Deschambault-Grondines

typical house in the village of Deschambault, Quebec, Canada

This post is about the visit that Ned and I made last week to a small village on the shores of the St Lawrence river called Deschambault.    We were invited to come before October 4 so that we could see the interior of two of the three historic buildings before they close for the season.     

the moulin a vent de Grondines, built 1674

On the my Process blog, almost all recent posts have been about my work with linen.  This is because throughout August and September I have been researching and gathering ideas for new pieces that use old linen.  I will be sharing my progress on these pieces over the next few months. 

(the old rectory)  le vieux presbytere de Deschambault built 1815 

The Bienniale Internationale du Lin de Portneuf is held every two years.  It is a festival where original, conceptual art works about flax and linen and heritage are showcased.  The variety of art is displayed across the historical sites of the villlages in the community of Deschambault-Grondines, located about a half hour from Quebec City.   

The old mill
  Moulin de la Chevrotiere built in 1802 with an annex built 1766

Twenty artists are invited every two years to create new work that will be installed for the entire summer season outside, around, or inside these historic sites.  2027 will be the twelth biennale, and the dates are June 11 until October 3, 2027.  There is a catalog of the first ten biennales and I was thrilled to find some of my favourtie artists from Europe and Canada included in this Canadian festival over the years. You can purchase the beautiful catalogue that celebrates the first ten biennales (20 years ) on the website.  (here)

I looked at the exterior park-like area and walking trails through tall trees as potential sites for my linen pieces.  These trails go along the creek up to the dam and to the pond.  

I also looked at the interiors of the two historic venues that would be available for my work.

interior of the old mill  

Both interiors were beautiful with thick stone walls that were smoothed with white plaster.  They had lovely windows.  The ceilings are low however, and that will limit the size of my work, which is usually quite large.  

interior of the old rectory
(exhibition of Marie-Charles Nadeau's weaving and photography)

I loved viewing the several exhibitions in the two buildings.  All of them were excellent.  

I was especially impressed by the young Montreal artist, Marie-Charles Nadeau, who wove and dyed ordinary household linen to speak about the past life of early French settlers.  Her photographs of them burning struck me at an emtoional level.  

Marie-Charles Nadeau 
Archives du Temps Passe

Marie-Charles' work showcased the labour and care that go into creating 'ordinary cloth'. 

Her photographs emphasized the poignant fact that eventually cloth, like the human body, is ephemeral.  Her photographs and careful handwoven textiles resonated with me. 

These things are what I also want to also express with my work. 

Marie-Charles Nadeau, Archives du Temps Passe
in the Vieux Presbytyre de Deschambault

I'll write more on this topic as we go through the winter ahead of us.  I'm so proud to be one of the artists invited to show new work in the 2027 edition of the biennale.  I am supposed to ship it to Quebec in early May.  

It is good to know what will be occupying my creative brain and hands over the next months.  

Frances Dorsey: Shot Through The Heart

Frances Dorsey

When Frances Dorsey was seven to ten years old, she lived in Saigon, Viet Nam.   She remembers "a paradise on the edge of conflagration".  When she was twenty-one, she moved to Canada.  She has a duel citizenship with USA.  "I am a citizen of North America."

This piece, Shot Through the Heart, is made from used table linens that have been naturally dyed with extracts and earth oxides, as well as discharged and immersion dyed with mechanical resists.  Some have been  over printed with silk screen and also with block printing. The linens were cut up and reassembled.  They were embroidered hand stitched.  It is a large piece:  11 feet x 11 feet.  It was made in 2010. 

Suzanne Smith Arney saw this piece at a conference in Nebraska in 2010, and wrote about it in the fall 2011 of the Surface Design Association's journal.

"The napkins and tablecloths are soft with age and use.  Looking closely, I can make out a nine-block structure, with those blocks subdivided into four.  Each discovery revealed another level to decipher.  Stepping closer, I read the fabrics' histories written in monograms, embroidery, as well as small tears and stains.  Dorsey added her own text in faded yellow, red and purple dyes.  There are folds and stitchings and photo -derived images of her father's army photos and letters, such as b-52s and mortars.  I read the title and stepped back.  Shot Through the Heart infuses the room with a chilly clarity; the whole and partial circles are no more suns than dinner plates.  They are targets."

Frances Dorsey taught about textiles at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design for sixteen years.  Her father was a rifleman "who relived his combat daily."    She currently lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada and continues to make thoughtful and beautiful artwork with textiles.  

This is the first post about a new series on this blog:  

Canadian artists who work with Textiles  

The whirl of 2024

January 14  1:50 pm

February 16  7:16 am

March 14   7:22 am

April 9   8:09 am

May 15  6:54 pm

June 12  8:25 am 

July 14  8:48 am

August 16  6:23 am 

September 23  9:34 am

October 7  6:48 pm

November 10  7:12am

December 21 4:34 pm

I thought about using this space to show the interior of my house with all the finished and unfinished quilts piled up or unfolded across beds and chairs and on the floor and on the wall, because then you might understand how much work I do and how I am always busy ....but...

this constant view of the Wikwemikong peninsula across the water of Manitowaning Bay is truer.  

I stare out the window half the time it seems.   That colour full sky gives me an answer, even when I didn't really ask a question.  Here it is.  

Here is the answer.  Our lives are fragile and our timelines are speeding forward.  We must be kind to each other and kind to ourselves.

It often does seem like there is an urgency to get things done, made, out there, but really, there is no rush.  Don't rush. Go slow.   I wish for you, my dear and appreciated blog readers, the very best for the new year.  Be tender.  Be slower.  Allow softness and kindness to rule.  Let's care.

Poet in Love

He seems to me equal to gods that man who opposite you

sits and listens close to your sweet speaking 

and lovely laughing -- oh it

puts the heart in my chest on wings

for when I look at you, a moment, then no speaking

is left in me

no: tongue breaks, and thin

fire is racing under skin

and in eyes no sight and drumming

fills ears

and cold sweat holds me and shaking 

grips me all, greener than grass

I am dead -- or almost

I seem to me.

Fragment 31, Sappho

I received this white whole cloth quilt that was beginning to rot away from passage of time.  The back was the worst with big holes and disappeared batting so first I covered the back all over with new batting, some of which was not batting at all but a felting material (pre-felt) and then I added a layer of silk and rayon squares that had been dyed and then marked in the centres, all odd sizes, with large circles.  And then after that, on the other side, I added easter egg shapes of silk velvet and then I quilted the piece, echoing and renewing the earlier maker’s thick blue thread only I used a pinkish avocado thread instead. 

We used it on our bed during that velvet egg patching time and the colours were so very bright because they were from the pandemic dye experiments my artist daughter mixed up and the colours – well the colours were like spring and gave a renewal feeling of softness to that side.  When I quilted it, echoing the interesting and beautiful whole cloth pattern from the original, I went through the velvet and the original quilt and then it was done.  I washed and dried the thing in the machines – subjecting it to life and a kind of drowning death and then rebirth and oh wow, the pre-felted parts reacted and shrank and turned it into something older, or perhaps I mean more human.  The amazing texture in the now quite misshapen quilt, is no longer usable as a bed quilt but too interesting to not look at and touch. 

I look at it and think I want to wrap myself in this weird courage – this cloak of resilience and mistakes and time past and isolation-colour experiments. An object originally made by a woman I do not know but I admire nevertheless, a cloak from the pandemic when we didn’t know what we were doing or what would come next, when I was so afraid, but poured my fear and desire to protect my family into this cloth of many colours.   A softer than soft quilt.  An emotional cover up.  A close listener to my sweet speaking and lovely laughter and my breath.

I think of my quilts as poems, and for me, this one is like Sappho’s fragment 31, her love poem that describes how she falls apart when she looks at the beloved.  How she is greener than grass and also feels dead.  Her tongue breaks and fire races under her skin and in her eyes no sight and in her ears drumming and cold sweat holds her and shaking grips her. "Greener than green I am and dead, or almost I seem to me."

And how this quilt fell apart, dead or almost – but now it is greener than grass on the inside.  Dull on the outside, bright in the inside.  Your sweet speaking.  Your lovely laughing.  

I am not the original maker of this quilt, but I followed her lead and quilted along her beautiful lovely laughing lines, I listened to and then enhanced her sweet speaking.  I made something that is greener than green but also wrecked.  Something to wrap around a poet.  Something to represent a poet.  A poet in love.  A poet’s bittersweet dream cloak.

Fragment 31 is perhaps Sappho's most famous poem.  In this post it is translated from the original Greek by Anne Carson.  Fragment 31 was a key reference in Carson's long essay about the creative space of yearning, of not knowing but wanting to know and being in love with that erotic wooing or seeking, that human lovers and artists and thinkers are familiar with.  Eros the Bittersweet, was selected by the modern library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time.

summer time

Happy Summer from Canada.

Wishing you imagination, 

water play,

and lots of quilts.   xo

number twenty

On The Lake

Made in 1989 when we lived in Kenora and would take the kids boat camping on Lake of the Woods.  Lake of the Woods is a deep lake, full of islands.  I was always looking between the islands for an open, uninterupted view.

It's a quilt of stitched photographs.
Film photos - digital cameras were not invented yet.

In the boat, motor going, long trips, fresh air, the four kids eating boat candy,  I would take photo after photo of the sky and the water.  I'd take another roll, more sky, more water.  We went camping with them in that open boat that we would pull up on crown land.  I took photos of the kids too of course, and more photos of the sky and the water.

Once settled at home again, I would drop the rolls of film at the drug store to have them processed - or maybe it was the grocery store.  It would take two or three days to have that done.

Once I got the envelopes of photos, I felt as if I was a painter with a new palette.  Or a quilter with dyed fabric.  I cut the photos into one and a half inch squares and arranged them, stitched them to cotton with white thread.

With no islands.
Just horizon.

In 1992 I think, I was invited to bring some actual work to a gallery in Winnipeg - Ace Art I think.  It was an artist run space and the purchasing committee of the Canada Council Art Bank was planning a visit to make selections from our area of the country.  I didn't think I had a chance as my work would be viewed along with many well known Winnipeg artists, but I took this piece and I think three others. It was a two hour drive from my house into the city.

So now this piece is still in the Canada Council Art Bank collection, and they have updated their web site so that it is possible to view online.  This photo is much better than any I have ever been able to present online - since I was having to work from film photos and scan them.  Anyway - it's nice when you come across these kinds of things and I thought I'd share with you.

It's number 20 on one hundred quilts

Colour With a U

2006

 In Canada, we spell colour with a u.  We also spell labour, favour, honour and neighbour with a u.

flesh and blood 2007

 That 'u' could stand for unique, unforgettable, universal, unity, understanding, utopia.

2008

 It could include the unusual, unexpected, unbound, unabashed, unaccounted, uncanny.

light of the moon 2009

 We care about the 'u', it makes us unique.  We care about the 'you', it brings us together..

2010

What do the Canadian values of diversity and inclusion mean to you?
How does your labour in your favourite medium honour your neighbourhood, your community?

energy cloth 2011

How do you colour yourself into our Canadian culture?

niagra falls 2012

We are looking for artworks that visualize these ideas and that together will give an insightful
perspective on our Canadian cultural identity.

2013

All types of work are encouraged, including representational, abstract, and social commentary,
in 2 or 3 dimensions.

lake 2014

Opening location:  Homer Watson House and Gallery, Kitchener Ontario Canada
March 15 - April 19, 2020

2015  providence

The exhibition will travel across Canada until March 2023.

This is a Studio Art Quitls Association exhibition for Canadian members of SAQA only.
Read the full Call for Entry at this SAQA link

Entries must be received by January 3, 2020.
For further questions, please contact Tracey Lawko, chairperson of the exhibition committee.

2016

 All text in this post is from the Call for Entry for Colour For A U for Canadian readers of this blog.

the cloud in me 2017  

 The images are a celebration of my years of blogging.
I chose one from each year:   2006 until 2019.

2018

See the sidebar for further details about this call and information about
the SAQA conference in Toronto 2020.

my awakened heart 2019