The Night has 1000 Eyes in Hardscrabble, Wondrous Durham

The Durham Bull, looking like something
from Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain.

Yes, I've been stitching. Been sketching. Been working with thread and fabric and fiber.  But I've also been looking around me. Marveling at the broken loveliness of my life and of Durham.

Tobacco Town

For many years, before I ever picked up a needle and pierced a piece of cotton, I wrote. And I read wildly and widely. In my old life I had bookcases so full there were books behind the books. Layers of books. And I made photos... rolls of black and white, home developed, hung in strips from my shower. And I listened to Coltrane. And he told me that the Night has a Thousand Eyes.

Beauty in dirty brick.

Things don't work out the way one plans or hopes. (This is not a brilliant observation, I realize.) But when things have fallen apart, a creative person, an artist like me, finds new way of piecing the jumble back together. You look at what is in your immediate world and you go from there. 

Suga Belt, a piece inspired by an experience in another broken
NC town, Carthage.

So, my hyper-immediate world is my body and face, thus the self-portraits.

Durham is insanely green. Eno River State Park, twilight.

And my immediate surroundings are Durham, North Carolina, which Andy called "hardscrabble and wondrous" in an email one time. This description is so perfect for Durham... it has become a lens for me. 

Yet another photo of my aging self.

And maybe it describes me at my best.