What inspires you to make art, and specifically - what inspires your tapestries?

Some find inspiration in what’s going on in the world - environmental changes, political unrest, social commentary. Others are inspired by pure texture, form, and patterns. Still other have a narrative to express. And a lot of us are inspired by nature.

Nature definitely inspires my weavings.

But more specifically, it’s a Sense of Place.

I’m so strongly drawn to my surroundings, I rarely want to leave.* I’m lucky to live in a unique area of the world that most outsiders (those that don’t know the area) know nothing about. I feel a strong connection to the land that I have felt from the moment we moved in.

I live in Kansas. Pottawatomie County. Wide open prairie. But we also have creeks running through our property, wooded areas, and a pond. Kansas is split up into 11 physiographic regions and from what I can determine - we live on the edge of Flint Hills Uplands and the Glaciated Region, where we share our habitation with Tallgrass Prairie.

My morning walks stimulate me for the rest of the day. It’s rare when I don’t pull my phone out and attempt to record the light, the plants, the prairie. These photographs then fuel my designs.

I share this bond to the land with my photographer husband. He has been photographing the light here for nearly 30 years. While my photographs are more research, snapshots, records - his express the essence of a Sense of Place. These are his photographs interspersed within this post.**

In writing this, I’m struck with the realization that I’ve not only been been hugely inspired by my environment, but also by his interpretations. I just mentioned this to my husband in the midst of writing this post - and he told me that his photographs were originally inspired by my weavings! How cool is that?

Sadly, I do not know a lot of the history of this area beyond maybe 70 years or so, but I’ve been learning. I’ve recently started reading Prairy Erth by William Least Heat-Moon; it’s slow going. It is a very thick book.

So back to my original question.

What inspires “you”?

* I do, of course, leave occasionally - trips to town, to see my kids, teach a workshop, or a return to Italy!

** This post was hard to write. Not the writing; choosing only a limit number of photographs to include was very difficult!

Weaving A Sense of Place