Lisa Thorpe

Stepping Stones: following an unexplored path

This week I finished this processional banner commission that I have been working on for weeks, with a few pauses for sewing machine repairs. I am content with the results and pleased I took up the challenge (although I woefully underestimated the time spent, live and learn, that’s a different lesson).  If you are a long time blog reader then you know that sewing was the beginning of my creative journey, specifically sewing clothes.  I went college and studied design and in the last 15 years or more have traveled down the design and fine art path more than the sewing path.  So this commission, while not completely out of my comfort zone, was at the very least a stretch.  I had worked with all the pieces in the past, sewing and construction, graphic design and layout but this commission combined all those elements in a way I had not be challenged to do before.  But when connection through friends led me to this place I said, YES, and so, without knowing how I would do it but secure in the notion I would figure it out, I stepped from one stepping-stone to the next.   And that leads me to the metaphor for the week.  This life is a wandering a crossing, some of the steps we take are ours to choose, and some of the stones we strike out on are laid out for us by family and history, body and mind and were never ours to choose.  But this adventure leads ever forward and we have choices about where we step and how long we stay.  Sometimes the stepping-stone we are on is large and stable and comfortable and it takes along time to get to the other side.   Every so often because of love or loss or opportunity the stepping-stone is small and tippy and we have no choice but to leap for the next stone.  At other times we walk from stone to stone in a fog, waking in the bright light wondering how we got here.   This time I stepped onto a stone that, though a bit wobbly at first, turned out to be a welcome diversion from my usual wanderings.  You never know what saying YES can lead to.

My musings got me thinking the Robert Frost poem The Road Not Taken. Although familiar I always find it lovely to reread and remind.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

Last weeks March Painting is up on the website now so check that out http://lisathorpe.com/mandala.html

Raffle tickets for the bird banner piece from my February 17^th blog post are now available through The Bishop’s Ranch website, proceeds go to the Ranch Annual Fund. http://www.bishopsranch.org/