There was a wonderful exhibit down at the Rockport Center for the Arts (where I have exhibited myself) when we were there recently. It was called, “Material Conversations: Woven In Place” featuring the work of artist Doerte Weber. It spoke to me, probably because my own artistic medium is fabric, and my own professional medium as a writer is words, conversation. The metaphor implied by both the designs of the Weber works and the notion of “woven” moved me to sit in one of the exhibition rooms for quite some time just contemplating the art — and, by extension, my life.

     Woven. The time-honored phrase describing the “warp and weft” of weaving, the figurative expression meaning the fundamental underlying foundation or structure of something. Every fabric, including the fabric of life, has a warp and a weft. The warp is the vertical threads held taut on a loom, and the weft is the horizontal thread woven back and forth through them. Together they form the complete piece of cloth. Figuratively, as an idiom,  it describes the elements that hold a story or a community together. Since so much of my life has been spent in devotion to the fabric arts, whether sewing clothing early on, decorative items for the home later, or still later, as a quilter and then as an exhibiting fabric landscape artist, woven mirrors my life and intentions. Fraying describes when those intentions, those weaving motions, fall apart.

     When you look back on a life in the terms of a woven experience, it is fairly easy to see the warp, the trajectory, the vertical lines of where one was going from the beginning and where one arrived. Goals. Those are the vertical lines. We march toward them, achieve them, check them off and keep on going: graduations, college, marriage, children, career, achievement, accomplishment. Those of us who are fortunate enough to know very early on what our goals in life are manage to plan our steps along the way in direct pursuit. Those of us who are lucky enough to recognize our goals and believe we can achieve them are truly blessed in the warp of life and generally destined for success, at least by our own standards.

     But along the way, there are the important “wefts,” the horizontal threads of people, experiences, insights, and deviations that interlace and that truly create and enrich the texture of our weave.They come and go, in the form of those who inspire us, those who instruct us, those who mentor us, those who believe in us, those who love us. The wefts are also the serendipitous events, the unexpected surprises, the unbelievable strokes of luck, the beneficial patterns that seem to reoccur. 

     I have always been a big believer in patterns and, as I get older and have the benefit of a longer hindsight, I can definitely see the patterns in my life, in my family, in my history: patterns of determination, bravery, strength, resilience, and loss. Patterns of profound love and self-sacrifice. My own art quilts aren’t “woven” in the traditional sense, but they do commemorate a weaving process.  My patterns are landscapes and scenes, whether it’s a Dairy Queen or Cape Cod or St. Tropez.  They are almost always drawn out of my own photographs, marking certain holidays, certain events, certain moments memorializing key places and moments almost always with the most important people in my life.

     But for all the planning of creative work and a creative life, there are also the pitfalls, the “float,” the loom errors that create serious interruptions in the life cloth, the catastrophic rips and tears of the fabric that we never see coming and that we ultimately find that we cannot repair. And that’s where the artwork fades and the fabric unravels in an otherwise beautifully woven life. And that’s what you are left to hold.

     Weaving has intention. It incorporates pattern and moves toward completion. I remember visiting the now-famous tent-makers of Cairo in Egypt, the beautiful rugs and walls they create out of patience and ancient skill. I remember watching, mesmerized, the nimble fingers of women weaving intricate designs of silk rugs in Turkey. Rugs. Foundations. Solidity underfoot, protection from without. Years later, in San Francisco of all places, I bought a stunning woven Turkish shawl of silk and wool,  heavy-weight and comforting, almost too heavy to be used in San Antonio, Texas, almost too heavy to be worn in any weather. Sometimes, even the most beautiful fabrics are too heavy to carry.

     And so is the fabric of my most beautiful life too heavy to carry now.