What’s Her Story? Imagining the Creative Process

     I was looking at an ornate medieval tapestry in a museum when I realized creating something beautiful or innovative is an enormous investment of time.  Making an amazing idea manifest as a physical reality often requires immersing oneself in the alternate reality of solitude.

     I wondered if the unknown artist sacrificed something to make her masterpiece.  Was sewing obligatory or did she do it as a hobby?  Was she the lady of a manor sewing with a circle of friends or did she stitch in the cloistered silence of an abbey?  How many years did it take her to complete the beautiful art I was viewing?

     I’ll never know the answers to my questions, but I know part of the woman lives on in her work.  She immortalized the values and culture of her era from her perspective and according to her tastes in a time when men dominated literature and the arts and suppressed the female viewpoint.  There’s no questioning her talent.
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