medical update

Where Does the Art Come From: Feeding Your Eye

| ellenanneeddy

Books currently on the desk

This has been a counter-productive week. My leg went out ( still not sure why), and I’ve had some low-grade flu. So my studio work didn’t happen. Instead, I worked a bit in my library.

When I married Don and moved, I stripped my library down. I have several libraries. One is for personal information and entertainment. Small kitchen library. And a pile of art books. Somehow that has continued to grow.

Where does our art come from? We’d like everything to be completely out of ourselves. I’m not sure that’s possible.

We have several illusions about art. We’d like to believe all art is original. But it’s not. Art comes from our response to other images. All art is in some way derivative. Different pieces of art hold a conversation over time. Art changes how other art is made.

We are told only artists are artists. That’s just wrong. Art is not unique to artists. It’s a part of our genome. It’s the ability to view our world differently. In our view of the world, we begin to change our world. when we work with those images, we change ourselves, and that changes the world. Just a little bit. It’s the creation of sense, beauty, and order. We have to silence the voice that says we are not artists. Because it’s the voice that tells us we can’t. Because it strips us of power that has always been our own.

So how do we kick start art? We need to feed our eyes and refuse to hamstring ourselves. What our senses bring gives us all kinds of inspiration.

But back to art being derivative: We work with the images that set us on fire, move our inners, pop out our own eyes or perhaps someone else’s. And there is never any reference like a book. The zoo is closed. The science program moves too fast. The web pictures are tiny. Your own library is a wide world portal that never closes; Not even at three am.

So I look for books with enough animal pictures to know how many toes a frog has and what angle the leg is at. I look for landscape books, garden books. pet books, pictorial archives, amazing art artists, and how-to techniques. And beautiful kid books.

I love my library. It fills my eyes. it fills my head. It fills my life.

I jus made myself bookplates for the Galesburg address. This is sneaky. I get to open every book, if nothing else but to put the plate in.

Take your inspiration where you find it, but build up inspiration where it waits for you, like treasure in heaven.

Health Update: Serious Wait and See

| ellenanneeddy

I saw my new cardiologist yesterday. Nothing has really changed. I still have a moderate leaky valve. I still have an aneurysm. I still have a blocked artery.

But none of them are actively causing me pain or difficulty. None of them are acute or active. They’re just there. And they’re not quite bad enough for surgery.

So for the moment, I’m off the hook. They’ll monitor. I shouldn’t lift anything heavy or strain, or lean over very much. That’s a very moderate group of limits, considering. I’m afraid I can’t help anyone move at this time.

Is it coming someday? Inevitably, I suppose. But not today. Today we make quilts!

And a Dutch baby for breakfast.

Thank you for your care, your prayers, your concern and your love. You’ve always held me up. I hope I can always do that for you in return.

merry Christmas! Health Update. What I get for Christmas is a stent.

| ellenanneeddy

Christmas this year is like a hurricane eye. It’s a spot of calm in the middle of chaos.

Don and I went to mass last night. We’ve been away a while, partially because of the knee surgeries and partially because of covid. And after that, inertia. It occurred to me that Christmas Eve is the time for what we wait for. The time things longed for finally arrive. Christ is Emmanuel, evident. Our waiting for the time of salvation is at hand. It’s here now.

I think what we’re really waiting for in some way, is the light to come back and the darkness to lift.

Tomorrow I get my stent. It’s the first of several procedures, Later they’ll fix my wonky valve and aneurysm. We’ve waiting for this for a while, through the medical procedural channels, which do grind slowly. With all good luck, they’ll send me home by evening, with the blockage resolved. One bomb out of three. Hey, the odds get better as we go along.

So after all that waiting, salvation is at hand. And I am past grateful to be offered a life longer than my parents, with options they never had.

I hope the people and things you wait for are there for you, at the right time where you can find them, I hope you find joy in the unexpected places as well as the ones we normally rely on. I hope you find answers and help that get you through the dark.  I hope you make things that astonish you. I hope you have all the love to hold you in the light. Most importantly, I hope we all get the holy sacred happy nappy this afternoon.

Bless you all through your holidays! Say a prayer or think a good thought if you can..

‘

a Thousand Cranes: Some Thoughts about busyness, Waiting and changing Our Stories

| ellenanneeddy

There is a legend that if you fold a thousand cranes, it will change you. Your pain will be relieved. Your luck will change. This repetitive action will change your life.

I had a visitor to the studio remark that there were a lot of processes in each quilt I made. There are. Dyed fabric, oil paint stick rubbing, painted sheers, dyed cheesecloth, free motion applique, direct sheer applique, and then we quilt.

That does represent a lot of busyness on my part. I like the complexity. I want a piece to be exciting when you see it from a distance and exciting if you are inches away from it.

With that said, there is a lot of donkey work. Yesterday, I cut rocks. I use the leftover pieces of fabric that are rock colored and cut them into rocks of several different sizes, waiting for the right quilt. Repetitive. So much of art is. A lot of art is creating a surface, a color, a shape, a texture that makes the piece something splendiferous. That takes a lot of repetition.

I have a price list where I document quilts by size, when they were finished and given a number. The latest quilt is numbered 1125-23, which means it’s the 1,125th quilt made since 1987. I’m going to claim them as my 1,000 cranes. What I’ve learned from 1,125 quilts is that the action of creating something over and over in different ways does change us. Art changes us because it helps us tell our stories in a different light and see ourselves in a different way. But we come to that by a series of actions that seem to be the same thing over and over. If we want the benefit of change and regeneration, it takes a sustained effort. In the Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis said we were not capable of any sustained action, only of the undulation towards a goal.  According to Screwtape, Undulation is the repeated return to a level from which we repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. God relies more on troughs because it makes us rely on God.

Art is a holy process. It’s a place of honesty, effort, and repetitive actions in hopes of reaching the peaks despite the troughs. What I have learned from 50 years of quilting is that the troughs simply have to be waded through like mud, with the actions over and over again that create our art and ourselves.

Tuesday, I’m going into the hospital to have a stent put in to fix my blockage. I have good hopes, but I can’t say I’m not nervous. But the waiting and the work on my quilts has soothed that some. It’s an office procedure. I expect to be home the same night.

So I do what I do when I’m nervous. Or happy. Or sad. Or confused. I make more quilts.

Health Update, 12-10-23

| ellenanneeddy

Well, the doctors have finally decided. Sometime within the next week or two, I’ll be receiving a stent that should correct the heart blockage. Once that stabilizes, in 3-6 months, they’ll do the open heart surgery for the aneurysm and the leaky valve.

I’m grateful for doctors who are thoughtful and not given to a gung-ho philosophy toward surgery. And I’m grateful for the time to process this internally. I’ve gone through most of the grief process, and we do grieve when our bodies fail us. I believe I will be grieving also for the loss of butter and steak. That will take a while.

And I’m grateful to live in a time when medicine offers these options. Both my parents, my uncle, and one of my grandparents died of heart issues. We live in a different world, now, thank God.

Mostly, I’m grateful for the care and love you’ve all poured on me. I have no words but thank you. We’ll keep you posted on dates.

Medical Update 3: Hurry up and wait, Will you?

| ellenanneeddy

Late this September I was diagnosed with a leaky heart valve, an aneurysm, and a capillary blockage. Since then I’ve been waiting for the doctors to make up their minds.

It’s serious. It’s very serious. And the doctors seem to need to talk about it very seriously for the next month and a half to figure out what to do first. I’m very frustrated by having to hurry up and wait. They tell me the diagnosis is early enough that we can take some time to decide.

In a way, that’s a good thing. I’ve found myself in a grief process connected with this, and it’s given me time to get past my disbelief, shock, rage, and depression associated with it.

It also gave me some time to sell some quilts to have the funds to take care of whatever else isn’t in Medicare or insurance. For those of you who have purchased quilts to help me, I don’t have words to thank you enough. I feel much more secure and safe because of you.

For the moment, it seems like nothing is going to happen before Thanksgiving. Christmas we’re still figuring out.

So in the middle of that, I’m doing the one thing I know how to do best. I’m working on new quilts, and new techniques. I’m focusing on new work. And I’m grateful for the love and support you’ve all shown me. Especially Don.

I’ll keep you posted. It’s all happening eventually. And until then, it’s all right now.

Second Med Update

| ellenanneeddy

We talked to the surgeon Friday. It didn’t go as we figured it would, but for a very good reason.

It seems that when I had the angiogram a couple weeks ago besides the aneurysm and leaking valve they also found blockages in one of the veins of the heart. We both read the report but somehow missed that. Now we know.

So that is now three things that need fixing. the doctor presented two scenarios. One, they go in and do everything at once, putting in a bypass to the blockage. Problem is that means they have to harvest a vein from her leg. that gives me another wound and by report more pain than the chest cracking. Also another chance for infection.

Or…they go in and put a stent in that vein to open it up. That has the same benefit as the bypass but does not require the leg wound. They go in the groin and do the job, not requiring chest opening. The down here is they cannot do the big surgery until the stent has had 3-6 months to settle down. During that time I must take blood thinners, and they don’t want to do the surgery with her taking those. The advantage is much less pain, and both procedures give the same benefit. The down is I have to wait for the surgery a few months. One good point is the aneurysm is just over the threshold for doing something, not ballooning out dangerously. This means they can wait a bit to do the surgery.

We talked it over with the doc and indicated the stent seems like the way to go. He will talk with my other two heart/vascular docs and let us know the proposed decision in a couple weeks. So we’re still in the waiting mode. We need to get it all fixed, and opening the blockage seems like the primary thing at the moment.

So as usual nothing is as simple as it first seems. It’s more of a marathon than a sprint. We’ll get there.

You have been my support in every way! Think good thoughts, pray if you can. And thank you!