intuition

I brought this piece of en caustic printed linen with me as a sample for the workshop, but did not get to start stitching into it until everything was over.


I don't KNOW what I'm doing, but it is a great comfort to me just to stitch while talking with my dad.

We watch Coronation street and the news together.

I stitch.

untitled

Everything went well.

the workshop and talk went really well.

I feel a bit inside out and backwards.

April came over to Kingston from Montreal. She took part in the workshop and made a wonderful piece and helped me so much.

The next few days will be spent visiting my father, who lives here in Kingston. Taking a break from the whirlwind of Manitoulin.

Modernism and Slow art

Hundertwasser 1960

This weekend's workshop in Kingston seems to have come together on its own. Eva Hesse 1966

I'm teaching hand stitching with a modernist sensibility, based on archetypal symbols that are the basis for much of 50's and 60's art. Nettie Kenedy 1955 (a Gee Bend quilt)

I'll be showing these images on the first day.

"art does not reproduce the visible, rather it makes visible" Paul Klee

all that is required is to slow down and reflect

I spend a lot of time alone.

I read the art reviews, the concert reviews and the movie reviews in the Toronto Globe and Mail and realize how isolated I am. (Manitoulin does not have a movie theatre)

“Ned” I say. “My work is backwoods, its out of step.”

He responds, “I don’t know Jude, where IS the centre of the universe?”

So that’s the title of the talk I'm giving on Friday.

line work

The kids gave me a sweet little red canon digital camera for my last birthday. Now I've lost the thingey that recharges the battery.
Unable to post any new photos, these are old ones of dyed and painted fabrics in the wind. They're relevant because they are in the talk I've been preparing to give in Kingston on Friday as a prelude to the 'slow art' workshop.

It will turn up.

two new panels

Translating the painted designs into full sized 90 inch cloth pieces is a little daunting but a start was made yesterday at the regular Thursday sewing circle. Three different women over the course of the day worked on the blue dotted eyelet stitches pictured left. I've received several donations of lace. How can I use it in a contemporary manner? How can I honour it? A long strip of foundation-pieced table cloth linen is the beginning of yet another panel. There are four panels in the Manitoulin circle project and one is completed, ready to be hand quilted. I'll blog about it tomorrow.

by heart

I tell my piano students to learn their repertoire by heart. What I mean is that they should memorize their music. that the music should go into their body, because under the stress of performance, we rely on the body to take over when one thinks too much, everything gets wrecked. The blue colours from our Exuma visit are held in my heart.

Painting Class

"I paint to be loved" Andre Breton

stitching in car again

We had a road trip over the weekend to deliver my art work and visit two of Ned's cousins, both named Tony. These fields were in the Hockley valley, north of Guelph. I stitched. Highway 69 is being widened. There are new rock cuts, trees have been cut down, made into piles of wood chips. This is the back.

cut-ups

I had to make photo collages of my exhibition idea for the degree work I'm doing in the UK. I procrastinated forever, but it was a valuable exercise. The best one was of the Halcrow house from the front with ten blue quilts flapping. To get the quilts to the correct scale for the house, I cut up 4" x 6" photos of my indigo fabrics that I'd pinned in arrangements. Put things sideways. Cropped things drastically. Now I see new quilt designs. Simple and minimalist. photo collage across two pieces of 18 x 24 drawing paper

Looking at Water

imagine this

Imagine my indigo quilts billowing on a clothes line near the Halcrow house.

easter nostalgia

Reading Jeana Marie's post about dyeing easter eggs with onion skins and silk with her daughters gave me a pang, and I dug out these ancient eggs. The two large ones are goose eggs, and they are at least 24 years old. I know that we moved across Ontario with them. Many of these eggs were blown before the kids dyed or painted them, others have just been left to dry out.
They are fragile, yes.
They are treasures, yes.

her art

I'm getting ready to post my work to England for this term. Today I photographed these heart shaped boxes (which I did not make). They are filled with journal papers. (which I did ) Click on these names to see thought provoking art work.

Alice Kettle likes working on a large scale.

Polly Binns makes grids of stitch on large pieces of linen.

Susan Lordi Marker uses iron and copper in dot patterns on cloth.

Deborah Fisher writes poetically about making.

Ann Hamilton asks questions that engage me intellectually.

Rachel Brumer uses whatever material she needs to tell personal yet universal stories.

What is Canadian identity?

Living as a white artist on Manitoulin, one of native North America's most sacred places, is problematic. I live in the middle of a rich culture, yet it is not my culture. What is Canadian identity?

I like to think of the cement houses on Manitoulin as if they were pioneer women who looked at the lake.

the brown motherly furrows
the whole estate
we walk on air
there is only the moon, embalmed in phosphorous
there is only a crow in a tree
make notes

Sylvia Plath