Whirlwind began as my second response to the first Cloth in Common theme of ‘sound’.  I thought about how songs are like a round, and how the notes and lyrics repeat.  I pulled out this beautiful hand dyed fabric that I had made, and I started placing shapes on the spirals to represent the notes of a song abstractly.  Life got in the way of my finishing, and soon, we were given a second theme about ‘touch’.

Then, hurricane Irma approached Florida, and came directly over our home.  She arrived in the dark of night.  We couldn’t see what was happening outside.  Trying to sleep that night was difficult – I was certain that one of our many trees would crash onto our house (or my studio next door), but we were lucky, and that didn’t transpire.  Stepping outside the next morning was otherworldly, and frightening.  Limbs and branches were everywhere.  We have a large property, so every day for the following week, we had to rake and pile and pick up and burn the debris.

There were thousands of heavy green pinecones on the ground.  These made it into my art piece.  So did leaves, vines, sticks and pine needles. Once we finally finished all the cleanup tasks, we were extremely grateful that our family was only ‘touched’ by this storm, and not slammed.

40 x 30”

Raw edge hand applique, hand quilted and embroidered