I am drawn to sewing. I like needles and colored threads, small work and tiny stitches... lap work. Some call it piecework. I call it peacework. Recently, I spent some time looking at quilts and especially crazy quilts. I admired the controlled randomness of the construction and the fact that they were usually made of remnants. The idea of using things that are left over, the bits that remain after something is made, has a strong appeal. Pieces of memory making new memories. My studio holds thousands of small scraps of paper that I’ve collected over the years. I have drawers full of drawings, sketches, watercolors done over many years. Why not make my own paper quilts? Out came the glue and scissors and all the pieces of color, including the old paintings. It challenges me to cut up something that came before in order to create something completely new. But, I have to say, it felt good to use my “past” and incorporate it in my “now”. Working on these collages kept me very much in the moment. And I felt such freedom.

“The great lesson from the mystics is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is found in one’s daily life, in one’s backyard.” -Abraham Maslow

I’ll add “and on the studio floor.”

Susie Phillips, March 2014