Craft For Health

The Healing Powers of Positive Attitudes by Katie Deits---

Art has always been part of my life and has added tremendous depth of meaning to my life on an intellectual, emotional and spiritual level. Growing up, my home was filled with art, as I had artistic parents, so creating art and writing about my feelings and experiences seemed natural. Since my teens, I have collected inspirational quotations that gave me strength and hope. Several years ago, when I was sculpting a work entitled “As I Think,” cancer was discovered in my colon. The surgeon removed it, I had chemotherapy and, so far, I’m fine. Many blessings have been bestowed on me.

During my recovery, I read that patients with positive attitudes recover faster and survive serious illnesses. It was an odd coincidence that the sculpture I had just completed was inscribed with positive and inspirational quotations. Thus, I dream about having “As I Think” as bronze sculptures in chemotherapy facilities and hospitals where patients and their caretakers can also find comfort and hope, and it could help them feel more positive as well.

Quotations can be inspirational and change the way we think. “As I Think” is a life-sized head and shoulders sculpture of an androgynous person with an inquisitive expression. I have carved the inspirational quotations on its surface.

Buddha taught, "All that we are is the result of what we have thought," while Bible text reads, "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."  There are quotes on the sculpture from great religious thinkers and philosophers, such as Mohandas Gandhi and Aristotle, inspirational people and writers such as Helen Keller, George Bernard Shaw and James Allen, and fictional characters such as Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi from "Star Wars" and the Skin Horse from "The Velveteen Rabbit.”

A quote from Joan Baez reads, “You don’t get to choose how you are going to die or when. You can only decide how you are going to live now.” My hope is that viewers will read the words and absorb the quotations into their own consciousness, which may help them to become whole again.

 Katie Deits is a Master Photographer, artist, educator, writer and arts advocate. In 2007,  she was honored to be a recipient of the South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship for Palm Beach County. Her work often includes pieces about human rights, feelings and emotions and has historical references. Her  mission is to create dynamic works of art that will help people discover the joy and mystery of art, to reflect on their lives, find their purpose and mission, and use this awareness to create a better world for humanity.  www.katied.com

 

Quilting as the Art of Healing by Jeannie Bush

It is early Friday in La Crosse WI. My sister, in Fargo, ND, calls to say there has been a change in Dad’s breathing. You will want to come home, but know that you will not make it “in time.”

 

Five days later, Dad is still alive; his pacemaker keeps on pacing.  The five of us kids and Mom try to pace ourselves. In life and in death, Dad had a hard time giving up.

 

Each of us handles the stress of a death of a parent or loved one differently. For me, sitting at my sister’s home and hand sewing on the binding of a quilt gave me peace. 

 

My sister and I had shared the making of this quilt to give to our nephew and his bride . . . the wedding just over a week away.  Calm comes over me as I thread the needle, feel the fabric with my fingers, and rhythmically stitch the binding. . . but I see in my mind,  my Dad dying the wasting-away- kind-of- death he feared, just like when he was a Prisoner of War under the Japanese in WWII. Tears fall on the wedding quilt.

 

In the past eight years, my husband lost his job of 23 years, gained and lost four more jobs, is unemployed presently, and had a massive heart attack at age 46; we became empty nest; my father died; my mother has slipped into vascular dementia; my sister has colon cancer; my mother-in-law has breast cancer, chronic lymphatic leukemia and had a hemorrhagic stroke. I come from a family of medicine, and understand it well, but, is this enough stress yet?

 

When my world is falling down around me, I head to my sewing area. Smell the unique scent of fabric. Feel the soft, rough, smooth textures. Put some fabrics together on the design wall. Hear the whir of sewing machine. Calmness comes over me. Now I can sort the feelings, deal with some, put some away for later. Some would call it therapy. I call it quilting, the art of healing.

 

Written by Jeannie M. Bush

Founded in 1999, Quilting From My Heart created quilted treasures with personalized story labels that will touch your heart.

www.QuiltingFromMyHeart.com

http://quiltingfrommyheart.com/blog/