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 visit about 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.    

Briefly Gorgeous (my mended quilts)

Sunshine and shadow quilt 1987, given to my father for his 70th bithday in 1993
He went horizontal on it throughout the day and wore the fabrics out. 
I began mending it with velvet when I visited him, until he passed away in 2017.
I finished mending it in 2022 and the family loves to use it for comfort.

My sister got married in 1976 and I made her a quilt from new fabrics.  It is my second-ever quilt and is very badly made.  It started to fall apart from age, but also because of my beginner quilt making skills.
I asked her to give it back to me so that I could mend it and plan to use velvet this time too.
I hope to finish it by July as that would mark her 50th anniversary.

 

I Saw A Butterfly is a quilt I made in 1988
and gave to our middle daughter when she went to university.
It became very soft with use and the fabrics and batting were disintegrating, so first I taught her how to mend it, and then I finished mending it myself in 2022.  (with velvet of course)

Sometimes I mend quilts that I didn't make myself, and that is the case for this one.  It was a white whole cloth quilt, beautifully stitched with thick blue thread in a hearts and flowers pattern.  
I replaced the distingrated batting with two kinds of wool batting, one of which would felt, and I also replaced the white backing with a rayon and silk one dyed with plants.  
Poet in Love, mended 2022

There were many holes in the quilt and so I covered them with large brightly coloured velvet circles and ovals.  When I quiltedthe piece, I followed the original blue threads.  And then put the piece into the washer and the distortion happened. 
Poet in Love  Mended (or something like that) in 2022 

I made the dresden plates in the early 80's, probably 1982, and appliqued them to a white background made from old sheets.  We used the long rectangular quilt as a lawn blanket for sun bathing for a long time but when the white background fell apart, I unpicked the plates and appliqued them to squares of naturally dyed wool and silk.  I like how the plates are so faded and pastel, they are remnants from my high school and newly-wed sewing projects.  Those that disintegrated have been replaced with, you guessed it, velvet.  I finished mending You are a Single Star in 2024.

We've been using You Are a Single Star on our bed, and it has been lovely.  Large and heavy.

But just this week I discovered that the backing cloth is wearing out.  
The backing cloth is an old damask table linen that was mailed to me from a Canadian textile artist who was decluttering her studio.  I loved it because of its softness, and that quality gave me the title for my Festival of Quilts exhibition in 2024, Softer and Dreamier.  Now, I see that the backing cloth is fading away.  It is disappearing. 

But part of the reason why I think that quilts are such an important and profound art medium is because they are like the human body and will not last forever.  The fact that they carry their own death with them all the time, even while they care for my loved ones and are so beautiful while doing that, is what makes them authentic and meaningful for me.

Quilts are, to borrow from novelist Ocean Vuong, who wrote the exquisite book in 2019,
 Briefly Gorgeous.   
When I mend quilts, I am continuing the work of these visible, touchable documents about care.
I may be able to extend the life of them for 50 years or so if I used new cloth,
but cloth eventually gets old and wears out, no matter what we do.

Dorothy Caldwell: Listening for the Quiet Sounds

 

Listening for the Quiet Sounds by Dorothy Caldwell, 6 x 9 feet, 2023

 

Dorothy Caldwell was born in Bethesda, Maryland USA in 1948.  

She moved to a rural acreage in Ontario, Canada in 1972 and continues to lives there with views of several hills, farmers' fields, and a lake.  In 1990, she won Canada's highest award for fine craft, the Saidye Bronfman Award, (a Govoner General Award).  Caldwell's work is adored, exhibited, and collected around the world.  

Listening for the Quiet Sounds (detail) by Dorotny Caldwell
Earth pigments screen printed onto cotton  with ink washes, applique, stitching

Dorothy Caldwell was trained as a painter, and graduated from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia with a fine art degree in 1970.  Textile art was not yet an option in art schools but in 1974 Caldwell attended the World Craft Council conference in Toronto entitled In Praise of Hands and saw global hand crafted objects and textiles.  These inspired her to open her painting practice to new materials and technques.  She has since travelled the world studying and also teaching tradtional and innovative ways to mark cloth in a contemporary, abstract manner that feels timeless.

  

For more information about Dorothy Caldwell, a good summary of her career is here on Grokopedia.  You can also watch her speak about her artistic journey at this link. and learn about her study of earth pigments on Fibre Arts Take Two.  The article I wrote about her work on Modernist Aesthetic in 2014 remains number one of all the artists I've profiled.

Dorothy Caldwell, number 7 in the list of Canadian artists who work with textiles.  .