Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between making art for external reasons—shows, sales, expectations—and making art simply because I love it.
As much as I believe in the value of creating for joy’s sake, I still catch myself falling into the trap of shoulds: I should work on a piece that will sell. I should make something impressive. I should focus on a project with a clear purpose. But when I let those shoulds dictate my creativity, the process starts to feel like an obligation and I start avoiding doing the thing that I love the most.
So, I decided to do something different.
Returning to What I Love
I started making cyanotypes a few years ago because I find the process so much fun. Making them feels more like childhood play than any other fiber art that I have ever done. To create the cyanotype, I take treated fabric out into my yard on a warm summer morning, exposing it to sunlight to capture botanical impressions in deep, inky blues. This process, every time, feels like magic. There’s something about working with the sun, with nature itself, that reconnects me with our larger world and restores me.
The cyanotypes that I started making didn’t fit into any of my existing series of works and they certainly weren’t protest pieces that conveyed a deep meaning. They weren’t made to fit in with my other work or with an exhibition in mind. I just found them beautiful. Eventually, I started stitching the fabric cyanotypes into quilted art pieces And again, I let the quilting process unfold organically. The stitching wasn’t about perfection or meeting a deadline. It was about texture, rhythm, and movement—the kind of slow, intentional work that feels meditative.
The result? A whole new series of work that I love where each piece feels deeply mine. A reminder that when I create for myself first, the work carries a different kind of energy—one of joy, curiosity, and authenticity. I like to think that the works convey that energy to the people who ultimately take them home.
Path of Joy
“Path of Joy” is the latest in my Cyanotypes series. It is composed of three individual cyanotypes of Queen Anne’s Lace, which is a wildflower that represents the joy and freedom of summer to me. I know that it’s a flower many consider a weed, but I love them. I grew up on a farm in Virginia and the roadside was filled with the flowers during the summer. I would walk from my house down to the farmhouse and barns, face turned toward the sun, running my hands through the tall grass and Queen Anne’s Lace as I went. These walks were never hurried. It was summer vacation, the sun was shining, and I had all the time in the world.
I quilted around each flower with white thread to give them the texture they have in real life and then hand quilted my meandering summer path in the background, linking each panel.
