For most of her life, Jessie Homer French worked without much expectation or hope of attention or sales or critical acclaim. In a recent article, she said “I paint my life, my stuff. I really, really care about the painting turning out. I’m really upset when it doesn’t. But I don’t feel any need to communicate. I’m sorry. That’s not the point.”
What a refreshing change from the inundation of famous film stars and celebrities and all those fascinating things on social media, which — in the end — draw us away from our quieter lives, or as Homer French says, being “a regular ordinary painter who hangs out in her garage, and desperately tries to make something that she likes.”
While she made this “mapestry” with thread, cloth, and embroidery, her paintings are what she’s known for:
This scene is up in the mountains above Palm Desert, Southern California area. I don’t know why this bio on her drew me in so much. Maybe it was the barren landscapes that she paints, or her focus on her creating, whether in cloth or with paints. And maybe like the stack of paintings that piled up in her garage, sending her out to find a gallery that would sell her paintings, I feel we quilters often toil quietly, with our cloth and thread, imbuing what’s in our hands with our life, our stuff.
Here’s some of my recent work:
Bit by bit, Twilight Garden is taking shape. It’s going to be a hand-work project now.
On the first day of Spring it was warm enough to set out lunch on the patio. Our conversations seem to unfurl at a slower pace out there.
We had our wisteria trimmed; the squirrel’s perch is right outside my sewing room window.
I’ve been photographing my Mother’s few journals. She was too busy to write much, ever, so they are brief and don’t cover much time. But reading them is like having a good conversation with her.
I went on (another!) trip to Utah to see this tall granddaughter come home after an 18-month mission to Argentina.
And to have lunch with my father’s sisters.
My father gave me this book many years ago, and I pulled it out this week. I found little notes tucked in addressed to me, instructing me to place some newspaper clippings he’d sent, into the back of the book. It was poignant to see his handwriting again.
It’s a weighty book, one man’s year of mourning for his father. I’ll have to take it slow, but right at the beginning this caught my heart:
“And when grief is gone? Still one may not speak of one’s parents baldly. After the twelve months of mourning, the rabbis continue, one must accompany the mention of one’s dead father or one’s dead mother with the words, ‘May his memory be a blessing for life in the world to come.’ Modern Jews have abridged this locution of piety. They speak of their dead and say ‘May his memory be a blessing,’ and they mean a blessing here, upon us. But the rabbis meant a blessing there, upon him….I can believe that the memory of our dead is a blessing here, upon us. Can I believe that it is a blessing there, upon them?”
I can only hope so. Really, I want both. As I think about my mother and father, feeling grateful at this Eastertide for their influence in all ways, I hope their memory is a blessing for them, together. And with my needle and scissors in hand, their memories and these blessings help me pass some really long days.
Quilt your stuff, everyone. Quilt your life.
Happy Easter Week!
OccasionalPiece--Quilt! 