Naming today’s jpg files for purposes of posting them here, I used the words “close” and “full” to indicate cropping. These files — “Heart Close” (above) and “Heart Full” (below) — put me to wonder, What is it to have another’s Heart Close? Or even, one’s own Heart Close? And, what is it to have a Full Heart?
Here is the “Heart Full” — although in this case, it is not quite the entire quilt. In this Heart Series of quilts, all of which feature a single heart perched on top of a busy mosaic, I have always been working with the notion that the fullness of our experiences add up to a kind of perfection. And that this perfection normally eludes us, but in fact, is always there. As a designer, it is easy to know that the dark-hued swatches of fabric are as responsible for the overall design (and dare I say, beauty?), as the lighter patches… As a human being, it is less easy to know that those experiences which wounded us the most, are just as responsible for the overall design (and dare I say, perfection?) of our lives as the sunnier experiences.
As David Whyte states in his poem “The Faces at Braga”, “If only we knew/as the carver knew, how the flaws/in the wood led his searching chisel to the very core,/we would smile too/and not need faces immobilized/by fear and the weight of things undone.” (From “Where Many Rivers Meet”).
This smaller quilt includes the word “Darkness”
and, in the lower right corner, “SONG”. These are not contradictions.
How does one become, again to quote David Whyte’s poem, “wedded to our essence”?
such that the details transpiring in our tiny houses, do not impede the fullness of our hearts?
