Returning to Creative Life After a Long Hiatus

 Navigating thru some of life's rocky punches resulted in an unanticipated lengthy absence from the studio. A total break kind of absence, and again, unplanned. It has been a year since anything creative has been able to happen, and now, at last, I'm able to find some studio time with which I stick out a few toes, tentatively, in the studio, as I would do if I were testing out the temperature of a pool before a deep dive. I worry that I have forgotten how to be an artist! Will creative juices once again percolate, after so long not exercising this muscle? Fortunately for me I have a project begun a couple of years ago which I can easily pick up again. Easy because all the thinking has been done; and all I have to do is the labor to realize it.  And easy because the technique for this project I already know-Bojagi. There are miles of enclosed seams to create with also endless measuring and trimming to do. I feel fortunate to have a relentlessly repetitive project like this with which to ease my way back into a studio head.  It's very organizing.  And indeed, as I work and come across small anomalies in the process, suddenly an idea for something to investigate presents itself.  That kind of mental jumping is what I feared I might have lost!

Here I am rolling a mixture of glue and water onto cheesecloth in order to stiffen it.  This enables the cheesecloth to hold its cut shape and go thru the sewing machine minus the soft drape of the cloth.

Measuring out and cutting the cheesecloth.

Yay!  It grows!

The panel is coming close to being done. The next step will be to create the image that will go on the top of this backdrop. I have a few ideas how to proceed, and it is this succeeding step that will be more demanding on me to be creative. Some serious experimenting and generation of small samples will be next in order to figure out how to proceed. Wish me luck, but I am feeling more confident now! Re-entry from a place of familiarity after an absence is a way that has been most helpful to me.