Spring Awakening

2024 was not a great year for me art wise - or in general. I spent most of the year struggling my way through cancer treatment, then slowly recovering and rebuilding my energy. But, I am alive, and as my energy has returned I've felt that need to create.

Like flowers that emerge from the long winter to provide beauty and light to the world, me and my art are having a resurgence.

Back in 2023, I won all three of the major art grants for my area - two provincial and one national grant. Things were going well; I got to travel to Japan to train under a master artisan for my art form. Then, while I was in Tokyo, I started experiencing the symptoms of advanced Stage 3-C cervical cancer.

It's hard to explain the sour mixture of joy and anger that I felt when I received a notification about having received a special grant to complete my tsumami-zaiku teaching certification on the heels of being handed my first week's chemotherapy and radiation schedule.

But, as angry as I was at having my life put on pause just as I was reaching new artistic heights, and despite all the terror and body horror that came with cancer, I now have an even stronger reverence for life. While many of my friends lament turning a year older, I look at having turned 39 years old as an achievement; I am one of the lucky ones. I get to turn 40 next year.

As such, I've been producing as much new art as possible. Not just to catch up with my grant obligations that have been so long set aside, but also because I feel keenly how short our time is.

I feel as if I'd spent the winter warming up; crafting a hundred plus single flower lapel pins, starting out small and reminding myself how it feels to create by working my way through progressively bigger and more difficult pieces.

Now that spring has come into full bloom, so has my work.

At times, I felt a bit like a one-woman production line, especially when I was producing so many of the same type of item, but now I've really worked my way into more complex designs - and I hope that the joy and wonder of creation comes through in these pieces.

And, I hope that anyone reading this who is having a hard time can take comfort in knowing that as hard as dark as things can be, there is still light out there - beauty, hope, and wonder. It can, and does, get better.

If you enjoy my work and want to read more about my tsumami-zaiku (Japanese silk folding) accessories, you can find me at the links below:

Art Blog: http://www.appledainty.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/appledainty/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@AppleDainty