A Different Perspective

After posting my recent BOM square, a member in the group suggested turning the bottom corner. I had not seen how the placement was just a little off. It didn't take much to go back with a ripper and piece that part the other way.

I could have left it and a non-quilter would not have seen it. I didn't see it. With the dark blocks lined up, they make the 'holding bar' for the ladder.

I know I have blogged about the ripper tool before, but it is really an essential item and one can easily rip all the way until the quilt is basted, changing one's mind and changing the outlook of the quilt. This switch-out took me maybe 15 minutes to do and its such a subtle change that it was hardly worth mentioning.

Hardly worth it, except that it demonstrates the difference of our perspectives, the way we see a thing.

And the act of making a re-do is so precious. Many times there is no chance of making something right as easily as this was. The thing about these mystery quilts, or any art a person makes, is that its deeply personal and dependent upon the artist's vision and expression.

For instance, I am not a fan of Jackson Pollack's work, even though those silly little tests you take to see who you are most like showed that I was a Jackson Pollack kinda person. When I first looked at his drip painting or Abstract Art, it seemed like some toddler created it. There was too much chaos and lack of identifiable form. It was hard to sit with it without pushing something inside me out. It was action painting. I tried to make sense of what I was seeing and that was not the goal.

Evaluations of his work say that he pushed the boundaries of what the medium of paint is capable of expressing. He explored innovative ways of creating art using liquid paint, and was less concerned for tradition.  He used to say he got "in his painting". When I gave into actually seeing the work, looking at it, suddenly I felt a lot of emotion within the canvas. Maybe I am like that. Less concerned with tradition. It has been said that his work was an unorganized explosion of random energy. Maybe this is me inside too.

One thing that seemed to mark him was the ridicule he experienced from traditional painters who could not see this new art form as valid. This piece is called "Moon Woman Cuts the Circle". I tried to like this one. Here it seems like he created the image of the fearful goddess, the fateful godmother, the poisonous nurse of all the moonstruck in the world. Its too much for me to take in and get. Its a different perspective that makes me step out of what I know and what I believe to be good.    http://dhowell.com/the-favours-of-the-moon-by-charles-baudelaire/  

While I want to quilt beyond convention and tradition, to stay within the groups I have joined, means I need to quilt the way our mother's mother's mothers quilted. Whenever I get to the point where I can step outside those boundaries and have a new perspective, then...well, I will.