Although making art is one of the two or three things I can remember doing right back to childhood, I was late to calling myself an artist. I didn’t match the definition of artist that the world presented to me. I didn’t do the things artists did, I didn’t work the way artists did, I didn’t think the way artists did. Or so I believed.
There may be several reasons for that, but one of the most significant reasons is that my process for creating really doesn’t conform to the commonly understood “artist’s process.”
I didn’t think I was an artist because I couldn’t create in the same direction as the people I knew who did call themselves artists.
I don’t work from ideas down. Ideas aren’t a big deal for me. I have a head full of ideas with new ones added every day. Ideas don’t inspire me to work. If you ask me what the idea behind my work is, I will struggle to give you an answer. I won’t be able to tell you about a grand vision. Nothing I make starts as a grand vision.
The idea to creation process path is top-down processing.
I don’t top-down process.
I bottom-up process.
Collecting Without Knowing Why
Bottom-up processors are like magpies. We collect and store little bits of things to use later. I store them physically – I have a room full of fabric and thread and yarn and ribbon. I store them mentally – I have a head like an old library card catalogue with memories of things I saw or heard or felt as I’ve wandered through life. I store them electronically – nobody ever wants to see my vacation photos because when I visited the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam I took a hundred and two photos of the floor tiles, and when I visited the Natural History Museum in London I took hundreds of photos of the carved animals on the buildings columns. And I store it all away for future use.
And yes, so far that is not that different from anyone in the arts. All artists see the world around them, and all artists notice artistic details.
What is different is how I use those bits of things. These things are not where my process starts, they’re ingredients. I don’t make because I have an idea, I make because I have a skill and a bit of something I can use. I make an idea by pulling together materials that I’ve collected. The materials are like bread crumbs with an idea at the end.
Let me elaborate:
I don’t think “Ooh, wouldn’t it be great to stitch images based on children’s literature?” I do think “Ooh, I found this piece of linen twill in a thrift store and I have these beautiful colours of crewel wool in my stash… Ooh they look like children’s illustrations!” So I go to my library and pull out some children’s books (I collect children’s books) and start sketching.
In another instance, an acquaintance who has started learning to embroider mentions they are struggling with the turkey rug stitch and asks me to help. I think “Ooh, I love the turkey rug stitch why am I not using it more?” and suddenly I am stitching pussy willows and fuzzy caterpillars because turkey rug stitch is fuzzy.
Nothing Starts at the Beginning
If you ask me what the idea or vision behind my work is, I will struggle to give you an answer because I didn’t start with an idea. But if you ask me how I went about making the piece I will give you an animated lecture on process and materials and all the things I discovered as I went.
For instance, this huge banner is the happy convergence of a dozen little bits and pieces.
Several years ago in a thrift store, I came across a large piece of sturdy fabric for a bargain. I bought it and put it in my fabric stash.
Sometime around the start of the internet, I discovered the Gnostic Gospels in Nag Hammadi Library. In 2017 I took photos of a church door in Seattle. In 2019 I was visiting the Rodin Museum in Paris and saw his Gates of Hell. In 2021, I stitched a book based on one of the texts from the Gnostic Gospels. In 2024 I traveled to Norway and visited the fabulous Vigeland Sculpture Park and saw The Monolith. Finally, in 2025 I learned how to use Stumpwork hands and different padding techniques to create a bas-relief image out of fabric and fiber.
From that collection of odds and ends I went from “Ooh, I love these wired stumpwork hands… hey they remind me of bas-relief sculptures about life and death … life and death remind me of the Gnostic Gospels and old religious poetry … Ooh, wouldn’t it be something to make a large work like Vigeland or Rodin? … Wait, I have that big piece of fabric…” I started sketching and choosing pictures and fabrics and threads and old religious poetry, adding more bits and pieces as I worked. This was how my banner Antiphon for the Angels (title from a poem by Hildegard of Bingen a 12th century German nun) was born, cobbled together like a magpie’s nest.
A Hundred Small Beginnings
It wasn’t never a big idea. It was a hundred little pieces of inspiration stitched together as I went.
Hopefully learning something about the nuances of the technique I used, the variety of materials, contextual details about famous artists’ works, and niche knowledge of old religious texts will help you to understand the piece. I will come away from that very animated and very, very inspired to take what I have learned, to use what I have, and to make an idea out of it. I hope you also come away inspired too.
When I teach, I often hear people saying they don’t have the ideas that an artist has so they don’t really try to make original pieces.
I think it’s a shame to let the lack of an idea stop you from creating. If you don’t have an idea, find a bit of something you like and see what you can make of it. The idea can come later.
This is my advice to my fellow bottom-up processors and anyone else who doesn’t feel like they fit the mold. Just do it your way. Don’t worry about having big ideas. Little ideas grow and can be stitched together into big ideas. Don’t worry about having a plan. Plans develop over time. Don’t worry about how your grand artistic experiment will turn out. Don’t think you have to start with a mapped out creative journey. Just start with a little bit of something you’ve picked up on.
Art isn’t a destination and artist isn’t a job title. Art is a path and a fundamentally human behavior, and artists are people who choose to make something out of little bits of stuff where others see nothing. Embrace your own type of creativity. If you have big ideas, then by all means run with them. If all you have is a pocket full of pretty pebbles you picked up from the edge of the river, hold onto them and search for the other pieces on your path that will make them into something bigger.
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