This work of art is created from small sections of hand-painted paper and string and thread, placed against a background of painted corrugated cardboard. These broken pieces, unravelled and pulled apart, create a new image and invite a new way of seeing. They present a chance to revise and rethink, to make a new path out of the fragmented, isolated pieces.

Quilters, stained glass artists, creators of mosaics, and wood workers using marquetry, are all familiar with this approach. These artists take small pieces and reconstruct them into beautiful objects. The tradition of Kintsugi, or Kintsukuroi, the Japanese art of using lacquer and gold to repair broken vessels, embodies this philosophy.

Scars and seams and gold and leaded lines reflect the history, our life experiences, paths altered and shattered and broken, things torn apart, yet, the reconnections create new places to be, and offer new opportunities of growth and understanding and provide a path for empathy. It doesn’t mean that it wasn’t broken, nor that what had been wasn’t valuable, nor that what was whole was not treasured, nor that it is not painful, nor that loss is not felt. Those who knit know that “unravelling” doesn’t mean the end of a project, that it is just an opportunity to rethink, rework and reconstruct.

This piece isolates part of the process, recognizing the pulling apart, captured in mid motion, but it also provides hope and gives a chance for weaving together a new vision. In that moment of pulling apart is the moment to grasp and recognize the value of each little disconnected piece, to reaffirm that it’s important not to lose the thread, and then, to see it anew.  

As Leonard Cohen said “There is a crack, a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in” (Leonard Cohen, Anthem, 1992)