Circle the Star

“Circle the star and put an ‘x’ in the box....”

When I began the surface design of these two pieces, this little phrase was playing again and again in my head.  It is an instruction from my own primary classroom---my own childhood.  I remember a workbook of sorts through which we progressed as first graders.  We read instructions (like this one) and performed the tasks required.  Perhaps this was an attempt at early reading comprehension?---following directions?  I can’t really say.  I do remember the smiling faces inked at the top of pages after they were completed correctly--perhaps the only motivator in such a task.

These two textile pieces are the result of a pair of old---but very charming camp stools--perhaps from the 1950s.  The frames are orange red, and the seats look to have been recovered with the remnants of an old tent.  The seats are seamed and double stitched in some places in the sturdy light green canvas.  Because they have some charm--I decided to keep this canvas as the base for the new covers.

I have always loved the architecture of small camp stools--easily carried on one’s shoulder---folding neatly and perfectly--- and able to stow completely flat wherever you put them.  I have one that sits in the corner of my studio, and another in my classroom---once used routinely in a school that embraced outdoor education--and one with which I often traveled to the top of a berm along Westerly Creek at lunchtime to journal and think.  They are now the relics of another time---only available as ‘vintage’ when one can find them!

I decided to repurpose these stools for my daughter and her husband---a wedding gift for a couple who loves to camp, raft, and find adventure outdoors.  They are looking forward to a camping trip in remote Colorado in the coming weeks.

I started by hand painting and stamping commercial fabrics.  After cutting painted fabric into squares and rectangles, I arranged them onto the existing (laundered) canvas.  I attached these with a loose zig-zag stitch on all edges.  I then set out to create the surface design using free-motion embroidery.  I used a palette of soft greens, yellow greens, orange-red, muted oranges and burnished red-orange.  I included the “circle the star” motif in a number of places--as well as childlike scribbles inspired by my granddaughter’s art on my studio wall.  

I also included the sweet wedding ‘logo’ that my daughter and her husband used on wedding stationery
“C + F” inscribed in a heart (carved in a tree) on each cover.


After the stitching was complete,  I used Briwax to clean and preserve the finish on the original red paint and re-attached the covers with tacks to their original positions.   Voila!--ready for sitting around the campfire---or alongside the river.                                                                                            

"Collecting Words"

When I first began to write seriously--or so I thought, a writer and close friend encouraged me to carry a small notebook with me wherever I went.  He said that he used this tiny volume for “collecting words.”  As he stumbled across memorable words or phrases--or odd juxtapositions of the same, he would jot them down in a small, looseleaf binder he carried in his pocket.  He said that he might discover such gems when he was on the train in the London Underground---walking past an advertising sign, or even in overheard conversations.  

So, I began this kind of journal keeping when I was in my very early twenties.  When I look back at the entries now--yes, I’ve kept them--I recognize the beginnings of what later became a poem or phrases that I might have used in other pieces of writing.  These fragments of beautiful or obscure language collide together on the page---sometimes making sense from the immensely senseless.  

These pages don’t contain the complete thoughts that a journal might---but are of the same nature as a “visual diary” where one might catalog images that transfix us---so they aren’t forgotten.  Along with those seemingly random words or phrases that fill the pages of my thin, black notebook with now yellowed pages, there are also the jottings of someone I vaguely recognize---and I remember where I might have been when something moved me enough to record it in my little journal---a long, long time ago.

I love the power of the unexpected---especially the unexpected juxtaposition of words.  The imagery they can produce is evocative--and often, extraordinary.  This “word collecting” is surely a passion of many poets and writers---as we all lie awake waiting to pluck those “just right” words from our half-sleep to finish a thought...

"Something Glittering" - acrylic, fabric, watercolor pencil, pencil

"Dreaming" - acrylic, fabric, watercolor pencil, pencil

"After Breakfast" - acrylic, fabric, watercolor pencil, pencil, 

Dream Boats -- And Intrinsic Knowledge

A familiar thought was running through my head this afternoon as I worked on the latest “Dream Boat” mobile.  I thought of my dad---a man of invention and incredible common sense. Although he spent his life working in an oil refinery, Dad built the house I grew up in---and then a beach cabin on the Texas Gulf Coast.  He had limitless practical abilities--the kind of innately logical thinker that I haven’t observed in many people in my life.

Jim West

 When there was any project going at our house, there was always the “perfect knot” to tie it with--knots with amazing names like slip knot, half-hitch, sheep shank, clove hitch, cow hitch...bowline.  Perhaps it was because my dad had been an Eagle Scout...or perhaps it was just because knots were sensible things to know about--he not only knew about them, but Dad could tie them precisely and use them effectively in every situation.  

A few years ago, I had a burning desire to put up a clothesline in our then, very urban, Denver back garden.  After making a trip to the local hardware store to buy all the necessary bits, I returned home and began fashioning a clothesline in a somewhat unconventional configuration to fit our garden space.  When it came time to knot the line to the hardware, there wasn’t a moment’s hesitation, I began tying a bowline, and I could hear my father’s voice...”the rabbit emerges from a hole, goes under the log, jumps back over the log and back in the hole.”  I had a clear vision of him tying this same knot at some time in my childhood--the patience and precision of his thick, brown hands moving deliberately.  

I had the same experience today as I began knotting the ending pieces of hemp and silk for the “dream boat.”  My dad was again alongside me.  

Isn’t it wonderful that those rich pieces of our childhoods---and most especially, the people we’ve loved--live on in the smallest tasks or moments in our busy lives?

Dream Boat II - recycled book pages, cottonwood twigs,
hemp cord, found objects.

Dream Boats

My love of origami was an unexpected journey. 

It began with making paper cranes with my own children on New Year's Eve of 2000.  My girls were then just 12 and 8.  Looking for something interesting to occupy the children visiting our house that evening, I thought of paper cranes.  As we sat down to fold our papers, we decided to write something secret inside---our wishes and hopes for the coming year.  Just before midnight, one of our guests thought that it would be a great idea to go out onto our deck and burn the cranes just as the new year arrived.  We watched as our secret hopes and dreams drifted up into the night sky of a new millennia.  

When origami paper is set alight, the dyes cause it to burn in beautiful, brilliant colors.  It was just the kind of magic we had hoped for as we rang in the new millennium---and thus, it began...the tradition of paper cranes on New Year's Eve that is followed religiously at our house each year.  I have also shared this with my students over the years and has been adopted by many other families and friends along the way.

The origami "dream boats" are a shape uniquely reminiscent of childhood to me.  I love their sharp angles and child-like quality.  I painted and hand colored book pages before folding them, then strung them with other found and natural objects to create the piece.

Dream Boat 1 - "Stars Shining Bright"

Detail of "Dream Boat"

On Inspiration...

“Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it.”

                                                                               ---Bob Dylan


So, where does inspiration come from?....I think it can come from anywhere---and anything around us.  For me, it often comes from what I see out my studio window...the prairie that stretches for miles, the wildflowers, and the deer that I often see as I come into my studio first thing in the morning.

Sometimes, inspiration is just about color, a pattern or texture, or the exquisite beauty of some natural material or found object.

This afternoon, there was a brief rain shower, an unusual event for us this summer as we struggle through another season of drought and wildfires in Colorado.  As I looked out my studio window, there were raindrops collected on the screen behind a nearly finished “Dream Boat” mobile I’d been working on earlier in the day.  The play of light and shadow between the paper boats and the brilliant, clearing, blue sky against the prairie made me smile...inspiration.

The Artful Word

I’m lucky---I’ve spent much of my life doing different things that have ultimately led me to this place.  I’ve been a student of the sciences, a working artist, an artist-in-residence in a small elementary school, a poet, and for the last fifteen years....a teacher in public schools.

Over the last several years, as I've worked hard at teaching in some very challenging school settings, I have missed those other pieces of myself--

“...the way it feels
the smell of paint, the stickiness of it
on her fingers.  But she wants them
to know it, too.  And they love the feel of it
the paint on their fingers
the room hanging with drawings
paint on the floor and the easiness of it
the joy of learning it only yesterday... 

There is also something rather magical about my job--working with ten and eleven year olds--as I currently do--when they write poetry.  I often tell my students that I know when a poem is really, really good when it makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up--and when reading my students' poetry, that often happens to me.  

I love the craft of writing poetry.  I love agonizing over finding precisely the right word to complete my thought.  I love finding words in interesting juxtapositions that somehow make sense out of the senseless.  

I have a vivid memory of the very first book I recall being read to me.  It was Beatrix Potter...The Tale of Peter Rabbit.  I remember the sound of the words as my mother read them to me---gooseberries, black currant bushes, and Peter’s “scritch scratching.”   The unfamiliar words were rich and magical--and made me want to say them over and over in my head.  It was then, I’m nearly certain, that I became a poet.  Whatever imprinting takes place when we hear such evocative words in our young lives---I’m sure it was then that it happened to me...

I sometimes miss the uneasiness of writing poetry----of agonizing over that perfect word.

“...reminding me what it was like
to turn restlessly shaping a phrase
finding a quiet word
chasing images into the blackness
of my slumber...”

So, I arrive at this place---ready to create anew and longing to tie all of those absent pieces together again---the scientist, artist, poet.  And this is the place it will begin...