Three Deep

I placed my Deep Pool of Thought over a Nest of Days so I might Reconsider Freedom.

Gee, that's a mouthful, isn't it?

A Deeper Cloth configuration.

From the side, Three cloths deep, but many more moments...

The sense of floating connection

Gosh I like it here, even the idea of the deep pool of thought becoming again invisible.

It became a Medicine wheel Basket.  In my mind.  Not a shield but a deep pool of holding some sort of personal order.  And acceptance.  Of what might be but maybe never will be.  And I can rest in that, the imagined.  The form that arises if only for a moment.  In perspective, how long does anything last anyway?

39 comments

  1. Sometimes I find I can’t focus on your words because your visual representation is too strong – in the top piece it’s amazing. You have such strong visualization skills to be able to know what to add (or not add). The details draw me in – all those little dots, the circles, the texture of the quilting and the small amount of colour making up the outside of the circle is perfect (and fringe). I often wonder how you make the decisions about what to add.

    • jude

      I add, using my own picture language, to try to complete the statement. This in itself, creates a from that might simply stand on its own.

  2. Mmm…invisible? I feel like the sheerness allows me to still see it or perhaps I am imaging it, know it is still there. I spent a very long time reading of the Native American medicine wheel last night and here you are today with your medicine ‘basket’. Wonderful. I like the photo – side view, seeing all of those layers! You’ve reminded me of “the rule of three” in storytelling.

  3. vickiseastrom

    “One day I will get lost in layers” sounds like a place worth getting lost in. Your ‘Three Layers Deep’ took me to a memory of a line of lyrics from James Taylor, “my ducks are all in a row”, a saying that goes even further back. I like thinking about these intersections that seem in opposition: getting lost and getting your ducks in a row. Feels like a way to weave a day. Thank you, Jude.

  4. June-Etta Chenard

    So grateful for your ongoing presence in my life through your writing and your making. Always, the layers of beauty, love and wisdom rising … again, and yet again

  5. Dakotah

    I was considering my deep pool yesterday, how I might work with her. Now yours makes an appearance. The layers are very inspirational.

  6. You have me considering how when you find your personal symbols and work with them again and again, everything–absolutely everything–works together.

  7. Sharon Koch

    those reddish orange loose threads ‘n fringe… the way the shapes weave in and out of each other… the tenderness of the stitches… all of it makes my heart dance. playing today with cloth ‘n thread, considering what you’ve shared. x

  8. That IS a mouthful. If I deliberately placed a Deep Pool of Thought over my Nest of Days, how might my view of freedom shift? As Joanne said, which layers might rise to the top to be reconsidered?

  9. (((Jude))) “how long does anything last?” This is something I think a lot about when working with any given medium, glass & ceramics can last for thousands of years, gold & diamonds too but I don’t use them as there is too much blood mixed into their histories. If carefully looked after cloth can last & be useful for centuries, thinking of how lace was more precious than gold a few centuries ago and how the lace would be detached & reused over and over by the next generations or how the Japanese would layer their old work jackets with boro mending, making them both useful & honouring time with beauty influencing so many in the textile world of today. On the other hand when I was attending a workshop at Pilchuck Glass School one of the resident artists said “The fun is in the process the outcome is just debris.” Always good to think about how & why we use our materials in a world that is getting cluttered with so much stuff in it already! Perhaps all the plastics of today will become useful materials in a thousand years

    • Rita Hollingsworth

      Well said…..process IS where it’s at, in any media. Mine was theatre, and now art quilting…ah…process…the mind at work.

    • jude

      It’ all about how we look at it, especially time.
      I am thinking compost at the moment, all these years, selves, the garden is almost ready…

  10. janstevenson

    the beauty of the way you work. . .the way, I think, a lot of us might work, is this ability to layer different things on any day. depending on what the day feels like. not like choosing outfits and accessorizing (!). . .more like the inner/outer landscape. . .what might be needed as we walk through this one. It’s not so much that the work (or the quilt) is never done. . .more that the combinations of forms holds so much potential and possibility. like a slide show taking place in the clouds. only not today ’cause it’s raining here!

  11. Joanne in Maine

    It’s how memory is saved I think. Layered. One on top of the others. And when we remember it layers move to the top again? Each time you post…I have more to consider. I haven’t made cloth in a long time….but I feel the quickening of it. Just off to the side, getting ready to begin.

  12. What I continually love about your work is the deep process you go through as you make it. I love the contemplative, slow approach. Thank you Jude, for all the years of inspiration!

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