This was a difficult challenge; “progress” can be a noun, an adjective, or a verb, but there’s no easy way to represent any of them pictorially. I cast around for an image that would work, and settled on “fire.”

When our ancestors developed the ability to create, sustain, use, and control fire they set the stage for progress of all sorts – the taming of fire is perhaps humanity’s most fundamental act of progress. Whether they lived in forests or prairies, in frigid, torrid, or temperate climates, early people lived in environments that were to one degree or another hostile. Fire not only made cooked food possible, it also served to ward off predators. This is the center of my piece: a fire, built of loose branches and set among rocks, in a threatening forest.

I’ve used hand stitch to fasten the elements of the picture to its background and to intensify the fire itself.