Category: Needlework

'The unknown' is a monster

12/14/2024

I'm betting its bite will be worse than its bark

Lately I’ve been asking anyone I come across: Is it just me or are we all sort of in a calm-before-the-storm, high-alert mode? So far, the score is 100-per-cent ‘Yes.’ Although in retrospect those affirmatives could mean, Yes you’ve asked me that already many times or Yes it is just you please let me pass.
My state of mind is somewhere between what former Village Voicejournalist/author Laurie Stone noted the night before this writing: “Everyone I know feels the edgy nothing” and satirist Samantha Bee’s last post: “Things are about to get fucking WILD.”

Anecdotal evidence through reading rational opinion reveals that countless numbers of engaged humans are not waiting to exhale but bracing for impact of the incoming turbulence in the Divided States of America — and beyond. The unknown is unnerving. It’s also intentional and we’ve seen it before:

Above: That other lying Donald, back in a 2002 press conference spreadingthe Big Lie that launched the catastrophic war in Iraq.

Living in the unknown has already taken its toll as seen during the global pandemic. Heightened fear and paranoia have morphed into the cultish desire for a strongman/daddy figure to fix it and us. And the geo-political trend shows no nation is immune.

To anyone prone to dismissing me by using the C-word (catastrophizing — what were you thinking?), consider this pre-emptive journalistic self-censoring under Trump 2.0: the two MSNBC “Morning Joe” hosts apologizing on air last week for possibly offending Fox News. (See “‘Morning Joe' Sorry David Frum Made Forbidden Joke About Fox News, Please Don't Hurt Them!”) To be clear, this is a left-leaning cable TV network obeying in advance by apologizing to “one of the most malevolent corporations in all of America, whose decades of lies, propaganda, and racist brainwashing are perhaps more responsible than any other single entity for America’s current slide into brain-damaged ethno-fascism,” in the words of the managing editor of Wonkette. Frum, a Canadian-American former Republican and speechwriter for George W. Bush then took issue with its apology in The Atlantic with the kicker: “It is a very ominous thing if our leading forums for discussion of public affairs are already feeling the chill of intimidation and responding with efforts to appease.”

Suffice it to say this is an early-warning signal that the way things are now won’t be the way things are after Jan. 6. But how to proceed until the big hammers come down on respected, fearless journalists and all the other perceived enemies? Is it more helpful to read Robert Reich’s latest, “How Trump could bring on a second civil war” or bingeing How to Become a Tyrant on Netflix? (True, there is no mention of the American meddling in the making of some of those dictators but the playbook tracks.)

I’ll think on that while I continue to do like the kids and live in the moment, channeling creative energy, even — or especially — the negative.

“The Unknown”, embroidered linen on hoop, 2021. Felt-pen drawing (inset) and words by young nephew Kaleb.

Fleeting thoughts of granny squares

10/25/2024

The Wet Coast is no place for this fuzzy fantasy

The trees are sun-kissed radiant red and gold as I hunker down to write this, in that little sliver of crisp and dry days between the months of dumb-dumb flipflops and the damn rain boots. Not that I’m complaining about life-giving precipitation in these drying times but by the time this is published we on the Wet Coast will most likely be entering the seven months of sog. So just for today, I’m loving this:

I don’t actually own an outdoorsy sweater. I have various rain-repelling jackets and coats and pants and some base layers spun from plastic pop bottles: ‘outdoorky’ gear, mostly in sensible black. Yet it occurs to me that since I have competent needleworking skills I could design something completely unique and unsensible: a vibrant visual statement! A colourful conversation-starter!

I’ve knit several sweaters in my time while commuting by bus and SkyTrain across four municipalities during four years as a reporter at a suburban newspaper. They were mostly derivative of the ‘Doctor Huxtable’ sweaters, more not-bad than bad-ass, for my man at the time. They were not keepers.

I have just one of my own: Logo Sweater, made in the months before the 2010 Winter Olympics here, to test the extents of corporate copyright and appropriation of the traditional Cowichan sweater design.

‘Logo Sweater’, 2010, made with the assistance of my mother, a truly competent life-long knitter, and modelled by my brother.

What I’ve decided after those years of increasingly complex sweater-making is that knitting, as a creative action, suuuuuucks.

In my hands, the knitting needles are tools trying to perfectly emulate what a machine can — and does — do: create perfect loops upon perfect loops on rows upon rows, stuck in a matrix, so mindless you can do it blindfolded or watch movies at the same time, which I guess is the appeal. It’s a laborious endurance; you can binge every Grey’s Anatomy episode and you still might not get that baby blanket done.

I’m with the hookers. Could knitting needles have created the hyperbolic-crocheted Spore from a 24-foot-by-28-foot deteriorating plastic tarp I dragged out of the forest? Or this other version in found fibre-optic cable? I’d like to see knitting needles try working up these tight mathematical models of hyperbolic growth.

Two crocheted objects in the “Fuzzy Logic” series. (Carlyn Yandle)

Just one agile hook is all it takes to create fast, improvisational and three-dimensional objects. It can be a meandering journey through rows of neat little stitches that erupt into large saggy loops before settling down the side in thick ribbing then circling back to the beginning. How about a curly lettuce frill here? How about stitching up a rose?

How about a few Roses Against Violence? Since that fun little project was introduced by an Austrian artist in 2018, crocheters have been tagging street infrastructure all over the world with purple roses with a message to stop gender-based violence.

Collage of Instagram posts from around the world (@rosesagainstviolence; #rosesagainstviolence). Austrian artist Claudia Grünzweig’s started the crochet-tagging in 2018 to call for the end of gender-based violence.

How about hooking up an alternative to the bland Barbie universe?

Work by Xenobia Bailey: “Her Royal Flyness”, part of an overlooked “Funktional Design” movement, “Poke In The Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture”, Seattle Art Museum, August 2024

Or a human-sized frock of funk fantasy?

(Garment, 1990s. Single-stitch crochet: acrylic and cotton four-ply yarn, “Xenobia Bailey: A Childhood Dreamscape In the Aesthetic of Funk Almost Deferred”, part of the “Poke In The Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture” exhibit, Seattle Art Museum, August 2024)

I am inspired by this outrageous aesthetic overlooked in the West Coast crafty counter-culture of the late last century. It has me mining my own memories of a fuzzy milieu of crocheted granny squares and afghans.
I googled “duster” and “granny squares” and there it is:

So much inspo: u/Birdfin on the r/crochet sub-Reddit; dreamcrochets.com

Not a word of a lie: As I type this last sentence, a loud crack of thunder rattles the place. I unplug the laptop.

Wait — is this grandmacore? Comes a time when the specialness of the old-lady look is lost when it’s worn by an old(er) lady. Any attempt at personal flair might read more ‘picked out of my seniors’ centre lost-and-found.’

So grandmacore is to be avoided. Also cottagecore, a baffling combo of simplicity and clutter. And definitely not the froufrou fairycore as there is no occasion when I will be attaching little wings to gauzy day dresses. Apparently (according to a handy online quiz) I relate mostly to the earthy goblincore. I do appreciate swamps and lichen and tree-trunk hidey-holes. But mushrooms have the feel of phlegm on my tongue so I will not be adorning my clothes or livingspace with any manner of those.

I was still visualizing a calf-length duster of earth-toned granny squares when the rain started firing against the windows like birdshot. So much for sweater weather.

Awkward family moment informs art-making aesthetic

7/14/2024

When I first started out as a suburban-newspaper reporter I had a single original artwork tacked to the wall in my basement suite. It was a life-sized acrylic-on-paper, a nude holding her maybe-pregnant belly against a landscape of spewing factories and techni-coloured streams.

I watched this gaunt, world-weary figure emerge in watery brushstrokes from the hand of the newspaper photographer's girlfriend. This is how she worked, in their basement suite, pulling yardage from a large roll of cheap paper, painting straight from her head and heart, with no plan to keep or show or sell her paintings. She saw that this one resonated with me too — what twenty-something in a committed relationship doesn’t have this weighing on her mind? So she gave it to me.

Hanging it felt like supporting an ally, even if it was only hanging in my dark, featureless space that nobody would see besides the boyfriend on weekends. Then one day some of his family made the trip for a visit. They complimented my hanging flower baskets, my thrifty decor. I didn’t hear until much later that the painting had become a topic of conversation among various relatives, a bit of a joke about that subject and, by extension in my mind, this girlfriend.

I had none of the inner fortitude to see this painting or my choices as acceptable and eventually I rolled it up and hid it in a closet. I married into that family within three years. The boxed wedding dress joined the poster tube containing the offending painting for two more moves until I finally ditched the artwork at the Sally Ann. The dress is another story.

Detail from 'Unbridled,' the artist's handmade silk wedding dress embroidered with significant events. (Carlyn Yandle photo)

'I Dissent,' aesthetic design with a political position marking the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Acrylic on panel, 2020 (Carlyn Yandle)

But I did keep something from that painting: some lessons that have informed an aesthetic that I carry to this day but might not even recognize until after each artwork is completed, or is at least on its trajectory.

The first is the power of attraction. Not to be confused with the pseudoscientific Law of Attraction, this is a drive to create aesthetically-pleasing, familiar domestic objects and fields that upon closer inspection have something else to say besides cozy or pretty. An early example of one of my pretty/pretty disturbing objects is Clutch (2007). Hundreds of sewing pins were pierced into a thrifted clutch purse in a colourful beaded pattern covering the entire surface. The clasp opens to reveal an impenetrable thicket of steely pointy ends.

Another valuable lesson is context, or time and place. Gallery-goers may prepare themselves to be confronted by artwork but I don’t wish that on houseguests. There are none of those Live-Love-Laugh type directives or IKEA Eiffel Towers and tulips on the walls at home, but what is there is selected to engage, not repel. Home is a place to feel safe. The studio is a place to not play it safe, but it’s still a covert operation, playing on that first impression of domestic objects that reveal cracks in the beauty of the everyday.

I’ve also learned that my creative energy comes from joy, not pain. I have no urge to make when I barely have enough hope for the day to put on pants. Heavy realities may be the driving force but the work develops from a position of hope for comfort and social connection, a hunger for nourishment of new ideas and new materials to explore. The joy is in learning while doing, imagining new collective futures.

What first appears as a frilly white textile barely conceals the chaotic armature of conduit casing, hazard tape, metal pipes, and other construction-site debris behind layers of discarded Tyvek building wrap. (Nate Yandle photos)

Finally, my position is not fixed. In my mind I have that 1985 photo portrait of Lily Tomlin in a black T-shirt with white lettering that screams EVOLVE OR DIE. And look at her now. My sensibilities are always shifting and I am growing more at peace with the idea that what other people say about me is none of my business. When an artist friend turned 50 on an artists’ retreat the rest of us toasted her in a welcome to the I Don’t Give a Shit Club. When you’re part of that club you stop second-guessing every decision and tending to other people’s feelings first.

This is how I recently became the owner of Fuckwit. I was attracted by the sweet rosebud fabric appliqued in tiny blanket stitches precise as Letraset on a lacy linen. I like the artist's choice of font and word. It’s an overt, uncomplicated work that hangs near the front door, visible before guests would even have their coat off. If people get offended, blame the artist, not me. I just like the beauty in that crack.

Original artwork by Kathryn Lissack (@kathrynlissack)

Circular thinking can be a flow state too

6/2/2024

I opened up my studio yesterday to the public to get some general feedback on a new series of paintings. Because even though I’m compelled to keep working on it and even though I’m enjoying a growing proficiency in this mash-up of stitching and painting I’m having trouble articulating why — or if — they’re not just pretty faces. Mostly I've been answering their questions with questions of my own.

“Why” has always been the trouble. Also aggravating: Why ask why?
This is the reason I’ve named this growing collection of paintings that all basically follow my own set of rules of engagement Circular Thinking. The connotation is negative but hear me out.

Asking ourselves existential questions while we create is infuriating (Shut the hell up, Inner Critic) but it’s also part of a process that can guide us to where we want to land. I would like to be settled with the obvious reason that it’s my route into flow, or actual, real fun. (The “so fun” episode of the We Can Do Hard Things podcast here was recommended to me by my sister.) And they do get me there: into the flow of playing with colours and opacities, of focusing on one stitch at a time, watching how each layer of paint or stitching changes perception.

But I can’t settle with just what’s in it for me. Making is my way of connecting with the world. Much of my work is collaborative, so those involved naturally have a stake in the final projects. Often that’s in the gathering of abject materials, or the actual simple hand-working methods that bring folks together. So it’s easy to see the ‘why’ in these crafted objects and fields; beyond their own resonance they stand as an archive of the social interaction, an artifact of the engagement with materials.

The Circular Thinking series has none of that. Each painting is a singular, intimate effort. It does not reveal any agency embedded in unwanted/useless materials and objects. So in the making, despite the flow part, I feel a whisper of guilt and shame that many women of a certain age might also hear when not doing for others: selfish, self-indulgent, self-absorbed.

There is definitely something in the ‘self’ there that is the driving force in these improvisational, unpredictable and unsettling paintings: self-care. I ache for solid, reliable ground in these perilous times so I start with a grid, like the criss-cross of rebar that sets the concrete footings in every new tower crowding the Vancouver skyline, or a typical nine-patch quilt block. Nine eight-inch-diameter circles in a 24" x 24" "block" anchor to that grid and then I’m off, free of all straight lines, off-setting those circles by half in paint, offsetting again with more layers of colour in paint or thread until I arrive at an attractive/distractive done-ness. It is an improvisational process of revealing and concealing (repeat!) petal-like sections of circles, creating unsettling, kaleidoscopic fields. It is the kind of all-consuming process that reduces hours to minutes, that absorbs all attention, a safe space away from the visual onslaught of social media, yet reflective of our ‘everything is awesome’ screen-field of vision.

It might be easier to eat this elephant one bite at a time by knocking down specific why-questions:

Why paint?
Colour-play. Especially important in this watery corner of the world. It can also act as a dye/stain.

Why canvas?
It’s fabric, with so much possibility for exploring its essential characteristics.

Why the wood stretcher?
Another fibre product that is a natural with fabric. It's basically a quilt frame or embroidery hoop for painters. Building stretchers and stretching the canvas is an investment in the project ahead (a trick I learned from my father @dennisyandle).

Why the stitching?
I like to needle at the hierarchy of painting over craft processes. Each stitch feels like I’m sticking it to convention. Stitching into painting offers the digestible label of “expanded painting practice.”

Why all the quilt references?
The geometry of quilt designs is fascinating, mesmerizing. I have little aptitude but a lot of respect for the beauty of mathematics. The tactility of that geometry connects to present and past makers of objects that exist as art pieces or as items of comfort, utility and gifts, an expression of love. This is a less-digestible "expanded quilting practice": improvisational, mixed-media works with none of that cushy filling.

$Picture$

The geometry of circular quilt designs remains a beautiful, captivating mystery.

Why this scale?
24" x 24” is my standard sample-block size. I dream of an exhibit of all my sample blocks blanketing white-cube gallery walls.

Why two-dimensional?
Closer inspection reveals the third dimension, in the stitching. Also, the aforementioned sample-block dream show is a three-dimensional, immersive space of pattern and colour chaos. (I want to go to there.)

Circular Thinking is both the name of this latest series of grid paintings and shorthand for how I approach every new project: play, think, write, share, think, research, share, write, repeat.

Through this writing part of that feedback loop I can see I just might stop torturing myself with the existential Why and get back into that flow.

@carlynyandle

My needling starts with a need to build community

11/10/2018

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The other day I did this because it really needed to happen. All that gleaming new-campus architecture, surrounded by other gleaming buildings and gleaming buildings yet-to-come was begging for a little fuzzying up.

I did my undergrad at the old Emily Carr University of Art and Design campus which was decidedly less smooth and metallic and more crafty, situated as it was in the Granville Island artisan mecca on the ocean's edge. I liked running my hand along the old wooden posts carved with decades of scrawled text, and all the wiring and ductwork that in the last few years looked like a set out of Brazil. I miss the giant murals on the cement factory silos next door and the funky houseboats and the food stalls in the public market and Opus Art Supplies 30 feet away from the front entrance.

The new serene, clean Emily Carr building is surrounded by new and planned condos that most students could never afford, high-tech companies and, soon, an elevated rapid transit rail line. As much as I wanted to return for graduate studies, I was not convinced that I would be a good fit here, so asking for permission and access to the sign was a bit of a trial balloon for me. I got quick and full support for the idea and its installation, and now see this new white space as a blank canvas, ready for the next era of student artistic expression.

This is my first solo yarn-bombing foray. A bunch of us attacked the old school back in the day for a textile-themed student show but I have yet to meet my people here. So the Emily Carr Cozy is not just a balloon, it's a flare. Is there anybody out there?

As I busied my freezing fingers with the stringy stuff (in hard hat, on the Skyjack operated by design tech services maestro Brian) I kept an ear out for reaction. And it was good. Sharing the fuzzy intervention on social media (#craftivism, #subversivestitch etc.) reminds me that I am not alone in my need for needling authority. Indeed, this public performance includes behind-the-scenes connecting with my community of makers to collect their leftover yarn and thrift-store finds even before the main act. (You know who you are.)

Textile interventions in the public sphere have a way of provoking polarizing responses. Some love the often-chaotic hand-wrapping of colourful fiber; others view the crafty messing with architecture with disdain of all things cozy and crafty and engendered female. I liked the idea of having to wear a hard hat and working for four hours in a Skyjack, in the mode of construction workers in the immediate vicinity of my rapidly changing hometown, to complete my knitting job.

The reverse side of the Emily Carr Cozy, seen only from the interior of the school, is like the work behind the scenes in my making: chaotic, improvisational and maybe more interesting than the public side. (Carlyn Yandle photo)

A visual of the process, below. (All photos by Caitlin Eakins)

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Wild, brilliant colour is rocking my concrete-grey foundations

11/17/2017

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A wall of a Peruvian restaurant in Merida, Mexico is devoted to customers' reviews written on ribbons. Carlyn Yandle photo

Modern science calls it bunk but I am fully on board with chromotherapy, an alternative medicine branded by the labcoats as a pseudo-science. The preferred term is photobiology now, an acknowledged science that includes the indisputable benefits of light therapy. I prefer the more mystical "chromotherapy" because it's less about rational explanations and more about feeling. And, for the synaesthesiasts (more specifically, those of us who experience chromesthesia), the beautiful music.

Consider these accompanying images from southern Mexico. Bask in the warmth of these visual fields of wild, intense, unrestrained, unleashed colour jumping out of our monochromatic devices.

A sewing notions store display of zippers in Merida, Mexico. Carlyn Yandle photo

Still in my first couple of weeks here in the Yucatan, I am bobbing around the crowded city streets, slack-jawed at what just may be the direct opposite palette of a Vancouver B-Line bus on any given November rush hour. My outlook has shifted from a low-level, gunmetal-grey resignation to a hot-fuchsia/blood-orange exhilarating mixto, all from looking at the zipper selection in a notions shop (of which there are plenty and another reason for exhilaration), or a glimpse into a hot-pink and aquamarine courtyard restaurant.

But it's not all feel-good. I am seduced by vibrant art and I use it to seduce in my own making: first the beauty, then the crack in the beauty. It's working when I think, "This is pretty and pretty horrifying."

Bright, hand-stitched floral motifs on everyday clothing say more for the Mayans than "pretty." Carlyn Yandle photo

If colour didn't entice then Walt Disney could have saved himself the price of acres of paint and Disneyland would be just metal and asphalt. The superstore cereal aisles would look like a newspaper periodicals library. You get the monochromatic picture.

Colour is a social statement in the bright, face-framing embroidered embellishments around a huipil (blouse) worn by mainly older women, or the brilliant woven blanket hanging from a balcony of a colonial facade. There is some needling in all that needlework, but without the dazzling hues we might not clue into the significance.

All this visual heat here in the southern part of North America is creating my own little inner unrest, clashing with my northern hometown palette of bruisey skies infinitely mirrored through the city's colourless glass towers. My concrete-grey foundations are being rocked. And I like it.

A dazzling woven blanket appears to appropriate the space of colonialist architecture, in Merida, Mexico. Carlyn Yandle photo

Courtyard restaurants in Merida's downtown entice diners with fiesta-hued interiors. Carlyn Yandle photo

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A beautiful craftivism in a flowery part of the world

11/8/2017

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MORE THAN DECORATION: Flower images carry deep cultural significance for the Maya. Left: A figure dating from 600-900bc nestled in a lily. Centre: Needlepoint detail from a huipil (top), part of a traditional everyday dress. Right: Jesus emerging from a lily in an oil painting of the Immaculate Conception. Carlyn Yandle photos

I've made it my mission to shake things up by injecting the handmade domestic — doilies, quilts, sweaters and rugs — into austere, authoritative spaces and places, from pristine galleries to sketchy undersides of my city, pushing back on everyday misogynistic descriptors like 'girly' or 'old-lady' or the slightly derogatory 'frou-frou' and 'flowery.'

Then I landed in Merida, Mexico, last week where there is no fight against things flowery and archetypical feminine. Here in the capital of the Yucatan state and the ancient Maya culture (not dead but flourishing against all odds, by the way, like Canada's indigenous people) the streets are a flowery visual field of richly needleworked garments and handmade decorative traditions woven throughout the city, from tiled floors to architectural details and murals.

Above and far right: Carpet-like ceramic tile floor artworks are more than decorative. At left, a four-petal flower signifies universal realms; Centre: Merida's impressive El Gran Museo Del Mundo Maya pays tribute to the importance of the handmade floral motif in one of its exhibit salons. Carlyn Yandle photos

Flowers are so sacred and symbolic in the highly complex Maya culture that the Franciscan missionaries, in service of the Catholic Church, appropriated specific flower designs in their battle for their souls, in a cultural war of the roses (and lilies and other healing, spiritually-weighty blooms).

Left: This rare depiction in oil of Fray Francisco de Santa Ana appeals to the Mayan sense of the sacred. At right, typical religious imagry is embellished with rich floral motifs in a visual appropriation of Mayan culture. Carlyn Yandle photos

Coming from the land of yoga pants, I'm fascinated by this idea that an acceptable form of everyday dress is one's own hand-stitched art piece in the form of brightly-coloured cultural patterns of flowers on white cotton or linen tops and tunics, over an underskirt edged in a thick band of white lace.

No made-in-China. No apologies, no fading away.

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Big painting shift at little house on the prairie

9/19/2016

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Day 12 painting: Embroidered details in a scene of a newly "thrashed" hay field.

I've just returned from a month in the big country of southwest Saskatchewan: big skies, big farming operations, big empty days that were all too much at the start of my artist residency at the Wallace Stegner House.

Suddenly agoraphobic, I pulled down all the blinds and paced around that lovely century-old house, wondering what on earth possessed me to throw myself into this imposing patchwork landscape. I am not a landscape painter; that's my dad's bag.

Plus I came by plane and an eight-hour car ride, so even if I did want to paint, I didn't have my usual large stretched canvases and totes of paints. I did bring a few of my usual travel essentials: embroidery hoops, needles and floss — and an old bed sheet. I knew there was just a couple of stores in town, and none would be selling art supplies so I packed a tiny travel set of liquid acrylics, a few brushes and a pad of mixed-media cardstock.

My sketchy plan involved, well, sketching with my father, who has spent some of every summer in this tiny town of Eastend ever since he filled the Stegner House with his landscape paintings 15 years ago.

We were quite a pair: me, not at all comfortable with the whole plein-air tradition, and him, increasingly unfamiliar with his life's work of painting that involved biking into the country to sketch then returning to his basement to paint in the heat of the day. (Actually we were mostly a trio, his wife acting as facilitator for whatever this was, supplying us with water bottles, sunhats, sketch pads and willow charcoal, and generally getting us on the road.)

We circled around this vague idea of mine as we circled around this dead-quiet, struggling little town every morning. But the awkwardness turned to anguish back at my studio as I undertook the tedious pursuit of finding some interest — or even the point — in painting puffy clouds and dun-coloured hills.

A week later and out of sheer frustration at my lack of landscape-painting prowess, I resorted to dropping diluted paint on a taut scrap of bedsheet in an embroidery hoop just to watch it bleed. I threw the first painted scrap away and did another, with a little more intention, then threw that away too. Within a couple of hours I figured out the right water-to-paint ratio to create a slightly controlled bloom with each stroke. A lot of other distracted behaviour (baking apple crisps, walking by the river, venting via text to my artist friends) meant that each additional stroke was added to a dried layer and by the end of the afternoon, a landscape was emerging on a miniature stretched canvas. That one I didn't throw out. But it was still a little hazy. That's when I thought about using my stash of embroidery floss for final line work.

I sat in the cool of the front screened porch that evening and embroidered some more information onto the painting. It was a clumsy first effort but soon I was enjoying the daily practice of biking in the morning with my father, painting something inspired by the ride in the afternoon, then embroidering some details in the evening, inviting others to join me for stitching sessions on the front porch.

I did this every day until I had 12 little paintings, each a progression from the last. I saw them as blocks for a future quilt, which led to a well-attended culminating exhibit, "Scenes from a Quilted Landscape."

But now I'm viewing them as something beyond a quilt and beyond the horizon. I'm calling them Points of Interest: something to build on and build with.

As with all creative pursuits, forcing solutions is futile. My original idea of coaxing my father back into his painting studio by getting him to share some of his process with me was a non-starter. These days he finds everyday joy in the moment, whether that is spotting a hawk while biking the backroads, playing a languid rendition of The Girl from Ipanema on piano in the hot afternoons, or watching the town's many cats on the prowl from the front porch of the Stegner House while his wife and I embroidered the summer evenings away.

I'm not sure if he knew it but he passed on to me the most valuable lesson for painting a scene: You have to actually see it.