When I think of Maria and her spirit, I think of one of those blindingly colorful and spinning kaleidoscopes, they turn and turn, and every time they turn, they show colors and forms and symbols in a different way. Maria came up to me the other morning, she said she wanted a photo of herself wrapped in her most recent quilt, which she called “Trust.”

She made the quilt four or five days ago and it didn’t sell immediately, which bothered her. Maria doesn’t care about money or success, I think she sees each of her works as a child, a wonderful foster creation in need of a home.

She doesn’t quite rest until it finds one.

She is fortunate, then, in that almost everything she makes finds a home quickly. She had this idea to wrap herself in the quilt, and I didn’t ask her any questions. Maria has many creative impulses, and she can get  grumpy if asked to explain them, they come from voices and images dancing in her head, it is not within the realm of vocabulary to describe them in detail.

Living with an artist is not really like living with anything else. It is art in living form.

Somehow, I thought these photos captured the soul of an artist, they spoke to the relationship between the artist and the art she creates, it is so person, she literally and figuratively wraps herself in it. Of the phots I took, this was my favorite, the soul of an artist peeking out of the artist’s creation.

Oh, she sold the quilt shortly after this photo was taken.