The solitude and quiet emptiness that I find on Manitoulin continues to be very important to my development as an artist. I intentionally withdraw from people and put a lot of time into my work. I touch my work a lot as I stitch it.
My pieces are large and simple, which makes it easy for my viewer to enter them. They are safe, calm places. I consider them a gift and am generous with the labour I put into my work.
I am planning an installation that uses old wool blankets to make a monumental walk-through corridor. The rock cuts along the new highway 400 are the inspiration for this new work. In northern Ontario, large areas of the Canadian Shield have been sliced open by blasting and heavy equipment to reveal eons of time and layers of beautiful sediment and crystals and minerals.
From the speeding car, we are able to look with awe at these magnificent grand pieces of Canada. Trees grow on top of some of them. There is something spiritual within these rock cuts. The car keeps on moving.
My installation of blankets will encourage people to walk slowly alongside at an intimate closeness to the work. I hope that people will experience the scale and weight of the familiar wool fabric, with their bodies. Yearning to touch but not touching, and somehow feeling some deep truth of lived emotions that are part of our human experience.
The installation will have two parts, each part made from two or three blankets sewn together and bordered top and bottom with still more blanket cloth. One part is shown in this post, and it measures 14 feet wide and 10 feet high. The nick name for this part is Ash and Rose.
Blankets are already full of human time before I work with them. Generations of time. The marks of those hands and bodies have left signs of wear and all I have done is add more time and touch with hand stitch. Both sides.
Materials such as blankets that relate to our universal human experiences in bed where things like birth, death, power or lack of power, pain, comfort, protection, and sex happen, are powerful metaphors. Making crafted objects from them is contemporary art.
I work with hand stitch and used domestic cloth.
I make hand made things that invite the use of all our senses, especially the sense of touch.
9 comments:
deep time
thank you very much, every post of yours is really inspiring.the texts and the pieces of art. thank you.
your pieces are safe places
Lovely.
This piece is so very heavy. To go up and down the ladder and move the two blankets, filled with wool and yarn to double their natural weight...just about did me in. I thought about maybe needing to hire an assistant, to help me with the physical challenges of making such large work. Today is my 68th birthday. It's now or never to complete this work .... and so I push forward. thank you for reading, and to those of you who comment, thank you v much. xoxo
Happy Birthday. Your work continues to amaze and inspire
Discovering your works is always a special moment. A time of peace and joy. I wanted to tell you despite my English google. So today I dare to leave you this comment. Thank you for everything you share here and (too late) happy birthday Judy
as always I am in awe of where or how your creative inspiration comes from ~ then to view your work, keeping in mind the thoughts of how they have come to be ~ a delightful journey, indeed.
Awesome blog you have hhere
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