14" x 14"
Juried exhibit: 1998 Common Thread, Oakville Arts Council
Published: 2000 Weaving New Rhythms 2000

The story of "Aha!"

Sometimes I try to resolve life by stitching my solutions onto canvas. Knowing that I experience life as black or white, good or bad, right or wrong, I wanted to become aware of the existence of "gray areas". That means that things can be both yes and no at the same time, they can be both bad and good, they can be both right and wrong. In other words, when things are "both/and" then one can respond to events with more tolerance and less agitation by looking at all aspects and seeing reality. How could I express this on canvas when it's even difficult to express in writing?

I had become enamored of experimenting with repetitive designs and I especially liked to do small square designs where each one felt like doodling. Searching my mind for a way to explain the gray areas, I had an "Aha!".

Aha! being a "bright idea," is represented by the center square stitched in very bright white metallic. Other white squares radiate diagonally above and below and they also have some white metallic glitter. White metallic, the only metallic in the piece, indicates the bright light is "on". Another "aha" was the idea of creating the piece in concentric borders of squares colored to follow the color spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Each square was to incorporate gray, black and the designated color of the spectrum as described above. The left side radiates from red at the center and the right side radiates the opposite way, from violet at the center to signify creating emotional balance. The outer three borders confine the light within the piece and radiate from whites to grays to black meaning, lights "off".

All designs are 12 threads square and none of the designs has been used more than once. My source for designs was needlepoint, embroidery and design reference books and just doodling with threaded needle.

Aha! was accepted at a juried Fiber Show in Oakville and published in Weaving New Rhythms, 2000.

Aha! was great fun to design and stitch. The emotional part is more complex and I'm still working at finding the gray areas.

>Click within the stitchings to see the detail images: