Harmony and Polly and Regina, oh my

Grey Scale I by Polly Apfelbaum,
marker on silk/rayon velvet, 60 x 37 inches,  2015

 

Ned and I went to the National Gallery of Canada to view Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction when we were in Ottawa last February.  

Grey Scale detail, marker on silk/rayon velvet, by Polly Apfelbaum, USA

This is the important exhibition that you have probably read about online.  It debuted in Los Angeles at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in September 2023, and then travelled first to the National Gallery in Washington DC in the spring of 2024, and then to Canada in late 2024 until the end of February 2025.  The exhibition is scheduled to open at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York in April. (April 20 - September 13 2025. ) 

Syaw (Fishnet) by Regina Pilawuk Wilson,
acrylic paint on canvas, 48 x 79 inches, 2011

Fishnet (detail) by paint on canvas by Regina Pilawuk Wilson, Australia

The exhibition was beautifully installed in our spacious national gallery.    

I was familiar with Regina Pilawuk Wilson's work as I own the catalogue for the Marking the Infinite exhibition.  It was great to see this painting face to face.  I really appreciated understanding with my body that that this painting is as large as one of my quilts.  (48 x 79 inches) 

Pink Weave, by Harmony Hammond, USA
 oil and cold wax medium on canvas, 24 X 24 inches, 1974 

Harmony Hammond   is a recognized artist in a wide variety of materials, and has, through out her 50 year career,  privileged textiles in her work.   I find it interesting that of all her work, the curators chose these two oil/wax paintings to represent her contribution to abstract art.  

Grey Grid, by Harmony Hammond, USA
oil and cold wax medium on canvas, 20.5 x 20.5 inches, 1974 

These two paintings by Harmony Hammond along with the velvet piece, Grey Scale I, by Polly Apfelbaum, (who is no slouch in the art world either, btw,) expand the thinking of those of us who unconsciously put art into categories.  Why? I wonder.  Polly Appelbaum's audacious idea to use permanent marker on sensuous silk rayon velvet gives me such pleasure.  (see top photo of this post)    

Untitled #8 by Agnes Martin,
india ink, graphite and gesso on canvas, 72 x 72 inches, 1977 

Untitled #8 by Agnes Martin, A Canadian who worked in the USA for most of her career.

It's rare to see an Agnes Martin piece in real life.  

I love that her pencil drawing is so much larger than the Harmony Hammond cold wax pieces.  That's one of the main reasons I like to go to art galleries.  The scale and the texture of the work can only be understood when you stand face to face with it. 

(By the way, the above artwork is not included in the beautiful catalogue, although two other Agnes Martin pieces are.  This makes me wonder if each installation of the exhibition is slightly different.)  

Floor Pieces II, III, and VI by Harmony Hammond,
acrylic on fabric, dimensions variable, 1973

Floorpiece by Harmony Hammond, paint on linen that has been braided  USA

I looked carefully at these floor pieces to see what had been painted and what had not been painted.  

In this post, I am showing some of the artists who created work that highlights the idea of domestic textile methods, (woven cloth, braided rug, pieced quilt) with fine art techniques (painting, drawing).

I plan to write another post about this exhibition.  If you are near New York City this summer, I hope that you will visit the MOMA and walk through this beautiful exhibition.    

Autumn Song

We closed our cottage on Thanksgiving weekend, just Ned and myself.

We got there around 2 pm on the Saturday.  It was very blustery. 

I started a fire in the kitchen stove and he started one in the fireplace.

We had an early simple dinner.

I had my holy Rothko piece with me.  

I am thankful for the angle of the sun that makes the water sparkly at 5 pm

and for all the pillows, blankets and quilts that I prepare for winter storage

and for my teacup of gin and for Eleonor Wachtel on CBC radio. 

Ned wore his red toque all day and night and I wore my undershirt.    

We have started into our 50th year or marriage. 

On my mind is the spring 2023 exhibition.  

To help me plan, I have been writing out the measurements of the walls   

and pinning different pieces up to see how they look together.

I want to choose a collection of work that is beautiful but also a bit raw.

I want my exhibition to be like a poem that reveals an inner self full of love and emotion and worry. 

I stitched my red Rothko piece by the fire both nights. 

Meaning in art often comes from the materials it is made from.

Repetition is a material.

The over and over gestures made by the body calms the maker.

The sight and feel of the repeated marks soothes the viewer.

On Monday we finished up and drove into the setting sun with the boat on its trailer.   

We were home in time to see the  moon rise.

and the next day's sunrise 

Why do you stand at the window abandoned to beauty and pride

the thorn of the night in your bosom, the spear of the age in your side?     

Leonard Cohen.

Circles, red thread, domestic textiles, ancient marks, 

whirling spirals, grids, time, dream and the vulnerability of sleep.

All of these are in this work of mine.  What do they mean?

And what does it mean that there are two-sides 

and that I work the marks from the back? 

The first thing I did in this piece was to dye it red.  

It is a full size linen damask table cloth.  I made holes in it with a kind of acid.  

This was in 2011.  See here. 

then in 2020 I planted velvet in each hole with reverse applique.  

A garden of dots arranged in a grid, like Agnes Martin's idea of perfection. 

"it is not in the eye, it is in the mind. In our minds there is an awareness of perfection."  

Now there is a layer of dark sheer fabric covering the reverse side. 

And I am stitching circles around the reverse dots using a running stitch.

The stitches get smaller and smaller as you go around.   

It takes time.

When I finish, I clip the sheer cloth away and the velvet is set free.  

The raw edges flame into petals that stand up from the base cloth.  

This work is about finding a way to meditate. 

These repeated circles help me to feel my own spirit.

This work doesn't address the outer world.

(There is a war going on that we fear any day will turn nuclear.

There are school shootings, children are being killed for no reason.

There are floods and hurricanes and fires that ruin people's lives for years.)

My circles do not fix these things.

My circles do not comment on these things. 

They do not try to convince people.

These circles are a way to find emptiness and calmness.

I was sad because I was alive.  I did not even know all the things I wanted, and that is what made me saddest.  If I were more religious than I am, I might say that the feeling was yearning for the place we came from before we were born. 

Perhaps instead, it is about the human search for perfection, the perfection we find only in great works of art and out in the landscape.  Sharon Butala

I think that we yearn for perfect peace, which doesn't mean being in perfect solitude, but for peace in the heart.  A peaceful heart in the midst of the multitudes, tumult, chaos, violence, sorrow, and beauty of everyday life.  We can never have that peace.  (Except in a work of art or in the sunset we have intimations of it.)  That is why we feel sadness.  Sharon Butala

 I will continue stitching these flowery circle stars.    

Carry on bravely my friends. xo  

solitude is a place

Q  Where have you been?  

A   I've been visiting a place that encourages me to work by instinct.

Q  What is the name of that place?

A   Solitude.

Q  Don't you get lonely?

A  Sometimes.  Most of the time I'm fine.  

Q  What do you do all day? 

A  I make my own coffee and don't follow my usual routine. 

There is absolutely no agenda on the weekends. 

However, during the work week,  I work.

The difference is that the solitude gives me a feeling of freedom.

I can't explain it. 

I don't think about the work first.   I don't plan it.

I just start.  

It's as if I am a four year old child and the adult who loves me gives me construction paper and scissors and  crayons and says:  "make art".  

So I just start.  The adult who loves me (myself) tells me to. 

Q  Can you give us an example?

A  One example is the new quilt that I started two weeks ago.  

I didn't know that I was going to make it when I went to bed the night before.

It's a huge piece, at least 100 inches square, but very light. 

I am using up the cotton that I painted with iron water dots in July 2020.

That cloth had been folded up in a basket for nearly two years.  

Q  So you follow the materials?

A  Yes. 

I also think that something intuitive happens with the passage of time and personal and world events.    

My brain didn't know, but my spirit and body did.

"knowledge grows slowly like a wisdom tooth"  said poet Adam Zagajewski

Q  Any other examples?

A  I did make some break throughs in other media.  I may post about them in the future, not now.  

Q  Tell about the circle stitching that you are doing.

A  After mounting the exhibition last fall I had started an embroidery on some wool cloth dyed with avocado.  It was like hugging myself, going round and round with the running stitch, but I had put it aside.  I picked it up again in May.  I hope to finish it this summer.   

Q  So this avocado piece was not planned either?  

A  That's correct.  The two pieces in this post have no plot.  They tell a story, but there is no plot.

Q  But I thought that you sketched in your sketch book and worked with the design wall.  

A  With these pieces, I sketch them after I've stitched on them rather than before.  

I figure out what to do while I do it.    

Q  How come you have solitude in May?

A  Well, it's a busy time for my husband so he's been going in to work rather than working from home.  He's also been away opening our cottage for one of the weekends and this last week, he's been on a fishing retreat with the guys.  He comes back home today.  I will be glad to see him and have him here with me at night.  

Q  Do you always have projects like this when he is away?

A  Probably.  But I think that this year something is different.

I seem to trust myself more.  I don't care if I please others.   

I don't know where it is coming from, but I am letting it come.

Q  Please tell us about your unique mark making.

A  Timeless geometric motifs have become my language: Circles, dot grids and simple running stitch.  

And like a mother tongue, I speak them without thinking. 

They seem so normal to me, yet at the same time,

I know that they are not normal because the way I use them is my own personal language. 

Q  Do you have a philosophy?

A  I am a woman artist.

I look at the horizon from my window or I sit outside and listen to birds.

I always have stitching in my lap.

The archetypes and the female in me rise up like clouds and stars in the sky and I let them.

Carl Jung struggled with understanding his own unconscious. 

He tried to find an image for the feeling, as if that would help him understand the feeling. 

He identified the first shapes that all humans seem to understand.  

It is difficult to translate our inner reality into a visual symbol.

Abstract art is a valid way. 

Abstract art with the touch of my hands it my way.   

"Classical art depends on inspiration.  It exists in the mind, it doesn't exist in the world.

Many artists live socially without disturbance to mind,

but others must live the inner experience of mind,

a solitary way of living." 

Agnes Martin. 

"I found a means to express my vital concerns as a woman; 

my body, my feelings, my relationship to others, my frustrations 

and my values: tenderness, resourcefulness, endurance."  

Radka Donnell

I keep journals

Sometimes, we think that things we say or think are important.   

They are.  

It's worth it to think and feel and remember.

Not worth a lot of money, but worth a lot of SELF.

A notebook / scrap book / is a way to keep a conversation going with the inner inner.

It's a way to keep the self open and trusting and aware.

I spend time every day on my journal.

It's not a waste of time. 

I am worth it.  

I continue learning.  

I study and take notes

 

The above sketch is of one of Louise Bourgeois' sewn head sculptures.

When I come across old family photos I save them.   

I also save things I find in old journals like this poem by Louise Rogers.

At the front of every journal, I list the books I am reading and give a wee review.

I tape the year on the spine 

Every morning I start a new chapter with the day's date.  

You can't think "my life is more important than the work"   

You have to think that the work is paramount.

Adventurous

One new thing after another

say "what do I like?"

      "what do I want?"

Find out exactly what you want in life.

To progress in life you must give up the things that you do not like.

When you go along with others you are not really living your life.

Find your way.

Happiness is being on the beam with life.

Agnes Martin  said this and I copied it and found it and taped it.

There is a two minute video of me speaking about this on my vimeo account, click here. 

overwhelmed by everything

It's the weekend and I am resting.

 my fragile self

During this pandemic summer, I've sunk into Louise Penny's series about Armande Gamache.

While in the midst of serious internal growth, respect your need to rest.  Yung Pueblo

"You can't be three people"  Agnes Martin tells us.

Evelyn's questions

Not To Know But To Go On 2013  13" x 220' installed in the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts in St. Bonaventure, New York as part of the SAQA Global Exhibition  ..  3-D Expressions

Q  Where do you find inspiration to work from?

A  Inspiration is not really 'found'.  It arrives.  Agnes Martin says that inspiration falls like rain when we are asleep.   The key, I think, is stay open.  I keep a journal beside me all the time and use it to catch those ideas that hover close to me when I'm reading or looking or listening.  Making note of what resonates with me is noted and then when I re-read the journal,  I find inspiration.

one entire skein of cotton embroidery floss was used up each day for over a thousand days

 Q  Thinking of the piece that you have in the exhibition, why did you decide to make this piece 3-dimensional?

A  Not To Know But To Go On is basically a time-line for three years of my life from 2010 to 2013, full of ups and downs, loops and circles, repeats and unknowns.  Each day that whirled past is a cycle of sunrise and sunset, each month is a cycle of moon, and each year a cycle of seasons.

the fabrics are from Judy's collection of favourite cloth from her life, torn into strips and couched to artist's canvas

The meaning of the piece is expressed by its form: a line.

like a star in my sky 2020 three layers of wool with wool thread, hand stitch, second side

Q  Once you have conceived an idea, how do you start?  Do you make sketches, do research, look at other works before you begin?

A  My work always begins with a rough ball point pen sketch in my journal. 

like a star in my sky in progress (first side) plus wrapping cloth 2014 second side showing

Q  How do you decide when you have the idea?

A  I think the idea develops as I sketch.  Drawing is a way to think.

My design wall is important.  As the piece progresses, I keep pinning my work up to gaze at and draw what I see and make new sketches of possible changes.

Judy Martin with Not To Know But To Go On as installed with 3-D Expressions at the Gerald Ford Museum in Grand Rapids Michigan in 2019.

Also, and this is very important.  I don't necessarily know what the end product will look like when I make that first sketch or catch the first idea with word or two.

Cloud of Time 2014  13" x 88 feet rescued domestic linen and variety of blue fabrics couched to artist canvas with 365 skeins of cotton embroidery floss in order to represent one year of time.

 I don't work three-dimensionally unless it is the best way to express the meaning of the piece.

Evelyn Penman is the Assistant curator and Director of the gallery that is hosting the 3-D Expressions exhibition.  Because the gallery is closed by the quarantine, the exhibition can be viewed online on April 29 along with a zoom interview of four of the artists.  More information is at this link.