Pan and His Lady

My friend Patty gave me an heirloom crocheted piece with a central circle with seven similar discs around it. I put this in a sky of orange cloth and waited to see what would suggest itself next.

After the trees came I made the head of Pan. That too flowed easily, but then everything came to a halt. I had the firm idea Pan needed a body, but I could neither make one nor see where to put it. I did make him a female companion. She had an arm, but for her, too, no body came forth.

And here are their roots and the ground where they grow.

One day as I held some sheer black cloth in my hand and trees suggested themselves. As I cut the cloth apart for the upper branches and attached them to the top of the orange cloth the lower part formed into the shape of a male tree, upright and sprightly. Then the next tree took the shape of a pregnant female tree with a more languid spreading shape.

How exciting. The materials and I were developing a relationship.

Having run out of ideas, everything sat for a year. Finally my friend Laurel came by and said Pan didn’t need a body and placed him where he is now on the male tree.

Now things began to fall into place. Obviously his lady and the female tree shared a connection. I put her on the tree and she began looking angrily at Pan. There they sat for a while.

Then Sandy came to stay the night and made a hostess present to Pan, a bunch of woven straw colored rattles that look like flowers. It was just what the lady wanted and she grabbed them. It was really easy to put them in her hand.

At this point I needed to take the lady's head down so I could sew on the background. When I put her head back, same head, positioned as closely to where she had been as I could, her mood change. Instead of being angry she now adores Pan. They have been very happy ever since I finished this in summer 2011.

I thought that Pan would sing to his lady love and tried him at the top of the lacy swag that sings across the canvas, and put the lady at the other end. But they looked wrong. It didn’t work any better to put him on the right end and her on the left.

Pan and his Lady was completed in 2011.