"In the Garden of Shadow and Light" (22.5”W x 30.5”T) was inspired by a vision that I had during a breath work session in which we were asked to face our inner demons. During that time, I saw the ugly, dark side of me as an unwanted little five year old girl holding out her arms to be picked up. I realized that I had been neglecting a part of me for years, and had been trying to deny that she even existed. Of course, those aspects of me had been trying to come out in other ways, even though unconsciously. I dropped to me knees and hugged the little girl version of me, crying that I was sorry that I had never loved her.
When I went to create the art quilt to represent this very important vision that I had seen, I used streams of darkness instead of beams of light. These sheer, dark ribbons, coming from the upper left, appear as fingers going into the beautiful garden below.
The brighter areas in between the dark ribbons, which in this case, are the “negative” spaces in this composition, look almost as fingers of light, reaching up from the lower right to join hands with the dark ones. This was an unconscious result of the composition as I was in a state of connection with the piece when I was working with it, and not really aware of what I was cutting out. My take, however, is that there are no coincidences. For me, this was another example of how powerful artistic work can be when you surrender the need to control the image and let the materials tell you how they want to be arranged.
You can see more of my art quilts at my web site at www.fiberfantasies.com