Tuesday, January 17, 2012

like a mother

Sandra Reford is taking an exhibition of Canadian quilts to Alsace, France in September of this year. I spoke with her on the phone last night, and she has selected about twenty artists or groups of artists from across this huge country, from Whitehorse to Fogo Island. That's incredible. Canada is one of the guest countries this year at the Carrefour Europeen du Patchwork. One of the pieces I'm sending is Twenty Four Hour Care, pictured here. In 2009, it was awarded the best traditional wall quilt in the Canadian Quilting Associations juried show. Sandra has to mail the information to France today, and so we all had to get our act together. This quilt took me seven years to make, as I kept putting it aside for life's tumult. During that period of time my family experienced a marriage, a birth, three deaths, a job loss, and our emptied nest. Each time that I returned to work on it after brief periods away, it was like coming home to mother.

9 comments:

henrietta (aka ani aka zani) said...

ah, the cloth laying on the logs absorbing the energy of the sun and in return it will give energy to those that see it and lay under it as well. nice metaphor - cloth, cover and mom.

Ms. said...

Aside from the fact that your handiwork is exquisitely accomplished, the messages and meanings incorporated in it move me to tears sometimes--all those buttons, buttoning up all the kids over all those years, and the life that lived through each return to it--it's all there and all brilliantly pointed. Life and art are one whole cloth.

Nancy said...

Magnificent!
Michelle says it so well. This quilt holds so very much. Very special as well as pleasing to look at. Ahhh...to feel where the buttons connect to cloth, like life itself.

Sandra Reford said...

Thanks for your participation Judy! I have been following your career for some time. I love your work and I am so happy Twenty Four Hour Care is part of "Tradition in Transition". It should be a great show!

Valerianna said...

A beautiful quilt, Judy. And a wonderful story.... thanks.

mansuetude said...

Lovely work, and something expressively symbolic (for me at least) to see it on the snow on a wood pile. The cold snow on the back, a refreshening.

lovely

Penny Berens said...

Sandra has taken on a huge job hasn't she!

Anonymous said...

isn't that true. i feel that way about one of mine...moreso than all the others.

Karen Thiessen said...

Congratulations Judy!!!!