New Dawn is part of my Goddess Series. This series honors the female form and the feelings of joy, awakening, and celebration. Her image was inspired by a necklace I purchased in a museum gift shop. To add to the idea of rising, I often depict her with her arms raised and holding or reaching an orb. Sometimes, I use the orb as her halo to imply that she is special.

The cotton broadcloth fabrics in this piece were dyed with Procion MX dyes using immersion and thickened dye techniques. I cut the fabrics into shapes and fused them onto a felt backing. I screened her image onto the fabric using fabric paint and also screened on the images of the musical notes and the orbs. The orb above her can symbolize a sun, a moon, a ball, etc. The musical notes can be symbols of birdsong in the morning, a newly created melody, or simply sounds happily sighed as she faces the sun and stretches up towards it after she wakes up at dawn looking forward to a new day.

The cording was created from embroidery floss and hand couched onto the artwork and it was machine quilted with lines representing rays. The rays and the painted rings represent the sounds radiating and harmoniously resonating. To finish New Dawn, I sewed a facing onto the edges and tacked them to the felt backing. A flat, aluminum slat, backed by velcro, is attached to the back at the top and has wire running through it so that it is ready to hang as a traditional tapestry.

(You could frame it if you choose to do so by removing the slat.)