inside an acorn

I have a ton of these vintage blocks.  OK - at least a dozen. Been working my way through them, one at a time - seeing what I could do to save them and create something new.  This is all part of my therapy sewing project which has evolved in an attempt to get my creativity back.

As I was staring at the latest permutation, rotary cutter in hand and about to pounce, my email pinged.  There, sent by one of my loyal and strangely prescient blog readers (as it turns out), was a snippet of an interview with Philip Roth.  

While Roth is a writer, his answer to the question below applies equally well to those of us who are visual artists. Even if you have an idea of where you'd like to go with something you have just started -- whether it's a monoprint, a collage, a painting, or a textile piece, don't you find that it never (or rarely) ends up precisely as you had visualized it?  Even the most detailed maquettes may change slightly along the way because serendipity rears its lovely head and changes things in the process.

Q: Which of your many books succeeded best at conveying what you had in mind when you started to write it?

Philip Roth: What I have in mind when I start to write could fit inside an acorn -- an acorn, moreover, that rarely if ever grows into an oak.  Write fiction and you relinquish reason.  You start with an acorn and you end up with a mackerel.  Unfortunately, my workday does not support the argument for a universe of "intelligent design."  Chance and staying power.  That's the hand that imagination's dealt.

Three of the blocks I have hacked up over the past six months

                     

Chance and staying power... need I say more?  :)