What Makes You DO?

While we were looking through some of the Art Cloth pieces slowly and meticulously, the customer who happened to be at the counter in the Gallery fingered some of the threads that I had sewn in one of my “ocean series” pieces. Delivering some of my work to the gallery for the upcoming show I was asked “what made you think of that?” She said “you just sewed this thread without sewing anything together? And why did you put these fiber-thingys on here?” “Yeah…,” I said a bit hesitantly –“I guess I was thinking that I LIKED sewing for texture’s sake,  and the layers of artist fiber paper, well …it seemed fun at the time, …maybe ?” Admittedly I was a bit annoyed to be asked why do you do what you do, why did you make the decisions you did? Maybe it was the tone –one of questioning, the question posed by someone who probably really didn’t “get it” and it made me defensive –or worse, questioned my rare moment of my unleashed, creative expression. One that I was totally fine with. I’ve been thinking about this all week. Trust me, it wasn’t a matter of me feeling sorry for myself , or that self-destructive artist behavior of creepy, self doubt. I’m pretty confident and have accepted the fact (finally), at age 50, I am an artist and always will be.  I was thinking more about the concept of CREATING some of my best work when I don’t  THINK about my art making AT ALL –when I just DO.  These feelings also confirmed that artists need to put a bit of themselves in work that matters to them and be reminded that we need to wear our bravery vests when putting our work out into the public –I’m working on adding long sleeves to MY bravery vest.