I spent a delightful weekend in Little Rock meeting many SAQA members (and potential SAQA members) at the Southern Voices regional exhibit. The folks there were gracious with their praise of my work and eager to talk about art and quilts and how sometimes they are the same thing.

Upon my return I walked into my studio to see this work in progress with slightly new eyes. It's about 80% done...I think...but still lacks something. Not sure what that is yet. So I wlll let it stew for awhile. Many of my pieces go through this rest time. It is always a challenge to reinvigorate my excitement about a piece after I leave it for awhile. There are times when the piece gets put away for months only to reemerge with new life later. This one may be one of those.

I do love those scallop edges though.

work in progress, Connections, Paula Kovarik

Inspired by that game we play of naming the shapes in clouds, several of my drawings have new colonies of these simple outlines of cats, dogs, gears, cars, clouds—whatever pops into my head. Using that as a starting point I started making shapes that nested into each other on this quilt. It looked like nonsense to me but I wasn't too worried about it. Trusting the process was part of the fun. Then I started wondering why these particular shapes showed up in my experimentation. Why was I compelled to draw a chicken, or a gear, or a tractor, or a headed blob? What point was I trying to make? Then, last Saturday, I went to see A Fierce Green Fire, the Battle for a Living Planet. It is a documentary summarizing the environmental movement. One of the narrators explored the concept of connections. Simply, Everything is Connected. Even if we don't see it. That's why I added these dotted lines.

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