Monday, May 27, 2013

A story of Story

Hello everyone.  This may be long and rambling but I want to continue with thoughts from last post.
It started at the exhibit "Girl with the Pearl Earring" (Vermeer).  There were many portraits.  In asking myself which to study in particular, I looked at them from the question of which artist portrayed someone I would feel comfortable talking to.  Guess who won?  Rembrandt!  Sorry, no pictures, but his faces have so much Story in them...so much life and realness and mystery.  I had forgotten. Then we visited the gift shop and of all seemingly incongruous things, I fell in love with a book, Chintz, Indian Textiles for the West, by Rosemary Crill.  It just popped out at me, so I bought it.  Here is one of my favorite pictures from it:

So much activity, so much Story!  As I've become so aware of in Jude's work and online classes.  Because I'm doing alot of piecing work for my grandson's quilt, I have been neglecting day to day Story, and so in asking how I could bring that back into my work, I was looking at Penny's blog, and at her wonderful stitchings of story.  Then I noticed the borders around the Indian textiles:

and I thought, why not create my own sort of border to record daily events, such as:
This includes a friends' medical emergency, Gilly's toenail clipping adventure, a T-cell for a friend who desperately needs lots of them, 10 Chesapeake Retrievers jumping into the water at the dog park, some bees, an Oystercatcher bird, a snake we saw, and so on.  That was week one.  Inside the borders will be another sort of story (maybe)...perhaps trees and a lifetime of pets...a Memorial Day Landscape of sorts.

Here is the Plant Report: the persimmon tree is amazingly full of flowers.  Either I have never noticed them before, which is not impossible, or this year is so dry that it is a bit survival-anxious:
And lastly, this wreath of maple leaves fell, in almost exactly this configuration, into my backyard last week:
So, incomplete as it is, that's the story for now...xoxo, s.




7 comments:

  1. some beautiful images. have you read the book 'the girl with the pearl earring'? i enjoyed it.

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    1. Hi Deanna, I did read, and enjoy it...it was a long time ago though, and I'd like to revisit it...

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  2. Your own story is as important in the telling as any other ... and I just love where you have traveled to in this post. Must admit, am partial (oh, so partial) to that paw print in your border. You might already know that about me by now ;>]

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    1. Hi Christi, yes it doesn't surprise me that you noticed that one! :). Gilly is much happier having her nails trimmed by others than me, due to my agonizing about it. It's interesting to try to find the right image to represent one's experiences...so different from choosing words...

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  3. Oh, Suzanna, I love your border! And you are right...half the fun is picking a simple image to record one's day.

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    1. Hi Penny! Thank you! The second one was harder, or perhaps more emotional (see next post), but it helps me collect my thoughts to do them.

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    2. Blogger doesn't want to let me complete my thoughts! Anyway, I would like to be more disciplined about my daily stitching...maybe if I just ease myself in that direction. I wonder if you do your stitching journals at a particular time of day, or just when there's a moment here and there? I love them, in any case...

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