Slow stitch requires slow time.  So often all the tasks of daily living and work soak up an urgency and I bring that urgency to the studio.  The stitch work is different then.

As I slowly put together a new field piece, I remember the first field that I loved. My “Granpie” Silvis’ vegetable garden covered an acre (or so it seems to me) on his land that fronted Sugar Lake in Minnesota. 

I love the window seat on an airplane so that I can look at the patterns made on the earth below.  Google Earth makes window seats available all the time and around the world. 

It happened three years ago.   

I fought it at first.  I knew clay.  I worked with clay in my art studio for more than 30 years.  I studied glazes and firing processes and different clay bodies and knew what I needed to do to achieve the effects I wanted.

Some Native Americans talk about it taking three generations to get used to "new ground" and to feel like you've sprung from that ground.  That may be true.  I sprung up from Minnesota ground and her corn fields must be buried deep in my psyche as the pattern of fields so often seep into my work.

I am back to making small pieces and loving it.  Periodically, I think I need to start making larger pieces.  “They are bigger and better and more important,” my mind says.

The best artists stop me in my tracks. Time stops. The first time I had that experience was at a Van Gogh show in New York.  It's a state beyond words. It is like a mystical experience.