Drawing with fabric

velvet and rayon couched to felted wool


Before Christmas the Cornerstone gallery contacted me to see if I would mount a small exhibition in their space around the same time as my workshop in Kingston. Even though I was already committed to an exhibition at Greenwood Quiltery in Guelph for the same time period (april-may 2010) I said yes.
It means gathering together two completely different bodies of work and finishing up some pieces. I've decided on circular stuff for Kingston, protection stuff for Guelph.
This abstraction of my view over Manitowaning Bay is now basted to a backing cloth for further stitching.

circular imagery

indigo on linen with stitch resist

women artists who use circular imagery in their work

Eva Hesse
Pamela Fitzsimons
Lenore Tawney
Sue Hammond West
Sue Lawty
Helen Parrott
Ilze Aviks
Donna Sharrett
Marjan Bijlenga
Ase Ljones
Jude Hill


indigo on cotton with tied resist

primordial sacred symbol

According to Jung, the human psyche holds an ancient collective memory, where universal experience is symbolized. Archetypal symbols are so familiar we respond to them both intuitively and rationally. These universal symbols are common to many world religions. They are archetypes.

This circle began from the outside edge.
It was a moon that became a sun.

sky trees water

I remember hand piecing these hexagons to make an image of bent over pine trees against a cloudy pink sky, the view from our bedroom window. It was 1984. I remember entering the quilt into an art exhibit. I washed it before shipping it off, and all the colours ran together to make the dulled colours you see here. I remember crying about that.



Now when I look at it, I see fragility. The fabrics have started to fray and disintegrate just because of time passing, not heavy use.


That's the story.

un-writing

1991 journal, some pages ripped out, the remainder painted gold and stitched shelf of hard cover journals 1994-2004

I have kept journals for years. Family life, art ideas, and notes on what I was reading filled them quickly. In December, I started going through them, transcribing the text into my laptop and disposing of the actual jouranls. I've burned three, another I tore up and used in collage work.


They are like the stitched resist I talked about in my last post. I've spent so much time writing, now it's time to un-write.










shelves of journals 2005-2010 Once I have you looking, I'll let you in on what I'm thinking. Because I am thinking.

time spent

two pieces of resist dyed indigo on the drying rack. The fabric in the front had been wrapped with thread that then took me two hours to remove.This piece took a couple of days to tie with raffia and string at the SDA conference in 2007. Last night I spent an hour untying it, but it's still nowhere near done. It took two or three hours to lay the threads into this circle on linen. To tie all the ends took 2 more. Now it has been dipped twice in indigo and waits for me to unpick. The time spent stitching or wrapping in order to resist dye is lengthy yet the result does not look like it. Running stitches, blanket stitches, stem stitches, marks made with needle and thread that LEAVE THE THREAD ON THE ARTWORK do seem to make labour and time spent visible.

Stitch resist is like housework. It takes time to do but seems invisible. Even those of us who are aware of how much time domestic work takes don't consider it, we just think that it looks great.

What other metaphors exist in this slow stitching that looks fast?

Today, I spent time with Connie who had 29 years worth of hair cut.

Thanks to Ann and Michaela for sending me photos of the opening of Convergence in Owen Sound.

mortality

drawing by Grace (5 years)transferred to satin and embroidered

For Yvonne mid 60's, who died Jan 20, 2010 and for Kayla, age 22, who died Jan 15.


"The woman turned and picked up a stone and said "No. I will throw this stone in the river. If it floats, we will always live. If it sinks, people must die." The woman threw the stone into the water and it sank. The woman turned to Old Man. She said, "It is better this way for now they will always have sympathy for each other."
from the Blackfoot Creation Story


"Remember your dying time in order to keep the stupid and the ugly out of your living time."
from Family Matters, by Rohinton Mistry

the heaven

At first I thought I could cut up these vintage handkerchiefs but had to change my plans as it just seemed too disrespectful. They have been donated for use in the Circle project and I am laying them out edge to edge on a cotton lawn foundation. They are for the upper half of the circle in this design. (the heaven). The dotted green lower half of the circle represents the ark. This Thursday we will continue to piece the water. All welcome.


Click here to donate to Red Cross relief for the Haiti earthquake.

wonky log cabin

indigo dyed silk, linen, wool, velvet, rayon, cotton, and hemp, hand pieced on 10" muslin square Log cabin is made by sewing strips in a spiral manner around a central square. A stitch and flip block, it has been used creatively for ages. I make log cabin on foundation fabric of uniform size, handy when it comes to joining blocks together. The pencil lines remind me to be wonky within that limitation. The playful hand painted bowl in the photo is a gift from Grace, brought back from Turkey for us. I've started the process of dipping and oxidizing the rye paste resisted fabrics in indigo - shall keep you posted on the results.

Planet Earth

Loved as if Embroidered with Flowers, fabric and paper collage (2002)

It has to be loved the way a laundress loves her linens,
the way she moves her hands caressing the fine muslins
knowing their warp and woof,
like a lover coaxing, or a mother praising.
It has to be loved as if it were embroidered
with flowers and birds and two joined hearts upon it.
It has to be stretched and stroked.
It has to be celebrated.
O this great beloved world and all the creatures in it.
It has to be spread out, the skin of this planet.

The trees must be washed, and the grasses and mosses.
They have to be polished as if made of green brass.
The rivers and little streams with their hidden cresses
and pale-coloured pebbles
and their fool's gold
must be washed and starched or shined into brightness,
the sheets of lake water
smoothed with the hand
and the foam of the oceans pressed into neatness.
It has to be ironed, the sea in its whiteness.

and pleated and goffered, the flower-blue sea
the protean, wine-dark, grey, green, sea
with its metres of satin and bolts of brocade.
And sky - such an 0! overhead - night and day
must be burnished and rubbed
by hands that are loving
so the blue blazons forth
and the stars keep on shining
within and above
and the hands keep on moving.

It has to be made bright, the skin of this planet
till it shines in the sun like gold leaf.
Archangels then will attend to its metals
and polish the rods of its rain.
Seraphim will stop singing hosannas
to shower it with blessings and blisses and praises
and, newly in love,
we must draw it and paint it
our pencils and brushes and loving caresses
smoothing the holy surfaces.© 1994 P.K. Page

I read this poem today as part of a presentation in church that included the United Church moderator's letter about the lack of action on Climate Change at Copenhagen. By Canadian poet P.K. Page, it is part of a United Nations program to foster dialogue among nations.

poetic

with no preparation, the appearance of an unusual image reacts in our mind and heart despite all common sense.

the heart of the circle
the soul

beauty that can't be seen unless we look for it
a plain box with a beautiful inside
paper birds in all stages of flight
last night's candles

Bound

a limitation
a binding
rule bound
neatly bound
out of bounds
north bound
forward to the unknown, backward to memory
bound with a rope
secure

What are the boundaries of quilt making?
How do quilts bind me as an artist?

The tradition binds me - the old patterns, the layers
The stigma binds me - it's a domestic art
The labour binds me - each piece takes a year to make

stitched resist

This piece was made by Gasali Adeyemo.

I purchased it from him at the Surface Design Association's 2007 conference in Kansas City. I studied traditional Yoruba indigo techniques with Gasali at that time.



The piece below is from the 50's and I bought it from Gasali too. My once a month art quilting class was yesterday and I set up my studio with the thought: "If I were attending this class, what would I like to see when I walk through the door?"

Your fragile life

Perfect your gentle name
Perfect your fragile life
bees
shadows
fire
snow
silence
foam
steel
wire
pollen
your firm and delicate being

Pablo Neruda's epitaph for Tina Modetti who died at age 45

binding and stitching in preparation for indigo

rye flour paste resist

I grew up on a large piece of property where my father
harvested hay
kept cattle or horses off and on
had an artificial pond
a large vegetable garden
a potato field
open fields rimmed with hedges of chokecherry bushes and rock piles
electric fences for the cattle
wooden fences for the horses
a Quonset hut aluminum barn
a wind break of scotch pine trees that was my mother's idea
a giant elm by the highway
a highway walk to public school
a bus ride to high school
an older brother
a younger sister
a paternal grandmother who did not speak English
a maternal grand father who didn't speak to children
a maternal grandmother who was locally known as an artist-gardener-dressmaker-reader
a father who was an entrepreneur and electrician
a mother who was opinionated, intellectual and reclusive
no pets
no friends allowed to visit the place
lots of books
lots of art and sewing supplies
lots of space
lots of time.


Pictured are my experiments with rye flour as a paste resist for indigo dye. These may not work as resists - but don't they look beautiful just the way they are?

But you'll love it

hand and machine pieced 'water' fabric for the twig cross meditation banner, approximately 4 feet square so far, damask, silk and cotton.

I am currently leading a lengthy slow cloth project in my community and am flabbergasted by a recent realization I've come to about my generation. So many regard sewing as something they can't do. It's not because they are unable, it's because it was seen as a gender based menial activity in our formative years. These women may garden, they may bake, but sew? Nope. I get so much peace and satisfaction from handling thread and cloth myself that this baffles me. Some of us come to thread naturally, like my daughters, but there are just as many on the other side and I'm finding this out. "I'll make tea, but I won't sew" they tell me when I invite them to join the project. "I'll buy the thread, but please don't ask me to thread a needle." Things like that. At first, I thought they just needed to be encouraged, like the men who walk by and shake their heads and smile. But its something deeper. I think that if these women sewed, they would threaten something within themselves. When I told a professional woman that there was no need to worry, I would show her how to do things, she told me that sewing was something she just would not do.

That's when I realized that she thought it would be a waste of her time. So as we in our clique of needles and threads pat each other about the slow cloth we spend our days with, we might remember those who have not yet found "the way". The lost ones. The women who do not know how to do a running stitch and do not want to know.

p.s. I have been enjoying working one on one with both experienced stitchers and non-sewers these last few months.

Slow Cloth

I have been working on this stitching for over ten years. It started out as a rather traditional applique done in pink and green silk. Then I over dyed it black (along with the pieced background it was then on). I stitched into it rather obsessively with coloured threads in an attempt to make the image more visible against the similarly coloured background.
This summer I cut the urn and it's droopy flowers away from the black background and pinned it to artist canvas. The high contrast image became much more powerful and I am now appliqueing it to cream coloured heavy taffeta. Because I've invested so much time and touch, I feel that my own work is worth revisiting until it is right.
It is my stitching project when Ned and I have our regular TV date.
Here is a link to the new slow cloth group on facebook . It was started this week by Elaine, Jude and Glennis and already has over 250 like minded members.

Considering

What is the culture of quilts in today's society?

quilt guilds
quilt shows
quilt competitions
quilt shops
quilt magazines
quilt fabrics, more and more fabrics
quilt notions, special rulers
workshops
prizes
women for the most part

Walk into any quilt show, only one or two quilts shine out as true.
There is disdain for quilts among other textile artists. Why is this?
Is it really because the bulk of quilts in quilt shows are made
too fast
with lots of tricks and short cuts
like stack and whack?
Remember those Amish quilts from the 1920's? Made from naturally dyed wool and cotton they used large shapes, squares mostly and no embellishment or fancy tricks with fussy cut prints. The way that the colours were made and then how they were arranged makes us feel that the woman who laid those fabrics beside each other on the floor really thought about how they could best express the emotions she felt in her soul.What WAS quiltmaking?

an integral part of a woman's work day along with cleaning, laundry, mending, child caring, wood chopping, gardening
a welcome relief from those domestic chores
a creative option for a woman in her confined domestic sphere
a visual language where she could express joy, ambition, sorrow, even politics
What IS quiltmaking? (or should I say, what can quiltmaking be?)

a place to design with colour and shape in an original way
a tactile painting
a metaphor for warmth and comfot
an intimate connection with the body (we SLEEP with them)
a pattern (like music)
a way to recycle materials that might be thrown away
a way to keep things that need to be treasured
a way to gather things up and try to make them make sense
an object that takes a long time to make and gives contemplative space to the maker
a place to express concerns
about the body, about feelings, about relationships, about frustrations, about values
in a tender way
in a resourceful way
in an enduring way