INTRODUCTION + POETRY + MUSIC + ESSAYS + TRAVEL + FICTION + TEXTILE ART + HAAG'S BIO
It was inspired both by my having grown up in the Pacific Northwest, with its incredibly beautiful long -- February to June -- springs, and by, later in life, a visit to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. There, on a winter day, the covered courtyard was incandescent with hundreds of narcissus, daffodils and hyacinths. The air was perfumed with their scent. Its classic rooms offered coffered ceilings. Also, I was working on a novel at that time entitled NARCISSUS JONQUILLA.
Needlepointing had become almost like painting for me. I would sit down with a blank canvas and begin to stitch. The narcissus were "painted" in first, the background added after. Some of it was stitched on my travels, but mostly I worked on it in Los Angeles. Much of it was done in Tani Guthri and Dran Hamilton's POETS GATHERING which met for many years in my office at The American Film Institute. Both Tani and Dran served as my mentors in poetry, and POETS GATHERING was my honing ground, both for poetry and in the development of most of my early needlepoints.
Jan Haag may be reached via e-mail: jhaag@u.washington.edu
VII Great Grandmother's Legacy
THE FOLLOWING NEEDLEPOINTS ARE BASED ON THE RHYTHMS AND MELODY OF
NORTH INDIAN CLASSICAL MUSIC