I feel like I’m finally getting somewhere with new work. I’ve been struggling away since the kids went back to school mostly because I’ve had too many ideas. But now I’ve got a deadline coming up at the end of October (I’m planning on entering Fiber Philadelphia 2012) and so it’s time to focus one idea and let the others percolate for now.

I spent a lot of time looking at my photos from our trip to the Southwest last Spring. While I was there I was drawn to images of cracks and splits in the Earth. I have many photos of these. Some are views of the sky from a slot canyon, some are fissures where boulders cracked and split, and some are of the trail curving away and disappearing around a bend. My favorite is a photo of a boulder split by a tree root. I imagine a small rootlet finding purchase in the stone and, over eons, growing until it splits the stone asunder.

So I’m working with the image of forms that are split. Whether they are boulders split by a root, a canyon, a shift in geography, or a path curving around the bend will be up to the viewer.

It took me a while to draw something that felt different, yet still related, to the work I’ve been doing with my recent series, the Seedpods, Blades and Cotyledons. My process is also a little different with this body of work. I spent more time sketching at a small size requiring much less time reworking at full size. The paper patterns have come together quickly because of this prep work.

I’m also starting with the patterns before I move to fabric. I have some new fabrics that I dyed (see the last few blog posts) but I’m going to try to keep the value light in these pieces. My plan is to emphasize the form and the stitching with these pieces and not get seduced by the color and texture of the cloth. Make a body of work where the pieces relate to each other but don’t compete. Simplify.

Yeah, we’ll see how that goes!