Prompt: Make. What was the last thing you made?
What materials did you use?
Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?
When I first read this prompt, I thought to myself, "What was the last thing I made? I made a cup of coffee, but I don't think that is really what the prompt is asking, or is it?" Just this morning as I read A Summer of Hummingbirds by Christopher Benfrey, I delighted in this comment about novelist George Sand: "Her correspondence with the poet Alfred de Musset entrances readers, and demonstrated for a whole generation how a love affair could become a work of art," I marveled in the making of Sand's artful love as well as Benfrey's recapturing - both were "made" by creative people, simply in the living of their every day lives.
Then I thought about how I look at reverb10, as a means to recap the year so I came up with a slightly tweaked question: What was my most satisfying creation in 2010?
Because my life is centered in so many art forms, creating... making... is like breathing. Saturday night included the last performances I "made" - I was on stage in three separate performances. I directed a fourth, which I also made. I was quickly annoying myself so I decided rather than nit-picking the prompt, I would be specific in "What was the last tangible, not-everyday-thing-I made" which made it easier to answer for me.
Last Friday - on the afternoon of the Debut Performance of the Bakersfield Viking Chorus, I sewed three costume tunics for three of our Vikings: Rolf (aka Robert); Some Viking name starting with a V (aka Victorio) and for Swanhilde (she would also be known as me.) Our fearless leader, Cameron, had ordered tunics individually made but our seamstress flaked... which we wouldn't know until mail arrived in Friday... sans envelopes with Viking tunics. I have sewed this year more than any year in the recent past and I have found I love it.
I think I will finish the curtains I started last Summer in the next week or so, before Katherine comes home for winter break.
This photo includes Robert, the man in grey, wearing one of the tunics I made. LOL. I love this photo, so goofy... just like singing Vikings from the San Joaquin Valley town of Bakersfield where our river doesn't even have water in it. We are a multi-ethnic, wide-age-and-experience span of Vikings who share a deep passion for music and peformance. Voila! A Viking Chorus....
The tunics I made were by no means perfect, but the inexpensive fabric coupled with the ancient, industrial sewing machine made for a satisfying experience. The whirr of the machine chugging along, my hands pulling and pushing the fabric, the vision of the tiny stitches, one after another after another, after another....
This process also reminds me of the wonder of the collaborative art form that is theater. We are a stitching together of voices, of gifts, of vantage points. It isn't a solo thing, ever - even for a one person show because the audience is always a big part of the process. Theater without an audience isn't theater... although I suppose someone could nit pick that like I nit picked this prompt!
And like some of the other Reverb10 prompts, this has made me want to dive more deeply into my year as I take the prompt and reflections just a bit deeper. For the rest of the day I will be compiling a list of my most memorable, most satisfying creations of 2010 and seeing what I can create from those memories: what photos, what poetry, what collages, what strings of letters I may create as I review: What were my most satisfying creations of 2010?
I think I will start with this George Sand quote:
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