Several seemingly unrelated items have been swirling in my head since last time, their connections becoming more apparent as I write.

On a recent episode of the “A Brush With…” podcast, Ben Luke talks with Billie Zangewa, an artist who hand stitches imagery that straddles the line between the highly personal and decidedly universal. Having grown up in Botswana, now living and working in Johannesburg, South Africa, Zangewa’s goal is to challenge existing representations of Black women. Yet her brightly colored, intricate compositions of silk and stitching also explore overlooked aspects of many women’s lives (she refers to this as “daily feminism”). Her perspective is very relatable, especially to those who try to juggle a creative career with family and home life.

What I would have given to hear this podcast 20 years ago when I was always on the lookout for mentors who were able to balance motherhood with their art, without the benefit of hired help. So many young women are very successfully doing just that today; I am learning from them in hindsight. Yet even if that particular subject isn’t your concern, I think you too will enjoy listening to Zangewa ebulliently discuss her practice, her influences and her art.

Along the same lines of life and art overlapping, the other gem that grabbed me was a quote from the book Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. If you haven’t read this novel (again, with a woman at its central axis point),  put it on your list! I’ll let you discover its premise, but suffice to say it’s beautifully conceived and written, touching on a subject appropriate to our current time.

My greater point, though, is that a skilled writer can conjure images that are so relatable that even mundane impressions become solidly locked into place in new and elevated ways, leaving one marveling with a deeper understanding. For me, often immersed in the art of embroidery, the following analogy is brilliantly applicable to a variety of things that belie their surface appearance.

It is so tenuous, so fragile, the life of the playhouses. He often thinks that, more than anything, it is like the embroidery on his father’s gloves: only the beautiful shows, only the smallest part, while underneath is a cross-hatching of labour and skill and frustration and sweat.”

It makes one think of the proverbial duck who seems to glide across the pond, yet whose feet are furiously paddling beneath the surface, not unlike a busy mother. And, I can’t help but think of the work of Cayce Zavaglia, master embroiderer, who lately has been exhibiting the backs of her larger-than-life, super realistic embroidered portraits (versos) and her paintings of the same. Her intent is to highlight the “divergence between our presented and private selves”.

With all the above said, this past Tuesday as I looked at the calendar I realized that this very week marks Eye of the Needle’s 7th anniversary of uninterrupted weekly, and for the past two years, bi-weekly posts. In fact, this is #315. I have always seen this blog as source of connection – both with the greater art world and with you.

But what I have come to most appreciate and to value about this practice (and I do think of it as a practice) is it has allowed me to be more deeply engaged in my day-to-day, paying closer attention to underlying connections which most often arise unexpectedly. In many respects, this is a space to pull those loose threads together. Through the act of writing I become more cognizant of what I think and feel about the many, often humdrum things which somehow end up influencing my ideas, and in turn manifest themselves in what I make. And that is really the meat of this particular post. I hope that by sharing my relationship with those moments, you too have had cause to reflect on new perspectives – or to reconsider old ones – in a fresh light.