Karen Colett Frank

Each year I spend mid-summer through the early fall in the rural, wooded region of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. My life there is quite different from the one I live in the sub-tropical city of St. Petersburg, Florida. Autumnal Dryad was clearly inspired by the Vermont autumn colors all around me.

Again this year, my intention had been to create a piece about my Nature Child archetype. I planned ahead, packed up the variety of materials that this would call for – lush, tropical, blues, greens – the sort of things not in my very limited Vermont stash. Finally ready to start, I was thwarted by a technical failure that prevented me from printing the key image of the piece.

Ahh, here is the Saboteur at work! It would only have required a small bit of time to have printed it before I left home. That was really only a minor bit of procrastination. I had been thinking about this piece for over a year, yet still hadn’t started. The shadow Saboteur stayed in my company, until I was reminded that the Saboteur is about the power of choice. Time to move on. I have faith in my ability to develop an idea, following where it leads and trusting I will find a way to make it work. Friend Saboteur had invited Friend Prostitute to join in the process of making a new plan.

I would need work with the materials I had available to me. The unfolding fall influenced my ideas. The small blocks I pieced did not work as I had hoped, so they became a two sided frame, requiring a new idea to fill the newly created space. The process continued on this way until it was finished.

I continue to be amazed at fluidity of this creative process, the flow. I’ve always thought of it as a conversation between myself and artwork. It tells me where it wants to go and I respond. It has always worked best when I listen, rather than trying to force it into being something.

Autumnal Dryad 2022 12” x 14” Fiber NFS karencolett@gmail.com