our mother-daughter exhibition

 April and I began installing our exhibition today.

We have put together a mother-daughter show of new hand stitched quilts. 

Earlier and Later is the title we chose for it.  

The curator, Robyn Wilcox, figured out the placement.  My husband Ned was first assistant.

April's quilts dance into a future.  My quilts are steeped in my personal history.  April and I are part of a long tradition of creativity, women makers, and the passing on of skills. It's exciting for the two of us to be showing together at the Craft Ontario gallery in the city of Toronto.  I'm very proud of her and of our rich relationship.  

The opening reception is in one week in the early evening of  June 18.  Our joint talk with the curator is on June 20 at 2 pm.  

The Beauty of the Green Earth,
 hand stitched quilt, Tree Everlasting pattern
 by Judy Martin 2026

in relation to an inlet

My quilts are objects that come together from materials I can touch, but also from some kind of fantasy of what I hope and dream yet can not name.  

Slow to make, with many repetitive tasks that put me into a meditative state, they are listeners for the things I can’t say out loud in my normal life.  

When I made my first quilts, and even later, after I had been going along for years, I had a fantasy.  

My fantasy was about my own work.  I thought it was unusual.  

I thought that it was creative.  I knew that it was art.

But when I look now at what has been done and continues to be done by the giants of this immense world, I realize that my work is rather ordinary.  This realization does not mean that I am going to slow down or stop making it.  And it doesn't mean that I am going to stop having the fantasy that what I'm making is something new and true and different.  

It only means that I realize that I'm a speck, and that it is a big world.  

“I’m sorry for forgetting how small I was in relation to an inlet.  

  Every day is a last day, and it is more than enough.  Max Porter 

Maria Hupfield : Jingle Spiral

Maria Hupfield was born in Parry Sound, Ontario, Canada in 1975.  She works across disciplines such as video, performance, and industrial felt.  After ten years of living in Brooklyn, NY, Maria has returned to Canada, and resides in Toronto. She identifies as an urban Anishinaabe who belongs to the Wasauksing First Nation (Huron Robinson Treaty) in Ontario.

Jingle Spiral (2015) (pictured above) references the Ojibwe sacred powwow dress.  Such dresses feature hundreds of metal cones that creae a soothing sound when the dancer moves.  In her 2017 exhibition at the Power Plant in Toronto, Jingle Spiral was presented mounted on the wall as well as in a performance video. Watch the video at this link.

Maria Hupfield is assistant professor in Indigenous Performance and Media Art at the University of Toronto in Mississauga where she runs the Indigenous Creation Studio and is also the Director and Lead Arrtist in the Department of Visual Studies / English and Drama.  As well, she works with graduate students at the St. George Campus of U of T.  Hupfield states:  "My research brings together studio based practices and processes with expansive definitions of art that are informed by knoweldge from nations connected to the campus in the Great Lakes region."  

Maria Hupfield is number 9 in the Canadian Arists who work with Textiles series.  

as if we were all immortal

There is a room in Paris filled with the lady and unicorn tapestries.  

I thought about it the other day when I came across an old journal entry.    

The Musee de Cluny is a haven within the busy centre of Paris.  I visitted Paris last year with our middle daughter, Grace.   One fond memory of that trip is our hunt in the gift store of this museum for a second pillow with a unicorn done in needlepoint.  We wanted the twins to each have their own.     

I took a few photos of the tapestries and am sharing them here.  The now lost journal entry was about hope and the human spirit and how the handmade object is an expression of resilliance.    

These tapestries are so old, yet there is something forever young about them.  

as if we were all immortal in some way

ourselves enormous

in the plumed fields of light are the shapely deeds of our flesh

what grandeur

                 (words by Al Purdy, Canadian poet)

Click this link to view Rebecca Mezoff's visit to the Cluny museum in 2019.  She describes and gives images of each of the tapestries.   

Lonesome Dove

Been thinking about the blog again.  About why I write it?

And why it seems so important to me to share it?

The first question:  Why do you write this blog, Judy?

The answer:  I write it in order to have a record of when (and sometimes how) I made my quilts.  This is why I show my work in process.  The beautiful process of stitching is shown so well in the photos.  The more difficult process of designing a new piece is something that I also try to write about, but that struggle is not as beautiful.  

I write the blog so that my creative process is recorded.  

The second question:  Why is it so important to share your blog with the world, Judy?  For two years now, you've been sending out monthly emails to remind people that you've posted.  Why do you care that other people see your process?  

Actually, this question is what I have been thinking about the most. 

I started sending the email update newsletters because the main auto-subscribe service that I had listed my blog with told me that they would stop working.  So, I thought that it would be easy for me to just let people know with a monthly email.  In the same email, I could let people know that I have a design blog (my process) and a news blog (judy's updates) that are regularly updated.  Why?  

My kids advised me to start a substack instead, and eventually I did so.  It's called Judy's Newsletter, and right now, it is just a repeat of the monthly blog letter.  

But why mom?  

Answer:  I want to share this blog with you because it is about taking care of myself.  I make these quilts to take care of myself.  I share them with the world in exhibitions because I think that there is no other artform that is quite so motherly as a quilt. 

I want people to read the blog and feel inspired to start creating.  That's why I share it.

And I send the emails to people who are not interested in starting further social platforms like instagram and like substack.  I have a lot of those kinds of readers.

Judy's Journal is now in its 21st year of publication.  That's a long time.  I do celebrate that.  I am not tired of writing about my work, and showing photos of the works as they progress.  I might be getting tired of the monthly emails though.  Judy's Newsletter is free on Substack.   

   

Images in this post are of three new pieces that I am getting ready for an exhibition in Toronto this summer.  I've been listening to the very long and beautifully written novel, Lonesome Dove , while stitching. 

Mary Scott: Shredded Painting

Shredded Painting, unwoven canvas, by Mary Elizabeth Scott

Mary Scott is a Canadian artist who was born in  Calgary, Alberta in 1948.  

Mary Scott holds a BFA (1978) from University of Calagary and an MFA (1980) from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.  She was assistant head to Banff visual arts from 1982 - 1984, and then began teaching drawing and painting at the Alberta College of Art and Design, retiring in 2012. She refused to accept the paintbrush as the only way, and in the 70's and 80's, used a syringe to apply paint to alternative surfaces.  Around the same time, she started to incorporate text into her work and words by Gertrude Stein and Luce Iragary are featured in some pieces.  Scott's work is in several major public collections including the National Gallery of Canada.  

In you more me than you Mary, safety pins and acrylic, no date, by Mary Scott
collection of Owens art gallery, New Brunswick

The impact of feminism in the 70's and 80's encouraged women artists to look at traditional women's craft and reinterpret it into pieces that were gallery worthy, full of content and skill.

Imago (viii) "translatable" *is That Which Denies*,
by Mary Scott, embroidery and unwoven silk, 1988

Mary Scott's feminist work is based on reading and there are layers of meaning in her work.  Her labour intensive techniques include shredding cloth or removing the weave of various fabrics, embroidery, gold leaf, wrapping, crochet, and painting/writing with a syringe.  Mary Scott's fabric and text-based paintings heralded the emergence of post modernism and feminism in Canadian art.  

number 8 in the series:  Canadian Artists who Work with Textiles

foundation pieced circles

A diary 

I worked on this blue piece for nearly 3 weeks.  The plan was to make a circle from triangles. Foundation piecing gave me security.  Drawing the shapes onto a base cloth and then using the stitch and flip method gave me freedom.  Sharing here with humbleness. 

Feb 22:  First I pinned a cotton sheet to my pin-wall that would be my master life-sized drawing. Using a washable marker, I traced around a circular tablecloth. This is the size I want my finished circle to be.  

Then I cut out tissue paper triangles intuitively. I made enough tissue paper triangles to go around the diameter of the circle and pinned them to the wall. The short fat triangles on the left were the size I used.     

Feb 24:  I had been hoarding this dotted fabric and was excited to use it. The triangles were cut out one at a time and pinned to the wall.  It took a couple of days just to cut and pin.  

Feb 25:  Once I had all the outer triangles cut and pinned to the wall, it was time to cut fabrics for the narrower inside triangles that would be used to join them together.  I had to make a decision about whether to use more dotted fabric for the inner triangles or use contrasting fabric.  I made more tissue paper patterns.  I looked.  I made decisions. 

Feb 28:  I sewed all the triangles by hand and was able to create a complete circle.  As I sewed two together, I pinned them to the wall and continued looking and considering.  

March 1:  I moved everything onto the table.  

March 1:  With a washable marker I began to fill in the circle.  My idea is to use concentric rings of triangles and work my way to the centre.  The first ring is three inches wide.  

I traced along the inside edge of the sewn triangles and then a second line 3 inches in.  Within those two lines, I drew triangles to fit the curve.  I did not measure these triangles, but trusted my intuition.  All drawing was directly onto the bedsheet.

March 2:  Using a separate piece of cotton gauze fabric, I traced the triangles.  This is my foundation pattern. Use a lightweight see-through fabric for your foundation cloth.   (The gauze I use is available here .) 

March 2:  Stitch and flip through the drawn lines on the foundation fabric. I made four curved gauze patterns with the traced triangles on them.  

To guide my cutting and to be frugal with my hoarded dotted cloth, I made tissue paper patterns for the triangles.  A fatter -based one for the outer triangle and a thinner -based one for the inner triangle.   

March 4:  I was soon able to sew the inner curve to the outer curve.  (by hand of course)

March 6:  The two outer rings of a large circle are now pieced.  I might continue making foundation rings of triangles and work my way to the centre.  I'm not sure anymore.  

I was so happy creating this, but the amount of activity in the white dots on the blue base challenges my pared down aesthetic.  I’m putting it aside to steep for a while.  

Feminine Writing: The House With the Golden Windows

the house with the golden windows

 

In 1993 I made a paper and canvas piece entitled The House With the Golden Windows.  It was inspired by a childhood memory from when our family drove home from Fort Frances.  My mother would half turn her head from the front seat and point at the small farm houses set back from the road, their windows glinting from the late afternoon sun. “Look at the golden windows” she said.

Last week I found an envelope of black and white photos of the house. I'd like to talk about them in today's blog post.   

Helene Cixous

This art piece is an example of Feminine Writing, described by the important French philosopher / intellectual / writer, Helene Cixous. (born 1937)   She said: 

The feminine writer, like a mother, looks with a look that recognizes, studies, respects, doesn’t take, doesn’t claw, but attentively, with gentle relentlessness, contemplates and caresses, bathes, and makes the other shine.  She brings back to light the life that has been buried.  She signs its name.  

I believe that this sewn house is feminine writing because it shines a light on the domestic day to day.  It makes that daily life shine while using feminine techniques and materials.  

For one year, I took a photo every day from within the house I lived in with my family in Kenora, Ontario.  Every day I chose an interesting or beautiful sight from one of the windows, and then snapped it with my film camera.  Although the east side of the house did not have many windows I did take a few from the window over the kitchen sink that looked directly at where the neighbour kept his garbage cans.  

However, my favourite view was of the back yard.  It could be seen from the many north windows and most of the 365 photos are from the north side of the house.  

the north wall interior

I was a mother artist when I made this piece.  You can see the children's sandbox from the north facing windows.  The house was finished in time to exhibit it in the Lakehead University degree show in the spring of 1993.  We moved to Manitoulin that same year.    

this detail of the north window shows the maple tree and the neighbour's fence

I didn’t realize that was to be our last year in the house when I began taking those photos. 

the house with the golden windows, 1993

The house is an installation.  I wanted to make a piece of art that would require my viewer to move around it in order to understand it.  I wanted that same viewer to enter into the house and feel some kind of emotion.  I wanted my viewer to experience my work with the body.

Ann Hamilton

Ann Hamilton, (born 1956), was working with the idea of the body as a way of knowing during that time.  There was an article about her installations in an early 90's  Fiber Art magazine when I was just coming up with the idea to make this house.  Although I wasn't yet familiar with Helene Cixous, I knew about Ann Hamilton.    

When we experience something with the senses (smell, touch, hearing, sight)  and also with movement, we become open.  We receive and resonate.  We experience a poetic recognition.   

Louise Bourgeois

Another artist that has influenced me when I was making the House with the Golden Windows is Louise Bourgeois. (1911 - 2010)   Her art helped her deal with her emotions.  She needed to make art. 

She also expected her viewer to have an emotional response to her work.  She famously said, "If you are not touched by my work, then I have failed."  

Femme Maison  1946
 by Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois was 35 years old and was raising three boys when she made this piece.  She believed that the domestic world of a mother artist was worth making art about.    

“Art is not about art. Art is about life, and that sums it up."  she said. 

But what emotion do you think Louise Bourgeois is communicating with her image of a woman squeezed into a building?  She made other Femme Maison pieces. See here. 

This house is about domesticity, yet it is not a domestic object.

This piece was made for an art gallery.  The reason that I don't have good photos of it is that it needs an art gallery kind of space to install it in.  

I believe that quilts are art.  I have always believed that.  By making an installation like this, obviously for exhibition, I help others to realize that sewing and patchwork are valid techniques for art making.  

I turned 40 in 1991, and was just beginning to take ownership of the idea that I could be an artist and a mother at the same time.  I leaned into art as a kind of salvation.  I didn’t keep my art passion a secret from the family, but I also didn’t talk about it.  I did it.  I also did my best to be a good mother.  I don't know how I did it now that I look back.  People ask.

I do know that my art was and is a place for me to be truly me.