Things are getting more and more eccentric at Casa de la Swain. Changing styles in my textile work, falling in love again with painting and photography...and then there is the ever illusive quest for continuing creativity through working with Eric Maisel. Still on the road teaching, posting now at the Ragged Cloth Cafe and taking the pledge to keep handmaiden up to date.

Thursday, August 31, 2006

Time...how long did it take you?

Today's news is filled with the research scientist/doctor whose work has produced a way to intoduce a virus into white cells that makes them recognize certain types of cancer and attack it. He has a team, of course, but it was his creative, critical thinking that started the project. They have only worked on limited test subjects, fifteen if I remember correctly. Only two of the patients responded successfully to the treatment but that was two years ago and they have greatly refined the process. The future is looking bright for results in a variety of cancers. The doctor is the most optomistic man I have ever seen.

To the point, John King on CNN asked how long he had been working on this research? A familiar question, no? His reply was thirty years.....basically his entire career. What an amazing human being...we are blessed that he is on the planet.

I vow to never complain about how long anything is taking. I vow to spend as much time on each piece as it needs and not short change it just for a show or a sale. And from now on I will delight in being asked "How long did it take you to make that quilt?" Although at my advanced age, remembering might be a problem.

Excellent answers ladies to the why do you make art....I think we are all coming from the same inner place just expressing it in different ways, both verbal and visual.

Tonight I am going to pop a cork in honor of time and all the magic it can produce.

2 comments:

Melody Johnson said...

This was exactly the post I needed to read this morning. Thank you so much for putting artmaking in perspective.

Deb Lacativa said...

While you are at it, give some consideration for time passing with nothing happening. I dug up some stuff that had been lying dormant in the studio and, although I had wrought no changes on it, the stuff had grown a fuzz of new promise. Fuzz on my eyeballs? My brain? Both no doubt. CHeers!