passage of time

 When Vincent Van Gogh was 32 he bought a stack of Japanese prints and studied them.

 

 He was influenced by the clear contour, the unshaded light, and the pure colour laid down with no attention to gradation of tone.

 "In studying Japanese art one finds out how the wise, the philosophic, the intelligent man spends his time."  Vincent

And still this project continues.  It must seem as if this is the only stitching that I am doing.  One skein of embroidery floss a day.

Now I am stitching the panels together into a long river of time.

a simple poem for Virginia Woolf

This started out as a simple poem

for Virginia Woolf you know the kind

we women writers write these days

in our own rooms

in our own time

a salute a gesture of friendship

a psychological debt

paid off

I wanted it simple

and perfect round

hard as an

egg I thought

only once I'd said egg

I thought of the smell

of bacon grease and dirty frying pans

and whether there were enough for breakfast

I couldn't help it

I wanted the poem to be carefree and easy

like children playing in the snow

I didn't mean to mention

the price of snowsuits or

how even on the most expensive ones

the zippers always snag

just when you're late for work

and trying to get the children

off to school on time

a straightforward poem

for Virginia Woolf that's all

I wanted really

not something tangled in

domestic life the way

Jane Austen's novels tangled

with her knitting her embroidery

whatever it was she hid them under

I didn't mean to go into all that

didn't intend to get confessional

and tell you how

every time I read a good poem

by a woman writer I'm always peeking

behind it trying to see

if she's still married

or has a lover at least

wanted to know what she did

with her kids while she wrote it

or whether she had any

and if she didn't if she'd chosen

not to or if she did did she

choose and why I didn't mean

to bother with that

And I certainly wasn't going

to tell you about the time

my best friend was sick in intensive care

and I went down to see her

but they wouldn't let me in

because I wasn't her husband

or her father her mother

I wasn't family

I was just her friend

and the friendship of women

wasn't mentioned in hospital policy

or how I went out and kicked

a dent in the fender of my car

and sat there crying because

if she died I wouldn't be able

to tell her how much I loved her

(though she didn't and we laugh

about it now) but that's what got me

started I suppose wanting to write

a gesture of friendship

for a woman for a woman writer

for Virginia Woolf

and thinking I could do it

easily separating the words

from the lives they come from

that's what a good poem should do

after all and I wasn't going to make excuses

for being a woman blaming years of silence

for leaving us

so much to say

This started out as a simple poem

for Virginia Woolf

it wasn't going to mention history

or choices or women's lives

the complexities of women's friendships

or the countless gritty details

of an ordinary woman's life

that never appear in poems at all

yet even as I write these words

those ordinary details intervene

between the poem I meant to write

and this one where the delicate faces

of my children faces of friends

of women I have never even seen

glow on the blank pages

and deeper than any silence

press around me

waiting their turn

Poem by Kingston Ontario poet Bronwen Wallace  (1945-1989)
Paintings of the island she looked at in Lake of the Woods near Morson Northwestern Ontario by Pauline Johnson (1927-2007) (my mother)

sisu

sisu: courage, pluck, stubbornness, stamina, obstinacy

sisu: stick-with-it-ness, nerve, pride, spirit, perseverance

sisu: energy, gumption, heart

sisu:  facing down life and the changes ahead

good news

 

Sometimes there is good news.

I have received a reprieve in regard to moving out of my studio.

Great Aunt Diana's 1956 wedding dress fits our bride daughter Grace.  (end of June wedding)

And Threadworks 2013 looks fabulous.  I spoke at the opening, click here to see that and here for more info about the exhibit.  More images of Threadworks 2013 are also up on facebook if you search.

welcomed

 Almost the first thing I noticed upon arrival at home was this second blooming of the Christmas amaryllis 

there in the window sill .  then I saw our bed with this quilt I made nearly 10 years ago, upside down on my half

title of quilt: husband and wife
see more of it here

Rebecca Soudant

 "in this panel my water is breaking"   Rebecca Soudant

Sailing with John, cotton embroidery thread on canvas by Rebecca Soudant

Oh Rebecca.  Your hand embroidered tapestry, filled with colour and narrative, metaphor and beauty, time and power...communicates so much tenderness and pain.  

This tapestry panel is the first thing one sees upon entering the group exhibit I am Water, currently up at the steam museum in Kingston Ontario until May 2.

 Entirely covered with hand stitching, this is the second tapestry the artist has created about childbirth.

The earlier piece, "A tapestry of birth" is a thirty five foot documentation of the artist's first pregnancy .  For more photos and information about the artist,  click here. 

I believe I'm directly contradicting the way human beings are represented in our society.  
I think the universal is the male.  
And so in my deliberately turning this around and trying to universalize the female - 
-the rites of passage for women- 
birth, puberty, child-birth, death

would become the universal.  
I tried to challenge myself to look at the world as I wanted to,
as a woman artist, 
realizing the complexities of doing so because the world isn't really that way.

Nancy Spero

above photo of Rebecca by Asad Chishti,  

time

I'm glad that I have my stitch journal with me.

I don't get much chance to work on it here with dad, but every now and then there are minutes.

TIME by Kosso Eloul

Dad was discharged from hospital on Monday.  He has been back to doctor twice since then for new prescriptions.

The sculpture in the photo above is along the waterfront in Kingston. (more info here)
Notice the triangle of infinite space.  (photographed during one of my hospital-condo walks)

Not to know, but to go on.
A journal of a lived time (autumn 2010) visible...and also the time that I am living through right now because of my touching touching touching.

how it feels

art reflects how it feels to be a human being in this world
it just exists
it projects mystery, dignity, completeness

I made this in 2007
it still exists
it still reflects how I feel
how I feel tonight
and also how dad feels tonight

a survivor, but exhausted

quote of the day

Karma is the eternal assertion of human freedom. 
Our thoughts, our words, our deeds are the threads of the net which we throw around ourselves.

Vivekananda

star chart

Star chart  painted with mineral pigments on tanned elk leather
The many tiny stars in the middle represent the milky way
A sacred object of the Skidi Pawnee tribe who lived in what is now Nebraska
Buffalo hunters
village livers
cosmic believers

It entered the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago in 1906
it was already between 100 and 300 years old
the north star is the largest cross

Sources:  here  and here  with thanks.

not to know but to go on

 I took up stitching as my art form when I was an active mother of four.  With the quilt hoop next to the sandbox I was able to practice an art form larger than life, yet made during  it.

Herman, dad's cat

Thank you each very much for the supportive concern you've sent re: the recent loss of my beautiful studio.  I realize now that I was lucky to have had that space for six years.

I'm in Kingston again.  My father will be discharged soon from that rehabilitation hospital.  It's a new page for him, and I'm here to help him turn it.  I've picked up my art and brought it here to complete.

 Three years of panels need to be dated and sewn together with cotton tape.

"Our wills and fates do so contrary run
Our thoughts are ours
Their ends none of our own"        the player king in Hamlet

Wah

big work table

 I lost my studio this week.

pin walls for holding ideas

 The landlord (the town) is going to fix it up and move their offices in there.

space and natural light

 I am to be out by the end of May.

storage

The rent has been month to month.  I always knew deep down that this would happen.

Still.
I'm devastated.