Spring Portals // a return

Processing through the process, flower power and upcoming events

May 12, 2025

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Hello and welcome back to Spiralling! I say that to myself as well as to those of you reading, as I feel like I’ve been on quite the journey to find myself back here...

A brief update:

In the months since my last issue, I’ve been slowly working away behind the scenes of DORTA, and a change in my living circumstances means I have been resting more than I have ever rested before. It’s been revolutionary.

I’ve also been running The Stitching Circle, DORTA’s free community yarn club which I began in January 2024. I’ve only recently begun to share it more widely on Instagram, as it turns out I was much more reluctant to return to social media than I realised. Almost a year and a half after I had planned to return DORTA Studio to the internet, I made it back this week.

The Stitching Circle at Angel Meadow, Manchester, 30th April 2025

Spring portals

Spring for me always feels like a return of sorts: a return of the flowers, a return of the greenery, of warmer weather and longer evenings.

One of my favourite things to do this time of year is to go for a walk around the area I live in. These walks have become a stronghold of my creative and general wellbeing, as I find my mind jumps between thoughts in a way that leaves my ideas tangled and my brain overwhelmed if I stay indoors at my laptop. Taking myself outside helps to mentally detangle these thoughts by physically walking various routes of quiet suburban streets, and allowing my mind the space to wander along with my body. Processing my thoughts through the process of walking.

(This process is greatly aided by the vast amount of blossoming flowers in so many of the front gardens that I pass, and I am always in awe of how many people take the time to tend to and maintain such lovely home fronts. I appreciate their efforts very much.)

Every year the reemergence of the flowers helps me recalibrate. I truly believe in nature’s power to remind us to trust in the process, and during Spring we can see this process unfurl before our very eyes. The opening of the portal.

In English the concept of the portal is often found in fantasy or sci-fi writing and films, although the definition is simply ‘a doorway, gate, or other entrance’. In French the word for door is ‘la porte’, and in Spanish: ‘la puerta’. In Italian and Portuguese it’s ‘la porta’.

Going back to the English, we use ‘porta-’ to describe when something is portable; moveable. We also use find ‘port’ in ‘transport’ and ‘transportable’.

Combining these definitions, we can say that a portal is a gateway, an entrance to something else, perhaps something new: a new perspective, a new beginning. A portal provides an opportunity for escapism, whilst also allowing a return to reality. A portal can transport us to another dimension: of imagination, of ourselves. And if we use our imagination, we could say that everyday moments, processes and objects are gateways to the magical.

And speaking of magic, portals are also a common notion in witchcraft, with both the circle and the spiral being an image and concept to depict them. Coven meetings begin with the drawing of the circle, a ritual of cleansing the space in order for the group to sit within a circle of clear energy. To Wicca, the spiral represents the movement of time and the circularity of nature and life.

When I think of a portal, I imagine a sort of swirling opening in the air. The more I pondered on this whilst writing this issue, I realised that I was also imagining a spiral.

You can read a more in-depth description of the spiral and why it’s the title of this newsletter from the first issue here.

In the first issue of Spiralling I wrote about the notion of time as a spiral. The beginnings of this Spring portals issue of the newsletter were conceived in April last year, but circumstances meant I didn’t send it or indeed any other issues out until now. I’ve been planning them all this time, but the time to make them visible didn’t feel right until now. (And I have more confidence, experience and clarity in the concept than I did a year ago!).

My recent Spring walks have really helped me bring my ideas together. On one of my walks I was thinking about what it is that draws me to Louise Bourgeois’ work so much, and I realised that it’s her process that I’ve found so influential and formative, her reason for making. Her work still has impact on its own for me, and I would enjoy the aesthetic of her fibre art in particular with little to no context. But it’s her process that has the most profound impact on me, that I would say has influenced my life so greatly that I’m unsure I’d be on this path were it not for being so inspired by her to use my hands to communicate myself - to myself and to others.

Spiral textile art by Louise Bourgeois, from The Woven Child exhibition at The Hayward Gallery in London

The spiral is also a key motif in both image and concept in the work of Louise Bourgeois, representing her process of art-making as a means of acceptance of the past: something that is done over and over again, with self-understanding growing with each turn.

That is the aim of the DORTA workshops I’ve been developing: to encourage you to delve into the process, your process, to construct a framework of creative exploration that you can use as an anchor when navigating life’s ups and downs.

And it’s the aim of this newsletter, to help you become curious about your own processes, creative or otherwise, by sharing mine with you.

Upcoming DORTA Events

The Stitching Circle In-Person

Wednesday 14th May, 6pm - 8pm at Altogether Otherwise (or Angel Meadow park if the weather is glorious!)
Wednesday 28th May, 6pm - 8pm at Altogether Otherwise