Sunday one of the visitors at my studio was laughing as she looked at my recent Cloth in Common piece shown below. This was an unexpected response for an unexpected reason. She is a historian and is working to gather information from old graves in our community. She is researching the stories of the time between birth and death for the people buried beneath old tombstones. She works with a team who does forensics on people’s lives using legal documents, letters and stories passed down through generations. They want to tell the human stories of the space between birth and death for their families and future historians. She felt my art piece visually reflected another aspect of the unknown story in the space between birth and death, the hidden. She will share a picture of this art to her team of researchers. It was a fun exchange that I am grateful to have had. I think it is very interesting this group is so invested in this information gathering of the human stories of people unknown to them to add to the history of our community. Some people research the ancestry of their family this is the first I have explored researching a stranger’s ancestry with the goal to add to the deeper story of the person’s life. While she talked with me her dedication and excitement about this project was palpable. So much that it gave me inspiration for this blog.

We have heard people use the expressions: How will you live your dash? Use your dash to its fullest. It’s the dash between years that is important. There is a poem that many of you have probably seen on a funeral card or heard read at a memorial service, it is titled The Dash and can be read at thedashpoem.com if you are interested.

Another aspect of the dash is it also filled with events we anticipate, and feel will never arrive only to experience their passing and then wonder how it is over so quickly. Throughout our entire lives we have these spaces between events that move us forward as we accomplish goals, survive a difficult time or have a joyful outcome of a hoped-for event. November my life has a lot of space between events. Elections and Open Studios are over, today I’ll have surgery, soon I’ll host a zoom meeting and then Thanksgiving. I will complete an art piece on time for our reveal of the space in between prompt. All these events that seemed so far away are rapidly approaching and are or will also soon be past.

Through the preparations for Open Studios my mind has been working on three separate ideas for this prompt I have not yet made a final decision so there is a space between ideas that still needs to be resolved. I am grateful for the space between my ears that can contain so many ideas and plans while I navigate the physical and emotional work that needs to be done to fill the dash of November.