Monday, June 18, 2007

Yesterday was a BIG day


and I didn't realize it until today. Typical me...too wrapped up in what I am doing in the moment to think about it's context. Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the day in which I made my first book. I think the latest book, the one from Arrowmont well expresses how far I have come in the last five years as a person and as an artist. Five years ago I felt so impatient with myself. I couldn't make enough or learn enough fast enough. I always thought I should be farther along in my work. But I know now that you just have to go thru what you have to go thru and it takes as long as it takes.


These are my favorite two pages in the new book. I built the whole book around these two pieces. The book is called "Hanging on by a Thread" and represents the most common theme in my work: Dualities. In this instance, how great passion can coexist with great unhappiness. Life isn't all this or all that. It's some of lots of things. This is just the truth. Frida is a good representation of this. I feel connected to her - I feel sorry for her, for the heartbreak of her life, not being able to have children. I was in a terrible accident, too, when I was a young woman. Frida did not lose consciousness when she had her terrible accident and neither did I. She was both complicated and simple, big and small, heartbreaker and heartbroken.
Something has happened to me in the last ten days - something wonderful that I cannot explain. How can one little birthday change your whole brain? Why is 40 so much better than 39? I keep asking my husband what in the world has happened to me. He notices the change, but can't explain it either. It is only good and I have never been happier.

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