Yes, and…

Yes, and… was a phrase that came tumbling into my life from two different sources, one of which was a podcast. Yes, and… is the idea that to move an idea along, first you acknowledge that idea, and then add something to it. It can work in creating. It can work in setting up your day. It can work in relationships, in collaborations.

Some related excerpts from the podcast were also about creativity, so let me just throw these here, too, at the top of this post:

“[A]n important part of creativity is that it’s joy experienced in the present, and you have to be fully present to be able to have that experience and to be there. If you are distracted or you’re not fully in it, it is not the same experience.”

“Andrew Hooverman defined creativity as two phases, divergent, which the wider you explore things, the better. Nothing’s wrong there. You are exploring everything. And then the convergence, when you look at it and go, not all this is great, you know, and editing out, but you don’t get to the one without having volume and mistakes and figuring it out. I think it’s important to keep, you know, open to possibilities, at least early on.”

And finally, “[S]ome creative pursuits are outward facing, and some are in solitude.”

(from a podcast conversation about creativity and spirituality, with Lisa Valentine Clark and James Rees)

Which led me to explore some art galleries online, a very “yes, and…” experience as I see one piece of art, and say oh yes, and…I want to see more. Here’s one example:

Rebecca Klundt, in her artist statement on the David Ericson Fine Art website, talks about using the unusable, and that “I believe that when you are driven to create, you begin to see things around you in a different light.”

Perhaps Klundt takes the yes, and… approach, and in looking at her art, filled with squares and bits and rectangles, it reminded me of our drive to take our squares and bits and rectangles and try to see them with new eyes.

Where is the yes, and… in the quilting you do? Perhaps I am just in the divergent phase (as described by Hooverman above, but sometimes after finishing a big project like last week’s SAHRR 2026, I like to clean up the sewing room, tuck away the remnants of a project, evaluate how it went, what I might change.

Or maybe I’m feeling the “resistance to premature closure,” something tested for in the Torrence Test of Creativity, and I don’t want to close it down or wrap it up. Is that the source of a quilter’s UFO? Haha, I don’t think so. [For more yes, and…on this test, head here.]

All I know is that this week I:

• sanded and varnished and sanded and varnished a stair rail bannister (and it’s still not done)
• finished prepping the rest of my squircles, after putting them all up onto a wall to try and get some sense of the color and value shifts.
• visited San Diego (husband’s scientific conference) and while there, hit three different fabric shops and kept squircling
• hosted a daughter and granddaughter for a “flash visit” (less than 24 hours)
• celebrated a significant birthday of someone I love, with other people I love.

Even though I’d spent a lot of the last few weeks in “keeping the closure open,” thinking a lot of yes, and…. while working with the different SAHRR prompts, I am still using the yes, and... approach to figuring out what I want to do next.

Stay tuned.

(The art in the featured image at the top of the post, which some may see, is also by Rebecca Klundt. Head to the Blog Index — listed in the header — to see all the featured images in this blog.)