Emotional Block

Since I was a little girl, I looked up to beauty. Aesthetics is the mother of ethics, Brodsky said. I live it in what I do, what I speak, what I think, and what I have to share. But I could never dare to call myself an artist. This question didn't arise even when, during big moves, I packed two suitcases of personal belongings and nine chests of art tools and supplies. To be an artist is a holy mission. I am too little of a human to aspire that high.

The idea for the work named Emotional Block came after I learned the quilting technique. Little pieces that a quilt is made of

called blocks. When I hear the word BLOCK first association that comes to my mind is EMOTIONAL. Possibly that is because emotions are the main focus of my studies. I am a seeker by nature. I need to get to the heart of the things, figure out how it works, and improve if necessary. Where is the best place to start? Within.

An emotional block is a mechanism that we use to suppress or escape our emotions. When the subconscious decides that it is too difficult or inappropriate to deal with arising feelings inside us, it blocks them. But it doesn't mean they go away for good. They reappear in a different shape on a different plane and make us deal with it anyway. It continues to evolve, and it is our job to direct it most creatively, so we can learn and grow from it.

I started with cutting blocks. 

I admire the process of creation. I never know where it will take me. I feel possessed, or better to say, guided. This process is not what I am doing. It happens to me, and we both are equals. I let it go through me; I participate and watch what happens.

On the first block, I wrote 'courageous' and remembered standing at the dock on the low tide. There were at least 11 feet down to the water. Everyone looked at me and waited till I jump. I wrote 'prosperous' remembered Dionysus from Greek mythology and how friends feed me grapes on my birthday. I wrote 'vulnerable' and noticed that it feels the same as being skinny. I was reliving it while writing names of feelings on fabric. But this time, I was the spectator, the outsider in my own story. It made me look at the situation from a different angle. It helped me to be a fair judge of myself. It helped me to make peace with it. 

At first, the idea was to achieve balance by having an equal amount of positive and negative emotions on the quilt. But work stalled when I couldn't place 'fragile' in either of the piles. Then the same happened to 'bewitched,' 'empty,' and 'provoked,' so I looked for help and made an IG poll for people's opinions. The views were divided. 

In my search for the answers, I understood the root of the problem: my binary thinking wants to label feelings' good' or 'bad,' to give a proper behavioral model to cope with the situation. My mind acts like a nosy intermediary. But why do I allow it to perform on my behalf? Why won't I process my feelings directly? Because then I need to deal with a broader spectrum than just black and white. The one must be prepared for it. And I was. 

When the blocks were ready, I laid them out on the floor. I wanted my work to be dynamic like emotions themselves. They come, and they go, leaving residue that we fully taste only afterward. They are developing like a film. Like a film! That was the form that I was looking for. 

I pieced and stitched blocks together. If only you knew what a battle I was fighting within: make it easy or make it right. The decision to make it dynamic didn't come with effortless execution. I stacked blocks diagonally to make feelings break off in the mid-word. Another battle was happening in my head: I draw these beautiful blocks, and now I must cut them mercilessly to give the quilt a square shape. 'Ashamed' and 'happy' have the same fate. They disappear in the end, literally on my quilt and metaphysically in life. A new wave of relief is overcoming me while I am writing it. 

To create a film effect, I worked with bleach. Have you noticed that when the bleach gets on clothes, it doesn't discolor it immediately? It takes some time to develop, just like with the film and the emotions. 

Could you imagine how I felt when I finished the facing of the quilt?

Could you imagine now how I felt when I realized that this size of a project is not suitable for my sewing machine?

It was a perfect time to learn a new skill, so I took a 5-hour training course for operating the long-arm in a local fabric shop. 

Fast forward days, hours of stitching, binding, and "candy-wrapping," and it was hanging in front of me. Both lived and suppressed; my feelings were staring at me and didn't control me anymore. 

Over 100 hours of play and experimentation, topped with studies, self-doubts, and workshops, became tangible and turned into the art piece I named Emotional Block. 

What have I learned from this work? That the feelings it's not who we are; it's how we express ourselves. 

In front of me was hanging such a graceful expression of my feelings that I thought, 'What a way to communicate myself! I will do it again.'

At that moment, I knew I became an artist. Because art is a holy mission, and what could be more sacred than healing and reinventing oneself.