In everyday language, we often tend to think of words in binary terms, assigning them positive or negative connotations according to the nuances they carry. Thus, “connection” may naturally suggest something positive, while “disconnection” may evoke something negative. That is why I found Martha’s idea of exploring connection through disconnection so fresh and intriguing – a subtle shift in perspective that opens up an entirely different way of thinking.

When we experience the painful disconnection of loss, we may come to cherish even more deeply the relationships that remain, those people who are still beside us and connected to our lives. Perhaps this is one of life’s paradoxical truths.

Disconnection between people, disconnection from nature, from the world, or even from the things around us – all forms of disconnection can be painful.

And yet, as quilters, we routinely engage in a kind of disconnection ourselves. We take perfectly intact pieces of fabric and cut them apart, whether consciously or unconsciously reenacting an act of separation. Then, with care and patience, we stitch those fragments back together, reconnecting what has been separated and giving birth to something new – a work of art.

What amazes me even more is that, even when artists begin with exactly the same fabrics, each will cut, rearrange, and reconnect them differently, ultimately creating something entirely unique. The mere thought of this possibility fills me with a sense of wonder at the mystery and freedom of the creative act.

The finished artwork – a whole brought into being from countless fragments – is itself wondrous. But perhaps the act of connecting is equally beautiful: the careful, creative gesture of bringing separate pieces into relationship with one another.

Could this very act of (dis)connection – the space created between separation and reunion, between what was and what is becoming – be in The Space in Between?