Last night, I stood at Wealthy Street Theater with a group of strangers and watched David Lynch’s The Grandmother as part of a Grand Rapids Film Society event. The film was strange, silent, and full of feeling—a boy grows a caretaker from the ground when no one else is kind. After the credits rolled, we sat together and discussed what it meant, what it stirred up, and the universal ache to feel held.
What surprised me most wasn’t the film, but the feeling that stayed with me after: the deep knowing that all of us, at some point, try to create the one who will love us. We grow our caretakers when the real ones fail us.
And isn’t that what art is?
Isn’t that, in some way, what God is?
“We create our gods, and then our gods create us.”
— Rob Bell
This quote has been ringing in my ears ever since the film. It’s not just poetic—it’s a roadmap. It helps explain why art is so vital and holy.
In Lynch’s The Grandmother, a child plants a seed in the dirt and grows a caregiver from nothing. He brings forth the love he needed. But once she’s born, she doesn’t just serve him—she changes him. She comforts him. She shapes his reality.
That’s what happens when we create with intention. We pull something from the unknown, and in turn, it remakes us.
Dash Dyeing as Devotion
This is what I feel every time I dash pigment on fabric.
When I started More Joy, I wasn’t trying to be a fashion designer. I was trying to find my way back to life. I had left a version of me that didn’t love me. I had come back to life, and it was jarring. I was newly sober and unsure of who I was anymore. All I knew was that I needed to touch color. I needed to repair what had been worn thin.
So I started creating. First with embroidery. Then with pigment. Then with everything.
My dash dye method—using powdered pigments activated by wind, water, intuition, and prayer—became my sacred ritual. It was a way to feel joy again and converse with something bigger than me.
Because I don’t control the wind.
I don’t know exactly where the dye will fall.
But when I hang my work on tall iron posts and watch it whip around like fabric fire, I feel God.
I made this practice.
But this practice remade me.
The Art of Creating a Creator
This isn’t just about dye. It’s about longing.
We all want to be cared for. To be guided. To feel something divine looking back at us with love. And when the systems or people around us don’t offer that, we create it ourselves. A god. A practice. A daily rhythm. A color palette. A piece of art that understands us better than our own family sometimes can.
Hilma af Klint believed her abstract paintings came from spirit guides.
Vincent van Gogh painted the swirling night sky in a search for connection.
Makoto Fujimura fuses theology and paint, calling art “a gift of grace.”
Even neuroscience backs this up: creative flow activates the same brain systems as spiritual awe.
Art is how we create God.
And God—through the act of creating—begins to recreate us.
Come Dash With Me
When I invite people into my backyard to dye, I’m not just offering an art session. I’m offering them a new way to experience surrender, to see what happens when they let go, to partner with the wind, to let something scatter and trust it will become beautiful anyway.
Because joy isn’t a concept.
It’s a practice.
And every time we make something new out of something old, we participate in creation. Not just of color or cloth—but of self, God, and the world we want to live in.
Let’s create the Creator together.
Want to experience this in person?
Join me at a More Joy event or book a private dash-dye session. We’ll play with pigment, weather, and wonder—and see what kind of creation or caretaker appears.
