A Creative Pilgrimage

A period of exploration, creation, and charting — a time woven from fabric, hue, memory, and location.

sabbatical travel map.

As this creative journey approaches its end, I'll be offering glimpses: pieces of a path crafted through paper, thread, and imagination. I hope you'll join me as these stories continue to evolve.

Thresholds and Echoes: A Diptych of Place; Photography and digital painting

Left – Stradun Nocturne Dubrovnik’s central street refracted through light and memory — a night sky rendered in pixel and pigment.

Right – Topkapı Passage A narrow corridor within Istanbul’s palace walls — where stone, silence, and shadow trace imperial echoes.

The  essence of living a creative life, at least for me is : you make plans, those plans change, you stay nimble, you generate ideas, and progress. You keep producing work. You observe, document, and interpret in your own way and at your own pace. You take action every day, even when it feels daunting, uncomfortable, or uncertain, because the outcome is never guaranteed. You take risks. You summon the courage to try.

Ladies Lounge, Frankfurt Airport, An abstracted color study on the fly, in crayon, eyeliner, and nail varnish — a fleeting palette of waiting, privacy, and quiet glamour

At the start of the year, I thought this sabbatical would simply involve some travel, research, and one focused project. But after nearly fifteen projects — and countless wild ideas and creative sparks along the way — a distinct arc has emerged.

Street Scene, Burano, Italy Color blocks and brushstrokes blur the boundary between memory and façade — a dreamscape rendered in acrylic and digital texture. Part of an ongoing exploration of place, palette, and the narratives held in architecture.

This blog has documented a time of creative exploration. So, it seems fitting to highlight some projects that emerged from daily practices: collage, photography, and paper studies. The journey naturally progresses through material experiments — woven papers, textiles, and thread maps — leading to larger narrative projects like Tabards of Place, Threaded Paths, Sacred Pockets, and The Chasuble Project. Note that some of these projects are still ongoing!

Dubrovnik Threadscapes and Maps, Micro stitched studies on watercolor paper — 1.5" x 1.5" thread, ink, and place-based memory.

Paper Palisades, A collage of rhythms and textured layers—echoing the cliffs on the Hudson River,

The posts follow a progression from 2D studies to 3D works: collage → weaving → textile → garment → installation. This evolution traces the journey from gathering raw materials and intuitive making to developing refined, conceptual pieces. The work interlaces paper, photography, textiles, and digital art, reflecting the interdisciplinary essence of the practice.

A Herald from the Woven Realm, Mixed media costume sketch — custom fabrics of places based on artists photography, collage, thread, and ink. The figure’s face is adapted from the Leonardo da Vinci caricature series.

Thematically, the core ideas have deepened over time:

• Mapping: through aerial views, body maps, and stitched landscapes.

• Memory and Place: through sacred architecture, material culture, and projects like Tabards of Place and The Threaded Paths Project.

• Devotion and Identity: through garments like tabards and chasubles, and through collaborative works like Sacred Pockets.

• Fragmentation and Assembly seen in daily collages, woven papers, The Paper Army, and the layered textiles of The Heralds of Woven Realms.

Throughout, there is a reverence for the sacred woven into daily life — what may seem mundane to some was a visual feast for me repeatedly. whether capturing breakfast plates of color and textures, an old cobblestone street through photography or reimagining the tabard in contemporary form. Pilgrimage, both physical and creative, emerges as a steady metaphor, much like the narratives we construct in theater.

Scenes from Daily Life: Fragments from Home and Away

Top Row – Everyday Details, Elsewhere:Morning still life from Istanbul · Weathered shutter stop, Burano

Middle Row – Objects That Hold Stories: Bowl and onion, quiet kitchen in New Jersey· Cross and carved wood, Mission Carmel

Bottom Row – Thresholds and Watchfulness:Stairwell geometry, San Francisco · Guard on duty, Istanbul

Together, these many projects form a cycle of observation, transformation, and interdisciplinary storytelling — stitching a vivid narrative of memory, place, devotion, and material exploration. It feels cohesive and artistically alive. It reveals a real arc — a creative pilgrimage unfolding across place, imagination.

Left: Konavle, Croatia (Fabric Landscape)Pinned textures of Konavle—stitched terrain in progress.

Right: Sniježnica, Croatia (Watercolor) Soft ridges and misted light—Sniježnica in watercolor.

Over the coming months, I will be sharing portions of this documented work as an evolving archive. Each post will offer insights into the inspiration behind a project and its place in the larger story. I've mentioned several project titles and given a glimpse of some images here. More images will be shared in future posts, and I hope you'll continue to follow the journey.

-Val