Gifting

Covered stones on one of Jude Hill's "Spirit Cloths"

In the storytelling post I touched only briefly on textile artist Jude Hill's work. I've struggled for the last two weeks to put into words how her stitching has inspired me, and I finally realized this week that it was going to take more than one post to capture what her work means to me. With Jude's permission, I've included some quotes from her blog that have helped clarify and extend my own creative process. I hope that they will inspire you as well.

I admire how, stitch by stitch, Jude tells a story through her quilts. She seems to follow a thoughtful but open process that allows each quilt to reveal its own story. The time that she takes for each quilt allows for meanderings and intuitive leaps. "Funny how things come together," Jude writes. "I think it is a combination of intent, mistakes. . . , technical necessities and the evolution of thought during the execution. hand sewing is so slow that the project has time to transform in my head before i reach the end of a seam." (Jude Hill, Spirit Cloth . . . Quilting a Story, February 7, 2007)

I also connected with Jude's layering technique. (See her "layers" post from November 13, 2006 for her note to herself on this aspect of her work.) The layering of meaningful fabrics, applique, and embroidery gives each quilt block a texture, an emotional landscape of sorts. She achieves this layered complexity over countless hours, putting time into her art on a daily basis. (She has devised some innovative techniques so that she can quilt on her daily train commute.) It's inspiring to see how each quilt block gradually takes shape and then eventually gets formed into a complex whole.

Jude seems to approach each quilt as a gift to a particular recipient. As she sews, she is thinking about that person in a truly connected way, considering how to both represent them and communicate with them. She recognizes that she is receiving a gift at the same time that she is creating one. "for me the gift giving process is a centering process," she explains. "i am ever healed by giving a true gift. i consider the ability to appreciate an artists intention as a gift received." (Jude Hill, Spirit Cloth . . . Quilting a Story, November 22, 2006)

These three aspects of Jude's work--her storytelling, her layered approach, and her process of creating a meaningful gift--helped me clarify some of the goals of my own work.

I would like the stories that I write and the pieces that I craft to have a strong narrative element. A narrative, to me, feels like the necessary current that carries a reader or viewer along through a piece of fiction or art. While it carries them along, though, they also have to stop and admire the details. Although I love the sleek lines of modern design and art, I also appreciate work that has exuberant details that fill the entire frame and that cry out to be examined in depth. There is so much emotion to capture in this way, and these kinds of work force us to slow down and really LOOK. Finally, I agree with Jude's notion that making a gift provides a therapeutic sense of connection with one's own creative process and with the gift's receiver.

I read Jude's story of the making of the "Listen to the River" quilt (this post is a good place to start reading the story) just as I was working on a gift for a friend. In a future post I'd like to share how Jude's story pushed the piece in a new direction. It involves navigating the tricky terrain between inspiration and imitation and expressing one's own voice while still representing the gift's receiver.

Have a great weekend!

EarthStone