OTHER PEOPLE'S WORK #9

Triangular Zentangle® TILES (3-Z tiles) drawn by AE and placed in a mosaic. © 2017 to AE, all rights reserved. With thanks to her for permission to post.

I hope you will take a careful look at the above piece.  It's made from 28 triangular tiles placed together.  Each tile is unique, and was tangled by my good friend AE.  The overall effect is stunning.  And, they can all be moved around easily for a completely different look. 

Take another moment to look at each individual triangle and you'll see the level of creativity at work here.
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This afternoon I returned from spending five days with AE..  She's been dealing with a particularly challenging and confusing illness for months now, and coincidentally (or was it...?), she learned Zentangle right around the time that the illness announced itself.  For the last several weeks she has been receiving intensive and intrusive treatments, and I can't emphasize how often she has mentioned that tangling has enabled her to cope.

And while coping, she has been producing these mini-beauties.  Here are a few more examples (with thanks to her for letting me post these):

© 2017 to AE. More 3-Z tiles using the idea of plates as a string.

© 2017 to AE. A Zendala tile with brown and black Micron pens.

© 2017 to AE. A Zendala tile with just a touch of color.

© 2017 to AE. A Zendala tile with the tangles Paradox and Pokeleaf.

The meditative nature of Zentangle has been extremely helpful while she has been in treatment.  Tiles are the perfect size for portability and for tangling while waiting to be seen in a doctor's office.  One of the things I truly love about tangling is that it is a form of moving meditation, and enables a person to focus completely on the present, line by line, and not get caught up in past or future.  This is a huge advantage if you are waiting for a treatment session, a doctor's appointment or any stressful situation.  AE has been making the best of her time, as you can see here.
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We have known each other for almost 40 years (how the hell did that happen?) and have a lot of shared interests.  We met while pursuing a particular spiritual tradition and soon discovered a mutual love of art and crafts.  For years we both did bead work (she focused on loom work, I focused on bead embroidery) and between us we accrued enough beads to open a bead store.  Not that that was our intention; as we are both "tool hoarders," we never considered selling our stock and each still have pounds of seed beads.  We are constant knitters and each have huge yarn stashes.  We both enjoy writing and have blogs; she has also written a novel.  We've each accumulated way too many art supplies.  We each meditate daily.  We both read constantly, and our home libraries have many similar books.   I wouldn't even want to speculate about how many books each of our homes contain...too many.

I have to laugh at the similarities--we are each hopelessly determined and obsessive in pursuing our interests.  In just a few short months, she's produced as many tangles as I have in all the years I've been tangling.  She has taken her tangling kit to every doctor's appointment and treatment session, and used that time well.  It's an honor to share some of her work here.

And yet we are also very different, something I also enjoy.  I value our discussions, whether we are agreeing or disagreeing.

I am fortunate to have her as a friend, and hope we continue our crazy, obscure, satisfying interests for years to come.  She is kind, resilient, talented, hilarious and courageous.  A gift in my life.

"Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down."
– Oprah Winfrey

"There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate."
― Linda Grayson