I love these drawings of crochet doilies by artist Lisa Solomon's Toxic Doilies series. With titles like Formaldehyde and Carbon Tetrachloride, they bring me right back to that one hallway in my high school where the chem lab was next to the home ec classroom, and the art studio was across the hall. If I'd known then what I know now, I'd have spent a lot more time in the home ec and art studios and a lot less time feeling pressured to suffer through Chem 3, which, in an ironic twist that no guidance counselor could have predicted, was a total waste of my time.

My mother's generation would have celebrated the fact that as a girl I was pushed to study science and math instead of home ec, but to me, it's just a sad case of putting way more value into science than creativity. Now that I live in the big city and my role models are successful creative types rather than the doctors and engineers I was told to admire in high school, I just wish I'd been encouraged to nurture my creativity more during my studies. If I had a dime for every time I wished I'd gone to art or design school. Anyway, the intersection of creativity and science is what Lisa Solomon's work evokes for me. Who knew the nexus of the whole issue was in that hallway of my school?

I made a giant doily earlier this year, which I am planning to starch and attach to the wall somehow. I'd been thinking of using it as a stencil or a giant stamp, to create overlapping oversized doily images all over a wall. Lisa's work is so inspirational, I may just move my doily project up on the old to-do list.