Exciting beginnings in the garden
new growth in the garden
In the spring I spend hours in the garden cutting back, pruning, mulching, staking and preparing the beds for spring growth. I still experience wonderment as fragile, bright green shoots sprout from the earth into the light, then very quickly grow strong, sturdy, and full. Every year there are perennials that have reliably grow back multiple years, over and over only to die and disappear from my garden forever. Sometimes I understand the reasons why, other times I do not.
I think about the cycles of dormancy and germination the slow journey happening beneath ground to which I am unaware. Unable to see, I accept this. I have no issue trusting that shoots will emerge, that there will be new life, that there are always surprises in what thrives and what does not. I have long-term patience and do not allow failed experiments or disappointments to get in the way of my utter joy in the process. The failed experiments allow room for new plants and garden design. I recognize and acknowledge the cycles and processes necessary for my garden to bloom.
Not so much with my art process!!
Discomfit in the studio
materials finding their way into new artworks
The growth cycles of gardening and making art are incredibly similar. I need to extend the same grace I experience in the garden to my art explorations. When I am deep into a project, I create with clarity and decisiveness. This is the easiest phase of the creation cycle for me. But as in gardening, there are also periods of dormancy, uncertainty, germination, trial and error. Despite practicing as a full-time artist for near 30 years, these other phases still plague and discomfit me. I experience great unease and uncertainty when I am between series. I fear that my creative well has run dry, that new ideas and passions will not stir nor come to fruition.
“This is the point when I most need to trust the process. It is also when I feel restless, uncertain, impatient and frustrated. ”
That is where I find myself now. I am finishing up several earlier series. I am in the exploration and germination phase of finding my way into and creating a new body of work. This is the point when I most need to trust the process. It is also when I feel restless, uncertain, impatient and frustrated.
Tender explorations
a patchwork of teabags
I have collected waste from a beach shore and experiment with ways to use it. I dye cotton face pads and explore ways to include them in a dimensional sculpture. I am stitching together hand-dyed tea bag skins into a large “quilt” without a firm sense of how large or long it will be; how it will be presented, all that it references. I am impatient to get to the “knowing” before I have done the work of exploring, sifting and steeping, thinking and interrogation. I need to learn to trust the cycles in my art practice, just as I have learned to trust the cycles in my garden. Practice patience with both myself and the work. Own the knowledge that my hands know the way before my head catches up; that my thoughts and experiences, what I see, feel and want to say will slowly start to make themselves known.
In the garden, tender green shoots are fragile and need to be initially protected. So do my tentative explorations into materials, concepts, and the development of new ideas. I need to be as protective and supportive of these, withhold judgment and allow myself to revel and have confidence in each creative phase. It is a difficult lesson to learn. But I am working on it!
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