Art Every Day

In the absence of a group of creative friends or creative groups to work with, it is one way to stay committed to daily art. I am committed to Art Every Day! Picasso once said ‘inspiration exists but it has to find you working’. 

Day 1. New Embroidery Stitches

Insertion stitches using string and tapestry yarn

I am in bed with a virus, but it didn’t stop me being creative. I got a small box and filled it with threads, needles, pieces of fabric, scissors and a book of how to embroidery stitches. My idea was to learn new stitches and then use them in a creative way, making little vignettes for my sketchbook. I want to record any problems and successes with the threads, the technique or the surface to be worked on.

Day 2. Om Shakti

With this virus keeping me in bed, I started reading two books that have inspired today’s work.  ‘ Three Dimensional Embroidery’ by Janet Edmonson and ‘The Divine Feminine Fire’  by Teri Degla.

This reading binge inspired me to create Om Shakti, a small devotional vessel, from coils of torn fabric, wrapped around wire & embellished with beads and stitch.

Day 3. Devotional Beads

In Teri Degler’s book, she writes about the incredible life force or creative spirit operating through us, and how to tap into this source more often.

I practiced the breathing meditation in Chapter 1. It is something that I do most mornings since starting yoga 40 years ago! It reminded me how good it feels to be grounded and at least at the start of the day to feel at one with the world. I am thinking that devotion could be an adjective and a noun. It could be a feeling, an activity or an object that inspires devotion.

Today I am thinking beads. My brother brought me some natural seed-pod beads from Hawaii that are used in meditation, I also have a natural seed-pod necklace that I brought back from a trip to the Amazon. It was possibly made for the tourist market, but it has large pods that make it look like a meditation device.

In Buddhist and Hindu meditations they are known as Malas and contain a total of 108 beads.  Meditation beads have been used for centuries and are central to many religions. I think of the Catholic rosary beads and the Greek  komboli beads (or worry beads) with their one more than a multiple of 4 system – so 5, 9, 17, 21,25 etc.

The English word for bead derives from the Old English noun bede which means a prayer. Aw, I am liking where this is taking me, and I have hardly begun.

Day 4: Embellishing Devotional Beads

Embellished Fabric Bead

Yesterday I made 19 fabric beads,  they are wrapped in thread and need to be embellished with glass beads, embroidery stitches  and other ideas I have yet to fathom. I also need a solid idea for their creation. They are not for wearing, they are not like Greek-worry-beads that make a clacking noise, and they are too fragile to be used as a meditation device and handled constantly.

The embellishment process will take time, as glass beads are so tiny and the work painstaking… perhaps a couple a day. It is interesting to be working with small objects due to being confined to my bed, with a narrow range of materials. All the time I am working on Devotional Beads, in the back of my mind is how these basic design ideas can be enlarged & what to do with them.

Day 5: Lady Godiva’s Bequest

Godivas bequest

I feel better & I am studying the history of beads. The earliest prayer beads were discovered in India and associated with the God Shiva about 1700 BC. A worshiper of Shiva would use a rosary or mala of 32 beads and a worshiper of  Vishnu used 108 beads.

This concept of counting beads whilst saying prayers or repeating the name of a god  eventually spread throughout the Buddhist world to China and Japan and eventually to Europe and later used in Christian worship.

Today’s prompt is from the knowledge that Lady Godiva, in 11th century England  endowed the monastery at Coventry with all her treasure, including her circlet of gems which she used for her prayers.

She is better known for riding through the town of Coventry naked upon a horse. Her husband, the Lord of the Manor, had imposed heavy taxes upon the population, and she had repeatedly asked for the taxes to be lowered. He offered to lower the taxes if she rode naked through the town.She took him at his word.

Day 6: Embellishing Devotional Beads.

I have been invited to a small group of avid stitchers, every Wednesday. I took along my fabric beads to see if anyone had any suggestions. I am not sure these small beads are working the way I would like.

Chris, the organiser of the group, suggested making tube shapes of fabric around a tube of wadding, so that I have a central hole for threading them together. That is a good idea, which I will try,  but I would like to continue with the spherical shapes too. So I have made a bigger sample, twice the size of the first, with a ball of wadding in the centre. This time I used a self coloured thread to tie them, instead of a complimentary colour. Then I decorated them with sequins.