Sewing Seeds (no pun intended)

First, I cannot thank you all enough for your encouragement and compassion from your comments and private emails. Everyone meant another break through in the thin ice I was skating. If you are still out there reading this from time to time, here's the latest update.
First, it was total exhaustation that started everything. Followed by catching a bug from one of my darling granddaughters that laid me out for almost two weeks. But there was more, as always, internal stuff to dig through that was brought on by the period of not being able to work.
Since all y'all are used to my self examinations none of the following will be a surprise to you, but some of them actually surprised me.
Let's just tick them off in no particular order:
What's the point? Is my art going to change the world? Rather I came to the conclusion that it is meant to change me. However, again because it is my career as well as my passion, I found myself trying to create to please others or to get into shows. To follow the marketing agenda that permeates the business side of our art. Major philosophical crisis to follow.
I don't want to work toward any other artist style. While I want to be influenced by everything around me, don't think you can help from being effected by anything to which you are exposed. I see too many textile artist doing derivative work. How can I keep this at bay? Really had to think through this one. Again, as if I haven't regurgitated this a bazillion times: art is meant to be evocative. What it evokes in the viewer is out of my hands.....all I can do is make the work.
Then there is the marketing: this where many art quilters (not all, this is a broad generalization) and I break ranks. The idea that the marketing of your work is far more important than the work itself is a neurosis that is effecting our entire society. Huge manufacturers spend billions of dollars on marketing believing that they can sell anyone a product, whether that product is of quality or not. I try to swollow this pill but it is a bitter medicine. For me it must always be about the work, marketing be damned. I have no desire to pull the wool over anyone's eyes just to get sold.
I didn't become an artist to be rich and famous....and luckily, that hasn't happend. Imagine that? I became an artist as a meditation, a place of solitude, a place of freedom where I did not have to follow anyone and their restrictions. That was the major reason behind my leaving the theatre...egotistial artistic directors, equally fragile actors and the whole concept of team creativity sent me running. I wanted to give make meaning. Right, right, that sounds pretentious but it is coming from a place within not from some external need for attention. Still wrestling with this question but coming out the other side. To be honest, at this moment it would not bother me if no one ever saw my work but me...but I know that is also folly.
To draw this all to a conclusion, I am back in the studio but I am also taking photographs, exploring more sculptural work, and still painting from time to time. I know as artist we are all subject to these periods of highs and lows, plateaus and peaks. Guess this one just hit me in a weakened state from being physically vulnerable.
Will I always be a quiltmaker? Probably....is it all I am going to do...no from time to time I will stray from fabric. Will I continue to seek and scramble to make everyone see what I do? Sorry but that answer is no. I want to move to a place that is quiet and internal...dancing occasionally with the world but stepping lightly so as not to get caught in the mud.
We all know it is a lot easier to talk about art than it is to do it. There are several online venues that discuss art continually but that is all a head trip for me. Certainly knowledge of art history or design principles is vital to an artist but it leads to more thinking than doing. Them than can does; them that can't talks about it. I include myself in both groups....loving to talk and loving to do.
If you have made it this far, know that I am now physically well...a big plus...being ill was a real bummer for this old lady. I am more spiritually open and waiting for whatever is to come.....and creatively raring and ready to go but on my own schedule, at my own pace, not agonizing over the fact that no work was done today.
The flip side I am putting myself out there at market and festival, both teaching and having a booth at both. I know the work needs to be seen but don't want to work to a formula where every piece is made by rote. I am not speaking of working in series which has changed my life. I am speaking of the dolldrums we get into when you just start cranking out work thoughtlessly.
Thank you all for being there while I was traveling this roaad...destination still unknown but at least now back with a "ticket to ride."