Shoulder cloth (slendang) c. 20th century

This anonymous shoulder cloth from the Minneapolis Institute of Art, is a field of pulsing patterns, worked in reds, whites, and indigos. It makes me think about persistence, and working in a mode where it is difficult to know when to stop. I imagine someone—maybe many people—sitting together, passing the cloth back and forth, adding another tiny dot, another floral burst. Were they chatting? Maybe it was silent, but with the tacit understanding of the group all moving in unison. It makes me think of Agnes Martin and her grids, of the impulse to repetition, to keep going, filling the void with tiny marks. Each gesture, each stitch, is a meditation, a slow revealing. It's a conversation across time, from this maker to Agnes to me, all of us finding solace, and maybe even transcendence, in the simple act of making marks. What will you make?