Are you ever caught off guard by something you’ve done?

My new tote bags came back today and I was surprised by how pleased I felt. Mostly by the color. How it moved.

I’ve been creating art now for how many years? I surely enjoyed it as a child, but it became clearly a passion at 18. However, I didn’t go take college level art classes until I’d already taught art to children.

That sounds backward, but my masters in education degree from University of Washington was focused on how valuable all kinds of learning are, not just intellectual. And so I worked in alternative public elementary schools with teachers that brought film and dance and art into the classroom as ways to teach about whales or community or… or… or. After 3 years of that work in Seattle, I moved back to the east coast, specifically to Maine. And in Maine, the values were different. Wood stoves mattered most. Art?

I taught a course at the College of the Atlantic for the students interested in teaching. But, if I wanted to teach in the public schools anything to do with art, I needed art in my resume. I went back to school – to the University of Maine. I thought I was there in order to go back to teaching children, but my love of art, once allowed to fill my days, aroused an insatiable curiosity.

I hungered for more.

I was accepted at the School of the Museum of FIne Arts in Boston which meant – UGH – living in Boston.(I thought before moving there). But it was art and I couldn’t get enough of it. The deep dive.

There’s a theme here, right? It took me through grad school and… it keeps me going.

I laugh when I see my totes. After my years of huge oil paintings, large hand-dyed silk installations, now… Still having such a good time.

I know others are investigating AI. I haven’t done that. But I’ve taken this work, this horse, that I created in a lengthy process of hand-dyeing the silk and then assembling the pieces. This is the sequence:

The photo I take is the first removal from my original piece. Then the photo is interpreted by pixels on the iphone. I use that to design on the computer for its reproduction on cloth, interpreting to the best of my ability the way the colors will transfer. The colors at the start and the colors finally are – yes – different. And the journey itself involves creating and re-creating.

And now I have this art on a tote bag that can be viewed and enjoyed at the most mundane OR the most celebrated of times. When one chooses clothes, they look good for others to see. With this, you yourself can enjoy it as much as the onlooker. Here is art that can move with you.

And treasured for the times when what you need is… what art offers. Uplift. Distraction. A moment.

Don’t you love it when something unfolds in a way that surprises you?

(Oh, Peaches…)