Guest Blog Post by our Featured Artist: Sam Wilde
The smells and foods and colors of the season, don’t they kick up all the old memories? Invite us to reminisce? Fill us with nostalgia and longing?
As the season progresses here at my house, it is ever so busy with five kids at home and one in college, with concerts and gatherings and special events of all kinds. Rather than slowing down, the demands on me in December seem only to increase and I most certainly find myself longing for a simple Christmas.
But what does that mean? And what does it look like?
When I think about it through the lens of my weaving, I find that many of my pieces are intricate, with a rich variety of details, like this tapestry, “Over and Around Us.” It’s filled with dried flowers, Nantucket beach shells, a huge range of fiber, fabric, ribbon and texture. It’s a full experience—to look at and touch.
Others are very simple.
Like the “Rainbow Flower Tapestry.” What is about something simple? It usually has less but, at least as far as an artist is concerned, that less does become more. I suppose what I discover, when I am working with fiber to create a tapestry, is that each piece tells me when there is enough.
Perhaps that’s the key to the simple kind of holidays I want, discovering that right sense of enough. Because it’s also true, particularly if we have lost loved ones, that the season can feel very empty. And very dark.
This tapestry, “The Darkness Hides Nothing From You,” has an interesting story. Juried into a exhibit in Sacramento, California, it got lost on the way. For upwards of two weeks, no one knew where it had gone. The postal service had no record of it except for the first day I mailed it.
This tapestry meant a great deal to me for many reasons. Of course I wanted it to be found! But I also found it strange and ironic that the very piece with a title that meant that nothing could be hidden—had somehow become hidden in plain sight. I spoke with many USPS workers who helped to search for it.
Then one day, just in the nick of time, before the exhibit opened, I received a call that it had arrived in Sacramento. It arrived with no record of tracking in any other location across the United States. It arrived undamaged.
It think about this as I look at the tapestry. It is a tapestry expressing the quality of light. And as we all know, this time of year is a celebration of light—from sparkling Christmas tree lights, to the lights of the Menorah, to the candles of Advent, to the fire of Yule.
Sometimes, it truly does take the very dark nights to illuminate for us what matters, what gives deepest meaning, what truly shines in our lives.
Yes, I suppose it’s not really simple that I want this season—but rich and deep and meaningful. In fact, colorful, like “The Rainbow Tree,” and full of life. I want to be able to find my childlike awe and wonder, as I did when that tapestry arrived in California and I quite literally danced for joy. I want to bring the light and bear witness to it wherever I see it around me.
Light, after all, is expressed in a rainbow of color!
And so, even if I can’t get simple, or simple doesn’t happen, I can always—and I invite you to also—weave the beauty of the season’s richness and color into your days, be they hectic or calm.
I also invite you to come and enjoy these and many other colorful, rich and simple tapestries and wall hangings on the walls of Barstow’s!
These tapestries and many more for sale.