Telling Stories

 This is my Aunt Mary, my maternal grandmother's sister. Her name was Malinda...

so why Mary I am not sure.

She & my grandmother are the gals I think I got my creative genes from. They were masterful with knitting, crocheting, sewing.  My grandmother made all my clothes for the first few years I was in elementary school. Of course as time went on I didn't want home made clothes. Young people, they just don't appreciate things like that.  They taught me some of those skills when I was very young.  No wonder I'm a fiber geek.

Both of these women always wore a whole wrist full of bracelets. I am fortunate to have inherited the whole lot. They are on her wrist in the picture above though hard to see.

There are 37 bracelets total. I wear 7 or so together often. They wore every one they had. I'm not that flashy. No two are alike. When my wrist moves the sound they make takes me right back to being a 5 year old in one of their homes. It's the sound of these two women moving through life.

As I thought about the story behind this card I made awhile back, and the larger story it holds, it occurred to me that all of our art tells a story of some kind.  Without the back story the art would never come to be.

When I sat down to write this post this was waiting for me in my email inbox:

"Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it". Hannah Arendt

 It's beginning of a post by Fiona Dempster an artist I've admired from afar for some time. Check out her artist books, lettering pieces & her new blog. Here are Fiona's words on this quote. She goes on to say more all of which struck a cord with me.

"The subtlety in this is divine.  I think more and more I am coming to enjoy the things that are gently revealed, rather than those that are thrust upon me."

What little sounds or smells take you back & define how you came to be the person you are?