopped around for a knowledgeable physical therapist to help me with an old sport injury. She in turn introduced me to a private trainer and an osteopathic physician for acupuncture and osteopathic manipulative therapy.

In addition to an exercise program, hobbled together from Yoga, Pilates and Matt Furey’s ‘combat stretching’, I make myself relaxation files, first solely based on imagery borrowed from the Swiss Dancer Eric Franklin, and now including other ideas to, for example, support my ‘Biopsychotype’ inspired by Joseph Helms “Getting to Know You’. I make my own relaxation files using the freeware Audacity and I listen to them in my IPOD Shuffle.

There’s a woman in my SAQA group who’s going from painting to fiber, and I’m finding it extremely interesting to hear from passengers moving in different ways along the continuum.

Thanks for the consoling comments. I have never been one to go about my molehills in silence and acceptance, so it is probably true that I’m chewing at something already mostly settled and that I’m kvetching much too loudly. It’s one of my character traits — talking through problems is so much more fun than wrestling with them in silence (add snort!)

About “Dices,” — I resist the notion that the rays of light don’t work, although the piece doesn’t work and they are certainly part of the piece. But when I looked at it this morning, I thought that if I darkened and grayed the background considerably, the two primary figures and the rays would pop out and that might take care of the problem. The difficulty, of course, is in containing the darkening to the background — a bit difficult to do with unstretched fabric. But worth a try.

One observation that the critique seemed to highlight for me is that seamed textiles (like pieced or appliqued quilt art) depend upon a graphic-like quality — they tend toward the clarity of advertising (a lovely contradiction of style and meaning because quilts are traditionally warm and soft and uncommercial seeming).

the graphic quality of quilted art isn’t true of quilt collaging, of course, but in much of the other high art that is quilted, I see tidy outlines and clarity of contour. Massing of color and shapes become really important.

On the other hand, painting is about smooshiness of edges, about grey dripping into the blue that edges into the green that inveigles its way into the naples yellow. The contradiction between the graphic quality of the two figures and the rays of light and the painterly whole may be where this piece, “Dices,” falls apart. So I think I might graphic “Dices” up a bit, by clarifying foreground and background.

Of course, it’s easy to say I’ll do this. Doing it, successfully, may be something else.

Thanks, Melanie, for your thoughtful response.