A New Year…New Work.
I begin this ‘musing’ with a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye. It resonates on many levels, and I wanted to share it with you hoping it might offer a moment of inner-peace, a tear and heart-opening as it did for me…
Kindness
Naomi Shihab Nye 1952 –
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
First Snow. Taos, NM
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I’m truly grateful to accept the invitaion to show my work at a private gallery in Santa Fe. “Two by One” will open May 5. More information coming soon…
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My beautiful ‘tree house’ studio is open for in-person multi-day workshop retreats. I’ve designed residential and non-residential retreats featuring fiber art sculpture and papermaking.
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I continue to offer workshops online as well. There are one and two day classes in papermaking with flax fiber and sculpture.
Fiber Art Workshops
