thinking too much again

I have been able to go to my studio these past few days and fool around.  I say fool around because I really do not have time to play. 

The Manitoulin Circle Project has been given an exhibition in a public art gallery in  September and the fourth panel is still not in the frame.   Although I do not have time to flounder around, I need to.  

The dress embroidery in these images was done as part of my degree in 2009.  Doing it led to a self discovery.  When it was nearly finished I realized that I had pictured the dress on a hanger... waiting to be worn.  Did that mean that I was waiting to be an artist?  

In December 2012 I added more cloth to the small embroidery.
I thought it might be a good quilt BACK.  

Is it harder for women? 

  How do we manage it?  How do we balance our lives and our creative work?

Now I've removed those fabrics and thought some more.  Looking and thinking.

Did I mention that the art gallery has offered a publication about the work? 

My mother told me to think.       She'd holler it.  THINK!

As if thinking helps. 

(It doesn't.) 

"I thought of my three daughters and my mother in law and my own dead mother....not one of us was going to get what we wanted.  We're so transparently in need of shoring up our own pronouns....her...  she.  We ask ourselves questions endlessly, but not nearly sternly enough....we are too kind, too willing, too unwilling too, reaching out blindly with a grasping hand, but not knowing how to ask for what we don't even know we want."    Carol Sheilds    

(the last sentence from A Scarf, a short story she wrote age 65)