Creative Therapy

July 12, 2023

I haven’t felt the stirring of creativity for my coiled basketry in my mind for over a year. One of them has been staring at me for longer than that…begging for my attention! Now I’m looking at it again. It is the ‘Sister Piece’ to another beautiful creation I entitled, ‘Orange Bright’, created in 2020. These 2 pieces are my first attempt with using industrial wire, a material which adds another level of difficulty to the process of coiling, and I welcome the added challenge. I began work on ‘Sister Piece’ in 2021 during the Covid pandemic and didn’t like the way it was taking shape, so I stopped working on it. My focus never returned to it, because I gave all my focus to Al, and to my self-care. I will soon begin removing the threads from ‘Sister Piece’ so that I can reroute its design into a different shape. And as I remove each stitch to begin reshaping it, I’ll think of the days I sat talking and laughing with Al when I first started visualizing and working on it, and it will become something beautiful from that thought…Proof that grief can interrupt the creative process, but Creativity can help to stabilize us when we are staggering on the path of grief. And I am so very thankful for Creativity.

Creating 'Orange Bright' - 2020

'Orange Bright' - 2020

July 17, 2023

Today I began unraveling the threads of ‘Sister Piece’ so that I can reshape it into a new form…my first active step back into the creativity of coiled basketry. It feels good…like unraveling grief. Each thread that I remove represents Forward Movement.

Unraveling 'Sister Piece'

Removing Threads from 'Sister Piece'