Where I Tangle

Featuring Sue Agnew of Tucson, Arizona ~

Sue has been contributing tiles (along with her entertaining and heartfelt notes) since the very beginnings of IAST.  I was so pleased when she offered to share her tangling spaces with us.  

Sue writes:

When I got divorced at age 50, it had been so long since I’d lived alone, I was intrigued to discover how my day-to-day life at home (before and after work of course) would evolve. It has turned out that I have “islands” scattered around my house that I use for specific things.
I sit in this chair in my living room to read and to work Sudoku puzzles (note the stack of “I’ll get to them someday” books).

I have another chair in which I watch TV (lest you fear for my social life, I have a matching chair that I can wheel into the room when I have a houseguest or occasionally a boyfriend).

I even have a chair in which I brush my teeth — my electric toothbrush cycle takes 2 minutes, and I try to use that time sitting in this chair in my bedroom and looking outdoors and being grateful.

I am also including a picture of a chair in which I spend entirely too much time — at my computer! (Another chair, sadly, I don’t use enough — at my dining room table — I tend to eat most meals on a tray in front of the TV.)

And THIS is where I sit to Zentangle. It’s opposite my computer in my office/studio. The other areas of the office/studio are currently off limits to photographs until I check “clean up the studio” off my to-do list. The framed piece behind the table is an ensemble in which I participated a few years ago.

Also wanted to include two special places where I Zentangle. Soon after my first class with a CZT, in the summer of 2011, I flew to Ontario to visit my sister for a couple of weeks. We “camped” at the family cottage on Lake Superior that my grandfather built in the 1920s (my sister and her husband live in a year-round house on the same property). I’d brought Zentangle supplies to share with her, and we spent time every day (and have continued in subsequent years) sitting in the front windows looking out, talking, and drawing.

This summer, now that I am retired, I wanted to stay for a longer period of time, so I opted to try the newer cottage, which my grandfather built in the 1940s and which has running water and electricity. As kids we’d always stayed at the little camp, which has a beautiful private beach and low-bank waterfront, and the bigger cottage was my grandparents’ place and, after my parents retired, the place where they spent summers. It is also on the Lake but has a medium-bank waterfront and lots of trees in front. I found this summer that staying there by myself enabled me to “nest” and bond with the place and appreciate Grandpa’s workmanship, as well as its lovely setting. I began each day sitting in the front windows with my morning coffee and Zentangle supplies.

I am grateful that I had grandparents who were resourceful and visionary and adventurous and thrifty, and a mother who was dedicated to keeping the family property, and a sister who carries on that tradition. And for our interest in, and perhaps aptitude for, various art endeavors. This summer it was Gelli printing, but that’s a different story.

Thank you, Sue 💗