Stitches: Francie Towne & Hattie Starling
I am driving west of Bend to little town called Tumalo to meet with a pair of Entangle artists: Francie & Hattie. The sky is grey and I wonder if we'll get a little bit of rain tonight. We could definitely use some moisture with all the wildfires happening around us.
Pulling up to a home tucked away in cute neighborhood, I am greeted by Hattie. She guides me through her home and out the back door where I am transported to a garden scene that had to be out of a fairy tale. Flowers: everywhere. Wildflowers, daisies, poppies, dahlias, sunflowers, and more. A small gate that opened up to a green grassy clearing right before the rushing Deschutes river.
"Where am I?" I wonder out loud. They both laugh and we all agree that this has to be one of the best places to conduct an interview. But, just as we are about ready to begin, we all start to feel raindrops. So we rush everything inside to keep dry.
There are two canvases that Francie sets on the table with "What am I looking at here?"
"This is The River of Life." Francie says. I look at the two larger canvases in front of me, each painted with streaks of different blues to create the "river" and bordered with a painted black starry sky. There are stacks of pressed flowers and egg cartons full of dried herbs, seeds, and plant scraps you might find on the ground. Hattie starts to delicately place these things onto the river while Francie places illustrations of people she has drawn. "What is the River of Life?" I ask.
"Its a place in heaven - its crystal clear and there's a tree with and it's roots reach down and touch the water underground and it's always in fruit." - Francie Towne
These two have a concrete plan as they place more and more dried flowers and people in the river, describing the many things folks might be going through in life and how they are trying to replicate that in this installation. Hattie brings out some golden thread and shows how the thread will be connected to each person, resembling our connection.
"We can go through the river of life and we can think we're each an island (and) we're on our own, but the reality is we're not. We are all connected." - Hattie Starling
I remember when I brought the idea for Entangle to Francie a year ago and the first person she thought of working with was Hattie. "Can I work with a gardener?" I recall her asking. It was an automatic yes and it made me think: Should this event be limited to artists? What is an artist? It made me realize that regardless of our "profession" we are all inherently creative; we are all artists. I believe that an artist is someone who uses creativity to process or move through something in life. Hattie hand pollinates her flowers with a paintbrush. She has developed her own system after creatively trying different methods. She is also very close to developing a new variation of dahlia.
I believe Hattie is an artist. I believe Francie is an artist. I believe we are all artists in some way, shape or form. You don't need to be pursuing a career in art to be an artist. You don't need to be selling your art full time to prove you're an artist. You don't need to know how to paint or draw or crochet etc. to be considered an artist. We create because it's in our DNA. We do it daily, and I encourage you to look at the little ways you create today.
