and this quilt it is so safe

Kindness is our only hope.

We were with our family in a Mexican resort during that unreal time between Christmas and New Year's.  We had a very beautiful escape.  

I took my handwork with me and there were moments of quiet when I turned to it, mostly in the early evenings in our very clean and white room when it was a relief to be away from the sun.

I am pleased to finally be able to share on this blog that I have been invited to mount a solo show at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham England this coming August.  For the exhibition, I plan to finish up the quilt tops I put together during the pandemic so that I can display mostly all new work.  And this is one of them.

Quilting it surprised me.  When I hand piece a quilt, I usually need to strengthen the seams by quilting them 'in the ditch' and that is the case here.  However, this is the first time that I have added a secondary grid and that simple stitching made the old damasks express a softness that I had not expected.  

It became a quiet safety net full of PEACE.

A traditional one patch quilt has a timeless quality, not innovative or risky.  Quilts like this make me think about my 50 year marriage to Ned.  We celebrated it in Mexico with our children and there were many speeches and teasing about our long marriage and one of the kids asked me what my favourite thing about being married to Ned over the years and my answer  was that I felt safe with him.  

I'm a timid person. It's a scary world and I am afraid of it.  

And this quilt.  It is so safe.  

and my love is poured.

Our world goes to pieces. We have to rebuild our world.  We investigate and worry and analyze and forget that the new comes about through exuberance, not through a defined deficiency. We have to find our strength rather than our weakness.  Out of the chaos of collapse we can save the lasting: we still have our right or wrong; the absolute of our inner voice.  We still know beauty.  We still know freedom and happiness, unexplained and unquestioned.  Intuition saves us examination.  We have to gather our constructive energies and concentrate on the little we know, the few remaining constants.  But how?  We neglect a training in experimenting and doing.  We feel safer as spectators.  We collect rather than construct.  We are proud of knowledge but forget that facts only give reflected light.  If we want to learn to do, we have to turn to artwork, more specifically to craft work.  We learn that no picture exists before it is done.  The conception of a work gives only its temper, not its consistency.  Things take shape in material and in the process of working it.  Anni Albers

It's about love

Art is about relationships even if it appears to be about nature.

Coastal Trip by Paterson Ewen (1925-2002)  acrylic and metallic paint on gouged plywood  1974

I visited the Art Gallery of Ontario last week.  

Paterson Ewen is one of my favourite artists.

Coastal Trip by Paterson Ewen  1974  (each part is about 60 inches)

I respond with my whole body to the rugged materials and strong marks in his unique paintings.

The scale of his work holds us.  

coastal trip detail by Paterson Ewen  acrylic on plywood cut with first with a router 1974

Monotones (Seascape) by Silke Otto-Knapp watercolour on canvas 2016

I took my 7 year old grand daughter with me.  

We only lasted about an hour.

Monotones (seascape) detail by Silke Otto Knapp  

It's hard work, 

looking and thinking

 and climbing all the curvy stairs.

When we got home we made collaborative drawings with ball point pens in my journal.    

highway 17 return home

Our visit with our son and his family was beautiful and I am so very grateful. 

 

chanting

The similitudes of the past and those of the future,

the glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings,

the certainty of others,

the life, love, sight, hearing of others.

Others will see the islands large and small.

Fifty years hence, others will see them,

A hundred years hence, others will see them.

what is it then between us?

what is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?

I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me

It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,

The dark threw its patches down upon me also,

I laid in my stores in advance,

I considered long and seriously of you before you were born.

We understand then do we not?

Live, old life!

Play the old role!

Receive the summer sky, you water, and faithfully hold it

Till all downcast eyes have time to take it from you.

You have waited, you always wait.

We receive you at last.

We plant you permanently within us.

We fathom you not.  We love you.

These are Walt Whitman's words 

imagination is the star

"it goes on endlessly and one never gets to the place where the sun is setting but the red gets more and more intense"    Tove Jansson

This post is about a book.
Sculptor's Daughter (by Tove Jensson)
is written from a child's point of view. 
Child logic combines with adult wisdom and experience
and teaches the reader about art.

In fact, the book is a work of art.
It is a work about imagination.

"making a whole is very important.  Some people just paint things and forget the whole"
Tove Jansson

'The act of art becomes charged with power, then with failure.
We are up against mis-judgements, pre-conceptions, mis-interpretations, age-old entrenched beliefs, traditions, authorities, inevitable failures and competitions, and those games you have to play.' *

'A child, she reminds us, is refreshingly free from pre-conception - as well as a sponge for it.' *

We see the closedness of pre-conception and the child 's unknowing up against it. *

Sculptor's Daughter is full of images.

Darkness and light,
kindness and understanding,
objects and humans and emotions vivid and surreal.

The book makes us understand the importance and the fragility of our smallness.

It asks us to be alive to the imagination.

 It is full of flung-open windows.
Thrown-open doors. *

Tove Jansson has written a book that salvages and gives back to adults the child-sized truth about how things connect and how they mend.

How they continue.

I dream and my soul awakens.
Imagination is the star.    Carl Jung

The italics marked with * are by Ali Smith, and are taken from her introduction to Tove Jansson's memoir, Sculptor's Daughter.  I read it over Christmas when the children were home with their magical world.

The images are of some pieces I made in December while being a grandma and a hostess and a mother and I wasn't letting myself think too much. 

different perspectives

The view from a moving train is different from that on a platform, although the two viewers may be within meters of each other.  The experience is different in so many more ways than vantage point.

The noise, the speed, the shaking, the momentum, the humidity, the voices of fellow passengers, the smell, the temperature, the path traveled prior to that point, swamp the  experience of the train traveler.  Glancing at the person on the platform, how can we begin to see through their eyes?

Cultural clashes are like that.  but this relativism is a truth for all humans.  Even those who share the same culture, the same house, the same family, have starkly different experiences.  We are each on our own train and our views are peculiar to our own experiences.

But we crave understanding.  We need it for our survival.  As social beings we collaborate to solve problems that confront us all.  Wherever we are born and whatever language we speak there is a field of inherent questions that arises as a natural outcome of life.

What are we?
What should we do?
What of birth and death?
And no matter the diverse social constructs that form our reality, the answers from one lone traveler can always intrigue and be of use to another.

This is the spore that art can carry.  At the same time that we are never able to truly empathize with another human being, we can share at a deep level around the absolute pillars of existence that are not socially determined:  We are born.  We may love.  We will die.

At a time that even gravity is not a constant, our shared biological and neurological truths are common and infinitely unchanging.

The amazing text in this post is by Will Stubbs and is from his essay,  "art of the artless"  about the artist Nyapanyapa Yunupingu in the book Marking The Infinite: Contemporary Women Artists from Aboriginal Australia, catalogue for the exhibition curated by Henry F Skerritt.

The images are of  my new piece, Noble Tenderness, a different perspective of my Awakened Heart.  I packed it up gently and brought it to Toronto last week to deliver to Karen from Guildworks gallery, Prince Edward County Ontario.

There is also an image of a walk in the park near where my grand children live in the city.

Magical Material Thinking

To Lips velvet, brass, porcelain, mirror 2019 by April Martin

This post is about our daughter's exhibition currently on at Harbourfront Centre of Craft and Design in Toronto.  Magical Material Thinking.

Romance Portal (detail) brass, wax  2019 by April Martin

The objects are whimsical hand made treasures created from solid materials that, like humans, change from within through experiences.

It's an exhibition of two artists, but this blog post is just about April's work.  It's up until middle of October at HarbourFront centre of craft and design where she is a resident artist.

"There is no denying the joy of encountering a group of objects that transport you to another
otherworldly place"  Melanie Egan, curator of Harbourfront Craft and Design

Ideal Solution pewter, cobalt carbonate fired to quartz inversion, earthenware 2019 by April Martin

I was able to attend the opening celebration on July 11, along with many of April's friends and family members.

Fashionista April in sky blue shoes.

Snek Out neon, earthenware, unfired cobalt carbonate 2019 by April Martin

"The sheer pleasure objects can evoke and the delight artists experience through their
engagement with making and materials is a cause to celebrate."  Melanie Egan

Brightening Visibly copper, wool, carbon fiber 2018 by April Martin

April made Brightening Visibly when she was home with Ned and myself the winter of 2018.  The title comes from a favourite saying of Ned's that she had heard since childhood.   It was his answer to questions or statements (mostly about food) such as me saying: "oh sorry, there's no more broccoli "  and him responding with a smile: "brightening visibly".

Hard to believe, but in the sculpture pictured below, there is no adhesive or indentation to keep the scales in balance.  Just balance itself.

Rising Libra fired and unfired cobalt carbonate, clay 2019 by April Martin

"Artist April Martin and designer-maker Natalie Sirianni present an exhibition of curious
objects and installations infused with the alchemical nature of materials, process, and thought. "
Melanie Egan, curator

cobalt carbonate in unfired state is pink

cobalt carbonate after firing in kiln changes colour to blue  Rising Libra detail

The photos in this post are from the opening, and suffer from the reflections on the glass cases.

Romance Portal

For much better photos and April's observations about the creation of this body of work, go to the blog Modernist Aesthetic.  

To Lips

Love you, proud of you, dear April xo