Quiet Choices Handmade book mixed media with handmade papers 10"h x 8"w x 1"d 2008 Artist Private Collection
	Quiet out of the night - Mysteriously becoming our choices.
	Past, Present, Future - Traveling together on the backs of the winds.
	Cradled in hope - Streams of thought again begin their journey.
	Open heart behold - As a new way emerges going quiet into the day.

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Quiet Choices began as an assignment for a beginning jewelry class that I took to learn more about how to work with different metals. For a certain part of the class, we were asked to manipulate the metals as if they were soft, flexible. Braiding, crocheting, weaving; all were part of that vast field of possibilities. And then the final assignment came. "Combine all these techniques into one art piece."

Where my idea to make the book came from, I don't know, except to say as the journal started to log different ideas and with each page, I realized that if I let it...these metals could tell a story. Page layouts and their overlapping negative space began to show themselves, one at a time until the criteria for the assignment was met. Notes showed where page 4 would have the weavings, the zoom could be worked into the paper. The first page would start out simple and with each page progression, become more and more complex in design,until the final page would deliver the surprise ending. An ending that was in fact still a surprise to me.

As I created the pages, I deliberately left space for the text to be added later...space for the words to come to me when the time was right. It's truly a magical moment when the final pieces of any puzzle have surfaced and are triumphantly placed into their perfect spot, thus and only then....revealing the whole of a bigger picture. As I revisit this book now and again, I am still finding myself asking, "Where did these words come from?" How did my muses from the nether world possibly know these words, this piece, would become my touchstone for hope in darker hours - until daylight comes once again ... and of course, all quiet choices when sunned by the morning's light become magical.