Welcome to The Fold. Grab a cuppa and join me for not-one-of-those January newsletters.
Common Threads show open through January 23
The Common Threads fiber art exhibition is open through January 23 in the lobby of Myriad Gardens in OKC. (map link) The art show is free to attend.
Common Threads features five fiber artists: Sarah Atlee, Vicki Conley, Irmgard Geul, Sarah Sherrod, and Lisa Wing.
Myriad Gardens' Crystal Bridge Conservatory is open Mon-Sat 9am-5pm; Sun 11am-5pm (click here for their seasonal calendar). Outdoor grounds are open daily 6am-11pm.
Even (especially) when outdoor life is dormant, the Myriad Gardens Conservatory is a great place to revivify.
Shall we have some poetry?
Getting into Bed on a December Night
Ellen Bass
When I slip beneath the quilt and fold into her warmth, I think we are like the pages of a love letter written thirty years ago that some aging god still reads each day and then tucks back into its envelope.
From Indigo by Ellen Bass (Copper Canyon Press, 2020). Source
In the dark times Will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing About the dark times.
That visual language of tatreez attracts me to it. Every single stitch holds the memories and experiences of the embroiderer, and through it, generations of women have passed down personal stories and documented major events, ranging from the relationship of the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, to the Intifada when Palestinian flags were banned in public, so Palestinian women started embroidering them on their thobes. It's a testament to the enduring legacy, spirit and creativity of Palestinian women.
People don't just wrap presents with the cloth, but an endless number of small items like boxes, fruit, and books. When it was used to wrap gifts, Tsukada Simonian says traditionally, the furoshiki cloth would be returned to the gift giver to be used again and again.
Under by Cyrah Dardas. Click image to view on the artist's website.
I make work with earth and for nature; wood, paper, metals, creating botanical inks, dyes and watercolors made from foraged plants, charred willow bark, ochres, ash and stone. I consider this process as an interspecies communion that deeply informs the form and function the work takes. Colors are derived from plants, and the natural textures and materials that nature creates reflect the landscape and identity of the land I exist on.
I think about my practice as a container for collective remembering that strives to honor and re-centralize the wisdom and memory alive in my blood and to uncover or recover forgotten knowledge. This body of work examines tapestry-making as a healing technology that re-establishes forgotten networks of relationship between humans and non-human life.
The news is supposed to tell us what's happening in the world. It doesn't. It tells us what's going wrong. Thanks to a combination of commercial pressures, cognitive bias and cultural habits, news organisations have become modern-day doom machines, showcasing the worst of humanity, without highlighting any progress, healing or restoration. Yes, journalism is supposed to hold truth to power and when terrible things happen we shouldn't turn away. But when we only hear stories of doom, we fail to see the stories of possibility. We deny ourselves the opportunity to do better.
The American journalist Krista Tippett says that we're all fluent in the language of catastrophe and dysfunction, and what's needed are more of what she calls 'generative narratives.' This year, we found over 2,000 of those kinds of stories, and shared them with tens of thousands of readers in a weekly email. Not dog-on-a-surfboard, baby-survives-a-tornado stories, but genuine, world changing stuff about how millions of lives are improving, about human rights victories, diseases being eliminated, falling emissions, how vast swathes of our planet are being protected and how entire species have been saved.
Okay, Just a Few Personal Faves
Favorite foodof 2023, or just, like, lately: Lasagna Soup
(You could try this recipe, or this recipe, or this recipe, but I just made mine up. I used tortellini instead of lasagna noodles. The key is cooking and storing the pasta separately. Add pasta to leftover soup when you heat it up.)