Teacher for the Night

I completed my 'Trust the Process' stitched collage today, adding a key to the center, sewn on with gold embroidery thread, and stitching around the outer edge. I won't post a close-up, since it contains magazine images and there may be copyright issues. I found using the design reference sheet that I made to prompt me to translate words into visual language, was a useful exercise prior to intuitively scanning magazines for images. I've depicted stages of the creative process in a circle, with two figures -a female in white free falling trustfully and a male in black with a painted mime face and expression of alarm - opposite each other on the circle, with a joyful woman blowing an elongated stream of bubbles with a giant bubble holder, arcing back and forth between the two figures - holding the tension of these opposites. I've also included the skeleton of a fish to mark the death or completion in a process, which gives way to a bear underwater, or the start of something new 'bubbling' in the unconscious. There is also an ancient pregnant stone figure, kissing lovers stretched out in the sand, three riders on horseback 'running with it', a fabric 'world' or bubble held by gravity and a backdrop of a blue star-filled sky with tall thin dark trees reaching to touch them. I took a photograph of the collage and printed it onto silk, but I chose not to use that version because the colour is much less vibrant. Members of my art quilt group also did this exercise, but not all the collages are completed yet, so I haven't taken a photo of them together as our 'collective artist wisdom quilt'. I have also signed up for a collage design class with Johnathon Talbot later this fall.