On my mind

On a rushing-around Saturday, I am taking a few minutes to think.  It’s a gray, cool day…a gift on this extraordinarily hot, muggy summer…suitable for getting small chores done, but also for a chance to zone out with the porch breezes.

I’ve just been to the new exhibit at the Muse Art Gallery in Carrboro, where last month I and two friends hung our work.  We took ours down a few days ago, so I thought I would visit the art that is showing after us.

What I walked in on were stunningly beautiful, intricate quilts by a Dutch woman, Marga de Bruijn, who has lived in this area for forty some years.  There are whole histories embedded in her work…personal as well as global… color and line and the gradations of perspective and emotion evolve into events we should know and remember.  Quilting is a way she shows us what’s on her mind.

What I left the gallery with was a mind full of my own. I’m still thinking of the first quilt I saw as I entered the gallery corridor...Fibonacci A. easy to recognize the way strips of color and pattern contrive to spell a clear picture one cannot mistake.

 

More important, though, I’m thinking about the power of art to bring forth truth in ways that the flat, black and white icons we call words cannot.

Her quilts are about the travesties, tragedies, legends, inventions, meditations and sturdiness in the world.  Take a look at more of her storied work here:

https://www.mymusescardshop.co/muse-gallery

By construction, Marga de Bruijn spares nothing as she quilts.  Her fabrics, created by other artists whom she names as collaborators, she carefully synchronizes to bring out exactly the tone and resonance she means.  Her stitching reminds me of the notes and spaces of musical codes.  It seems odd to use such terms on such tactile makings, but these quilts do, really, sing to me.

And humble me.  I think of my scraps of paper and glue, washes of paint, cuts of metal, fallen twigs and broken pieces, and how, for me, they conspire to, at least, a semblance of thought that might or might not have risen to consciousness.  I love fine material…no doubt there.  Thread and fabric, hand stitches calm me into sewing; once in a while, embroidery becomes part of my art.

It's the deliberateness, formality of structure, intensity of purpose that Marga de Bruijn brings to her creations that amaze me, most of all the expanse of vision she creates with.

If I sound envious, be assured that it is admiration, purely.  This room full of a woman’s eye and hand…in them is an understanding and sympathy for the world I cannot help but admire.  What art, what meaning, what eye-, ear- and mind-opening because of her.

 

 

Art...and Life

 

It's hot.  That's no news to anyone around here.  Temperatures near 100 degrees, however, means that I force myself to a sunrise walk, humid enough at that.  Then, I settle down to Art.

What We Leave Behind

Note the capital letter...these days I’m creating with a fast pulse, for it was only one month ago that I discovered the new Muse Art Gallery in Carrboro, and casually asked about showing there.  Holly and I had talked about doing one in November again, but talking to Abhi, the gentle, creative owner of My Muses Card Shop (a good artist himself), we discovered he was booked through Spring, 2026.

"Well" he told us, calendar in hand, "there's an opening in July."  This July.

About Time

Holly and I looked at each other a long minute.  Why not?  Laurie was on her way to Southeast Asia for a month, but she figured that she could work on her beautiful embroidery collages on plane rides. (Imagine her inspirations!)

For me, the month’s deadline was a good thing.  I hadn't done serious work in a long time...cards for birthdays, thank-you's, celebrations, a few extending sympathy, too... amounted to my morning art practice.  (And yes, there are a lot of such events…up to 20 a month.  I get a lot of practice in.)

Dog People

Ideas always came to me, of course, walking, visiting galleries, traveling, imagining what x would look like as y or z.  Somehow, though gathered materials hung about in groups, I never got far with them.  A lot of Spring travel is my best excuse for that, but June had no such.

Here was a deadline. Suddenly, I was full of energy. The heat outside helped keep me in, and even Duke Energy's pleading texts to save electricity for the over-powered ACs didn't affect my workspace...plenty of natural light most of the long June days and the breeze of fans.

 

Temple in the Hills

At first, putting paint and brush to paper, I was surprised to discover only one new painting worth the showing.  Sometimes my hand wants to work on its own ideas.

 Without thinking, really, I began pulling together handmade books, small but charming ones.  I’d missed that. 

Notions

Book after book emerged.  Then, still happy with paper, glue, and odd embellishments that seemed to insist on inclusion, I started a full collage, working for days, layer by layer, until every color we saw on our sisters’ trip to Sedona rose to the surface.

Sedona

One morning, making a birthday card for my niece, I realized that what I call “small art”…an image rendered no bigger than a greeting card…might be a good idea to include in the show.  In an uneasy climate, small art can be an affordable and bright (sometimes witty) comfort.  Each day forward, I made a new one and framed them…a few painted, a few collaged.

Body in the Golden Age

Waiting for things to dry, or settle in mind and spirit, I went about doing small chores around the house, re-ordering, re-claiming, recycling.  While the mosquitoes slept, I snuck into the yard to clear and water as I could.  But mostly, I cleared my head for art, excited to see what would come about that day.

 It was on one of those early walks that I saw I was tiring of the two-dimensional…I needed more shape to cut, to string, to hang.  Not a few minutes into it, I knew what it had to be…something roiling in me for a while…another travel, another memory.  It took me a few days to register how,  then what with, then memory took over and out came, in copper and paper and words from my Morocco journal, this one. It’s my favorite.

Memory of Morocco

I’m back to birthday cards now, though interestingly they are coming out quite differently than previous ones; clearly, the inspiration of Art continues.

I’d love for you to see the showing, too.  If you can, visit the Gallery in July, 

one way or another:

In person

Visions:  Art by Rachel Victoria Mills, Holly Burnham and Laurie Zuckerman

The Muse Art Gallery

201A East Main Street, Carrboro

July 1 – 28, 2025

Come to the Reception!

The Muse Art Gallery

July 13, 4-7pm

Online                      https://www.mymusescardshop.co/muse-gallery