Lately, I have been eagerly consuming everything I can read, watch, and listen to by collage quilt artist Susan Carlson. If her work is unknown to you check out her website or tutorials on You Tube.  In one of her throwback posts recently, she wrote how she uses passages from bird by bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott as inspiration to keep working through the difficult parts of the artistic process.

Anne Lamott and bird by bird.  Really?  Back in the days when I was sure I would go on to be a (insert positive adjective here) poet, Anne Lamott was one of my idols and her novel, bird by bird still sits on my bookshelf. Well, this book now sits on my side table where I am reading it once again.

So right away I came across a passage where I realized I could insert the word quilt any place Ms. Lamott uses the word writing.  In this passage, she is explaining how she thought her world, and her sense of worth, would miraculously change once she published her first book.  It didn’t.  In fact, nothing changed, even after her fifth publication.

So I admit, I have some lofty daydreams of being viewed in my quilt community as an artist. I’m convinced this moniker will change my life. Ah, but the daunting, many times fearful, intimidating challenge and struggle for creativity I face in this pursuit…

Lamott says in the Introduction of bird by bird,

“…publication is not all it is cracked up to be.  But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises.  That thing you had to force yourself to do – the actual act of writing – turns out to be the best part…the act of writing turns out to be its own reward” (xxvi).

Re-read this passage and insert whatever dreaded process of quilting impedes your progress and you too will begin to understand why Susan Carlson references this novel as a must-read for any artist.

As someone who is still grappling with creating Modern-style quilts, I appreciate the passage Lamott used in her novel that Carlson now uses in her workshops that reads:

E.L. Doctorow once said that, “writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything that you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you” (18).

Doesn’t Doctorow speak to the modern slant of taking traditional patterns and techniques and reinterpreting them into something different or new?  Isn’t that improv?  Isn’t this the thought to hold when you are creating negative space or using nothing but solid colors or color combinations outside your comfort zone?

So I will continue to re-read bird by bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life and remind myself to “get quiet and try to hear that still small voice inside” (110) and see my design wall as my friend calling me to play.

Create something!

Gayle