Nanny's Knitting Needles, 2013

My newest piece, done in a brief but furious 24-hour period recently. Approximately 19 x 28 inches on pineboards once used as a blackboard.

M Y  A R T — "Nanny's Knitting Needles" is the first of a new series I've just started. I'm still using fairly rigid stripes but I'm not adhering to a graphpaper-like grid. Looking close, the grid is still there, but I'm trying to work with a type of "balanced chaos." This first piece is an homage to my grandmother. When I was just a little kid, staying at my grandmother's after Kindergarten and the early grades, she was confined to her bed or a wheelchair. We did everything together anyway. She even claimed I helped her learn to walk again as I'd stand in front of her walker and help move it forward. I remember telling her "just one more step, Nanny" and other encouraging words, and more than once I'd get a kitchen chair for her to sit down because we'd gone one step too far, lol. She used to toss her big container of knitting needles on the rug for me and have me pick up all the red ones, or blue ones. She taught me colors that way. Later she'd have me pick up all the No 4s. or 7s, as I learned my numbers. We were so close! We laughed a lot, even though she was dying of cancer and I had had my own traumatic experiences by then, but I have nothing but the warmest and most loving memories of our short time together. She died in 1969 when I was 12. I still have her container of knitting needles, and if I show this piece in public, I will make an arrangement with those needles to show my inspiration.

This next series will explore this "balanced chaos" and the second piece I'm working on has a photo collage in the background.