In rare, precious moments, when life sweeps you up without any effort from your conscious mind, you suddenly find yourself running along a track you never chose. If you manage to act as if you haven’t noticed and let your gaze drift elsewhere, things begin to align in a magical, surprising way. You are no longer the one creating. Something else is moving you — you become a desperately happy instrument, everything flowing without friction.
I’ve felt this before, for instance while taking dance classes. Disconnecting the mind was the only way to move fluidly; once I stopped counting, my body tuned into the music and carried itself. Another time, late in the afternoon, I was lying across my bed with the window open. My consciousness grew airy, almost transparent. I listened to people in the street coming home from work and felt the collective energy—of people, of time, of trees and wind—and I was part of it. That intense feeling changed my life and dissolved many of my fears. I still had my individuality, yet I was fused with universal energy, which was no longer around me but had become me.
Something similar is starting to happen with embroidery. Some pieces have taken unexpected directions on their own. It had happened before, in a different way, with one of my earliest experiments, but now it feels even less under my control. I simply follow what the needle wants, without resisting, without pushing back, without suggesting paths. After so many hours of dedication, the mind seems to understand it can take a walk and let go of the reins. It’s a wonderful feeling—finally, just me and the world, unfiltered.
The archipelagos were born out of an accident. I had left some granules of iron, the kind I use for plants, in the laundry sink. When they came into contact with water, they released a series of beautiful rust-colored stains on the enamel. That’s when I thought of trying it on fabric. I pulled out an old cotton napkin, once part of a trousseau sheet. I spread it on the kitchen sink, sprinkled the iron over it, wet it, and left it there for a couple of days.
When it dried, it had a marvelous scent of iron, like the ferries to the islands I used to take in summer. The color seemed indelible, but just in case, I ran it through the washing machine at 190°F. Then I left it under the July sun for a whole day. It didn’t fade a bit.
I traced the outline of the stain with a green-gold thread, then went over it again, as I always do, with white thread. I circled it randomly, as if it were a light making it shine while also protecting it. When I finally stepped back and looked at it, I saw an island, the edge of a continent, a piece of land emerging from a wide, white sea.
I’ve finished two, and now I’m working on the third. It will take a couple of weeks to finish the white thread, and then I’ll shift again. I feel like experimenting, experimenting, and experimenting some more.
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