solitude

"To discover the conscious mind in a world where intellect is held to be valuable requires solitude - quite a lot of solitude. We have been very strenuously conditioned against solitude. To be alone is considered to be a greivous and dangerous condition.

Most people have never been alone enough. I suggest that people who like to be alone, who walk alone will perhaps be serious workers in the art field."

Agnes Martin

Amulets

The familiar quilt patterns I use are arrangements of protection symbols found in textiles around the world. Diamonds in squares, repeated triangles and crosses, the hand, mirrors and sequins, as well as the colour red, all of these possess powerful amuletic meanings that can be read as a code. Hand stitching completely covers each piece, which gives weight and strength to the cloth. This stitching also lends the power of my own repeated caress that I think the viewer can feel.

I'm very into puddle mess, it's just my age I sort of guess

When it rains and rains and rains
The world's awash and slick
The train I like to pull along now breaks into a merry song
As it runs free, it sings to me
And as I walk the pavement talks,
My rubbers squawk my rubbers squeal
It's really quite a raucous deal. The rain.
text by Pauline Johnson

Kitchen timer

One word question: How? Two word answer: Kitchen timer.
Set kitchen timer for one hour. Chain sew 2" squares of hand dyed silk velvet into grids.
Buzzer! Reset timer for another hour. Type research on Picasso into the computer.
Buzzer! Make lunch. Begin new recipe for oatmeal bread.
Set kitchen timer for one hour: Continue chain sewing of blue velvet.
Buzzer! Reset timer for another hour. Put shelves and piles of overflowing books into new bookcase. Also do laundry.
Buzzer! Reset timer for another hour. Cut more fabric. Continue sewing blue velvet.
Buzzer! Take dog for walk in the fresh snow. Start dinner, bake bread.

I remain completely me

Shining surfaces express concepts of fertiltiy and survival.

symbols of protection

I added a border of darker zigzags to my new protection quilt last weekend. I have a May deadline for it.

"The masks were magic things. They were against everything. Against unknown, threatening spirits. I understood.
I too am against everything. I too believe that everything is unknown, that everything is an enemy! Everything!
They were weapons. To help people avoid coming under the influence of spiritis again. To help them become independent.

I understood why I was a painter." Pablo Picasso

Ontario Arts Council

I'd like to acknowledge the Ontario Arts Council as they continue to support my work in art textiles. Public funding of the arts is important.

The Language of Art History

Iconology: the study of visual images

Icon: an image that possess a specific literary meaning.

The Frame: a term used by the Fench Philosopher, Jaques Derrida. What is external?
What is internal? How far are we able to interpret anything?

Discourse: a term used by the French philosopher, Michel Foucault. There are so many competing statements concerning the truth that there is no absolute truth.

Structuralism: the ingredients in the picture are treated as signs for something outside the picture. They present a narrative structure.

The signifier: the image in the canvas.

The signified: the meaning it carries. The mood we might feel when we look at a painting relates to something we know that is not inside the painting, but comes instead from our own life.

History of Art: a students handbook by Marcia Pointon (simplified by moi)

Grandmother to Grandmother

Valerie Hearder has set up African Threads on her website as a support for the remarkable Grandmother to Grandmother campaign (run by the Stephen Lewis Foundation). Beautiful narrative embroideries made by women in sub-Saharan Africa are pictured and the sale of these will go to help the millions of orphans who have been left behind in the wake of the HIV-AIDS pandemic. The pictured embroidery of cattle is part of the Keiskamma Art Project, South Africa. See more African embroideries by clicking here.

Joe Lewis

I'm so glad to see that Joe Lewis has resumed his blog around town, after taking a holiday break. His enthusiasm almost makes me wish we lived closer to southern Ontario.

Melody for Canada

We have been internet friends for four years or so and share group emails concerning art and life. It's been wonderful (and important) to have such a support group. There are nine of us across Canada and all have been featured artists on Mary's site, Exploring Creativity. Valerie Hearder, Nova Scotia (Horizons), Margi Hennen, Nova Scotia, Penny Berens, Ontario, Janet Rice Bredin, Northern Ontario (J's blog), Judy Martin, Northern Ontario, Martha Cole, Saskatchewan, Mary Holdgrafer, Exploring Creativity, Alberta, Jayne Willoughby Scott, Alberta and Wendy Lewington, British Columbia. I refer to these women fondly as 'my famous friends'.

Celebrate Craft: a contemporary craft mosaic

Across Canada, 2007 is the year of craft. Proposed and publicized by the Canadian Craft Federation, the year will be built around ongoing and special activities of the craft councils, associations, and guilds nationwide who join forces in a celebration of craft. The Craft Council of Newfoundland and Labrador begins their year with a national juried exhibition of fine craft in all mediums that will present a broad and varied view of function, material, technique and aesthetic. Reflections of personal stories and places that build a mosaic of Canada, Canadians, and craft will be presented. The dates and location: January 28 to March 9, 2007 at the gallery of the Craft Council in St John's. I'm very happy that my velvet journal: secret garden embroidery will be part of this show.

Freezing over

Fresh white cloud babies rush upwards off the rolling water. It's like watching fire. The water is too heavy to make waves. Instead it rolls and pushes small hard pieces of ice onto the beach.



January 16, 2007 8 am

My hand sings red

Ned's home.

women artists

ART:21 is an excellent home video that I have been watching while quilting in my hoop this weekend. It was wonderful to be able to watch the wide variety of artists in their studios and numerous other places. It was informative to hear what they had to say about their work and what it was like to do it. To live it. I loved Richard Serra's reminder that the eye is a muscle that needs to be exercised, and that is why he draws every day. It was so poignant to hear James Turrell say how much his work cost him to make. Two marriages. However, my favourites were the women. Ann Hamilton, Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith, and Sally Mann. 5 stars.

Manitoulin Island

These old cement houses and split rail fences are hauntingly beautiful, and are one of the things that make this island unique. I noticed a photo of one on Our Manitoulin last night when I checked out island blogs. According to Life on Mantioulin this is "de-lurking week". I guess this might be a good time to mention that the new blogger format has allowed me to re-configure my comments section. So if you have been trying to comment on this blog and haven't been able to, well, now you can! Another well maintained island blog is Dylon Whyte's. Dylon is my website designer who also happens to be an author of chain mail jewelery books. Last but not least is Freshisle Fibers, a knitting and dyeing blog that I am thrilled to discover and shall return to. Yes, we are an interesting bunch of bloggers here on Manitoulin Island.

Desire

This blog gives me an opportunity to explain how quilts in general and my quilts in particular fit into the critical discourse of contemporary art. Quilts are usually made by women and almost always refer to life in some way. Quilts are considered craft by art galleries, and because of that they are often dismissed as a decorative triviality, and not given exhibition opportunities. Quilts, because of their connection to the bed, provide a vehicle that is rich with metaphor about major life passages. Quilts need to be understood and they need to be critically defended.

postcard series

I was recently asked if all of the art pictured on this blog is my own. Yes it is. Always. Even though I may write about another artist in the text. For example, today I came across Sue Lawty's name twice and so I'm taking that as a sign to create a link to her blog. It comes out of the Victoria and Albert museum in London England where she is currently artist in residence. She is working directly with collections of pebbles, one of the things I find quite inspiring.

into a tender mode

Psychoanalysis and art. An artwork has a relationship with two persons: the creator and the viewer. The creator actually makes a self portrait with every painting, no matter what her subject. The viewer sees the resulting artwork through a veil of his own life experience and what is lacking there. According to Jaques Lacan, vision has more to do with desire than with optics.

Natural Rhythm

I switched over to the new blogger tonight . It required that I edit my sidebar and unfortunately, I seem to have lost some of the more recently added favourite blogs. One of these is Friederike, a wonderful textile art blog from Germany.

I enjoy having other artist's blogs just a click away and shall re-instate those lost ones when I next feel like spending two or three hours stuck in front of the computer. Never fear.

plantain and cardinal flower letter from home

Over the many summers that we've lived on Manitoulin Island, I've collected a wide variety of beautiful pieces of nature. All manner of leaves and wild flowers are pressed in stacks of magazines and newspapers. Seed pods, wild bird feathers, mica, shells, and heart shaped stones are sorted into plastic containers. I have drawers of these things. My new idea is to draw my collection onto watercolour paper and see what happens next.

Family time

my father age 12, photographer unknown



We took two days and drove our daughter and her friend back to Queen's U and I was able to visit my parents in Kingston. I value these family times.

Think

Women artists are not outside of history or culture.
Women artists just occupy and speak from a different position.
This position is essential to the meaning of western culture.

Griselda and Rozsika

Patchwork quilts are a distinctive form of art with different kinds of relations between maker and object and between object and viewer. These are RICHER than the relations of making, using, and viewing so called "high" art. Work and art come together.

This is what is being effaced by art history when it categorises quiltmaking as decorative, dextrous, geometric and the expression of the feminine spirit.

There is a value system. Any association with the tradition and practice of needlework and domestic art can be dangerous for an artist, especially when that artist is a woman.

Why is the spectre of domestic art so menacing, especially for a woman?
Because high art and the fine artists have come to mean the direct antithesis of all that is defined by the feminine stereotype.

We never speak of masculine art. We never say man artist.
We just say art. We just say artist.

But the art of men can only maintain its dominance and privilege in the pages of art history by having a negative to its positive. Ideology is not conscious. It works unconsciously. It reproduces value and belief systems of the dominant group. Male dominance began in the Renaissance and expanded in the 18th century. It was articulated in the 19th century and by the 20th century was so NATURAL that it was taken for granted and women artists were just not mentioned any longer in the art history books.

If feminine is the negative of masculine, and if masculine is dominant, how do women artists produce meanings of their own if the language we use affirms men’s dominance and power and reproduces their supremacy?

paraphrased from Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology by Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock (1981)

2007 is the year of craft

There are many opportunities for artists who work in craft media this year, as 2007 has been designated a celebratory year. For example, the regional Ontario Craft Conference will be in Elliot Lake next June and my fabric and paper collage workshop is one of the six workshops being offered at this event. The other teachers are John Willard, (spontaneous quiltmaking) Russ Mason (shibori dyeing) Lissa Hunter (two and three dimensional weaving) Steve Irvine (pottery) and Lisa Whorle (professional development). I will be listing this conference and several other Celebrate Craft events into Judy's updates over the next couple of weeks.

A New Year

The small amount of snow was rained away on New Year's eve and everything is gray again. The nice thing about it is that we were able to walk on the ridge with our good friends Frank Myers and his wife Basje who are here for the weekend. Happy New Year to everyone.