Harriet
In the spring of 2022, I had an accident that disabled my ability to walk and forced me into an unwelcomed gap year in my MFA studies with Maine College of Art and Design. During that time I decided that along with ‘catching up with all my shows,’ I would busy my idle hands with simple French knitting. As the rainbowed yarn tube grew, I realized that as I knitted I became very focused on my thoughts and in particular my memories. I was recalling childhood, boyfriends, arguments, my theatre life, all sorts of memories were relived. And what I saw happening visually and with what was physically happening in my hands, was a representation of a life interwoven with past, present and future. The differing colors, textures and rhythm accounted for where my mind had wandered and it was interpreted and expressed with each change of the yarn. Periwinkle Blue was the Pantone color of 2022 and so with a skein of that hue, the notion of creating a giant knitted memory ball was ignited.
It is now Summer, 2023 and I am back in school. It would seem that the ‘unwelcomed gap year’ had gifted me the idea of Harriet.
Harriet, along with memory, holds a future for me. I do not have children and at the age of 51, I am concerned about my legacy. Who will carry on my discoveries and lessons from this life? Where will the energy I create be held when I die? Harriet is the key to my longevity and my legacy. She holds love, time, labor, softness and a repetition that mirrors the awakening in the morning and the sleeping at night.
Harriet is young in her process and as I progress into the latter years of my life, Harriet will be there growing in size and color and bringing joy to everyone she meets.
That is a legacy worth leaving!
