working in series

I've been working on pieces inspired by the photo in the last posting. I kept dyeing silk, not getting the color I wanted, and ending up with nice pieces of fabric that weren't what I wanted...but somehow most of them have ended up in pieces in progress. If I had to pick, one of them would be the most representative of what the picture says to me, but they all are abstracted from the same point in time and space.

Now that I've had a couple of solo shows, I find myself wondering where to go from here. And keep coming back to the notion that my body of work is kind of a scattered vision of the world. People tell me they can pick out my work; I don't always see that. But seeing a large portion of my work on the walls of a gallery, I see this jumping from place to technique to play. I think I want to try to get a cohesive set of pieces, one that anyone can see go together.

But where to start? That's the problem I've been mulling over the last few weeks. This challenge group is one series, but I have no where to go from that--one piece hasn't really led to the next. I have another piece in progress, one exploring the idea of stratification, such as seen in the canyons of the southwest. I'm just not sure if I can find the next step to take to make a group out of this...

And so I continue to putter. I have made pieces lately, just haven't gotten around to photographing them so I could show them to you. My growth as an artist feels like it's stepping in place--I'm ready to take the next step, as soon as I can see where to plant my feet.