Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Looking Forward

Sometimes I feel wrong sitting in my comfy warm studio weaving away with beautiful yarns on my wonderful looms while much of the world is in chaos (or worse). How can I justify weaving ?

To explore my feelings, I wrote a list of my wishes for the world and my wishes for myself. Each item on my list I imagined as a color. Then I decided to turn these color lists into collages. (4" x 5") The collage above represents my wishes for myself, and the one below is my wishes for the world.

Then I made color copies of the collages. I cut the wishes for the world copy into vertical strips and the wishes for myself copy into horizontal strips and wove the wishes for self into the wishes for the world.

I taped the tops of the vertical strips to a piece of graph paper, so I could maneuver the strips easily.

This symbolic gesture has helped me to feel that in some small way by working towards my personal goals I am also working towards those things I wish for the world.

Happy New Year!

4 comments:

Leigh said...

What a great idea, Bonnie. May you have a proserous and personally peaceful (peace spreads one by one!) new year!

Lynn said...

Yes, it is hard indeed to sit in peace at one's loom or wheel or with the knitting needles, when all hell is breaking loose in the world. It's even harder to integrate one's peaceful pursuits with striving to bring peace to the whole world. I appreciate a great deal your symbolic weaving-together of your wishes for yourself and the world - thank you!

Peg in South Carolina said...

How creative! As for world peace, that I cannot influence. But I can influence the bringing of peace to this little patch I call home.

Kathleen said...

Happy New Year!

I can really relate to what you have expressed, the feeling that comes from time to time, of needing to justify the life of the artist. I really admire how you took those feelings and turned them into action, finding a way to visually symbolize them so beautifully.