Emerging and Retreating

a treasured gift from my friend els @ fiber rainbow

Like Spring Bulbs and New Leaves….

As the Surface Design Online class ends, and my teaching schedule for the season closes, I find myself in an interesting transitional space. One that has been more challenging to move through than I had thought when I planned my calender for the year.

I’m retreating from being online in my capacity as teacher, and emerging into my summer island world.   Lots more time for long walks in the forest, evenings at the beach and book reading under the tree.  Family time and coffee with friends. It’s an interesting challenge to switch gears mentally… I’ve gotten used to long hours in front of the computer, and have to remind myself that I don’t actually need to be doing that right now…and sign out.

In this time I am reacquainting myself with my studio space….I worked in the studio alot over the spring, but mostly in relation to developing teaching materials, and it became more of a messy production/holding/impersonal/disaster space…It took some initial perseverance this last week or so to remind myself to be out there…It was actually difficult to go out there and start making something! I would have loved to have cleaned and re-organized completely to reflect new creative directions and spaces, but that just wasn’t possible….so in addition to making new work, I adjust and sort for an hour a day….and slowly but surely the studio is emerging as my true space again.  The more this happens, the more I retreat into this space and love the quiet and authentic reflection.

This season in my working life is all about new explorations and creations. I retreat from the everydayness into my space and fall in love with my materials, like renewing vows in life long relationship! Ideas constantly emerging, and sometimes fear also…What if I can’t actually do what my mind sees and my pencil creates on paper. What if I am just not good enough to realize these ideas.  There’s a lot of that right now. The next few weeks will tell! The piece below is part of a series that uses the dress and therefore the human form as a canvas. Waiting to be dyed and stitched….

As I spend more time in this creative space, I am eager to share my explorations online again….here on my blog or on Facebook…..full circle but in a different space. 

I am absolutely intrigued with how retreating and emerging can be one and the same thing. Retreating from or into one aspect of life brings us into emergence in another. They are each a side of the same door.

I have to say how grateful I am to have met so many wonderful people through felting this Winter into Spring…some in person and some only online. But the connections are so good and whole….the emergence of such a gift!

A special thank you to my far away fiber friend, Els, who sent me the beautiful gift above…a little bit of each of our countries, and of herself. I love having these little touchstones in my studio, warming and thoughtful, from friends also making in their own spaces…
 
Warm wishes, 
Fiona