Everything We Create is a Collaboration

arian Parsons posted this quote at Miss Mustardseed the other day.  It's from Rembrandt is in the Wind by Russ Ramsey.

“Everything we make, in some measure, relies on the help of others.  All of us rely on borrowed light.  Even the blind composer sits at a piano not made in darkness.  There’s only one who can make something from nothing – God.  The rest of us sub-create.  We work with what can be found lying around on the floor of creation and repurposed from the belly of the earth and the salvage heaps of industry.“

Marian then commented, 

It’s something good to chew on as we do creative work.  Every tool and material we work with – fabrics, paints, pigments, brushes, nails, hammers, sketchbooks, pencils… they have all been created and made by at least one other person.  Not just that, but there are the people who pack it, ship it, deliver it, put it on the store shelf, etc.  Everything is a collaboration.

I love this!  Everything is a collaboration!  Everything we make ... relies on the help of others! 

If I had to independently prepare the ground (with a shovel I made?) and plant cotton seeds (which I would have purchased or traded with someone else), care for the plants as they grew, harvest the bolls, pick the cotton from the seeds, card the fibers (with carders I made by hand?), then spin the fibers (and how much practice would it take to be able to spin a fine thread, and where did I get a spinning wheel or even a drop spindle?), warp a loom (which I made?!), weave the threads into fabric, dye it or print on it (with dye I made myself?  (No, wait, I've done that!)), cut the fabric (with scissors, or ripe it), sew it by hand (using needles I'd made myself).... 

If I had to do all of that to make a quilt, I don't think I would make one.  I would probably stop at harvesting the bolls or possibly even preparing the ground....

None of us creates in a vacuum.  We all need so much more than our own creativity to make beautiful things.

Just a few thoughts....

--Nancy.