the left leg moving forward

I make quilts as a way to understand myself.
I start with my own experience and my own dream world.
If you find connections with your experience or your dream world through my work, then I have succeeded in something very special.

My life, my dreams,those moments hidden in every day life, all rise up as I stitch.

I consider things from the point of view of a mother.

Beauty makes us human.
Beauty makes us more aware of what we could do and be.
We are bound together by beauty  (this is an abigail doan idea)
Images in this post are of a new piece that I personally find beautiful.

I stitched it throughout most of 2017, and the handling of it, the looking at it, the touching it repeatedly, made me very happy.  It put me into my dream world then, and it still does when I run my hands and eyes over it.

The Cloud In Me.  New organic cotton with old and new velvet reverse applique.  Washed and dried seven times.  The dark velvet cloth that fills the random holes was a gift, fifty years old at least and some of it dis-integrated in the laundry and was replaced with younger stuff.  The areas of bleeding from the nine dots of pink silk have left a rosy stain in the centre of the piece.  The scribbled loopy lines that catch and distract my eye and fingers just the right amount are embroidered, yes, but they are also quilting stitches and work just as hard to hold the piece together as does the close hand stitched grid. 

(The Cloud In Me here)

On my walk today I noticed that I still need to chant my steps.

I used to be able to think about other things during this daily walk,
but I am lame since this happened.  I use a cane.  I still have pain.

The left leg moves forward and I count until I get to 100.
Then I stop and stand.  I breathe deeply, and then step to 100 again.
Yesterday I did 400 steps forward, and then came home, 400 more,

Does the huge amount of stitching I do disassociate me from my body?
So that instead of healing me, (as I have claimed) it allows me to ignore my leg
.
I stitch by my window where it is comfortable, legs up, and watch the birds.
I go into my day dream mind.
My repetitive yet very intelligent hand comforts me as it caresses the cloth
I feel at such peace.
yes, I ignore my body for a while.

The birds come to the feeder.
The snow melts.

The repeated touching of hand stitch connects to a dream world of emotions.

We each have an immensity within and quilts help us dream.

I'm here

My work is grounded in the phenomenological idea that the sense of touch is the most effective way to make an emotional connection with others.   Judy Martin

I am in Toronto, delivering my new body of work to David Kaye Gallery today for installation.  Here is the text that David sent out to his subscribers in an email.

Please join me from 2:00 - 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, October 7th to meet textile artist JUDY MARTIN and view her amazingly stitched thread wall drawings/objects. Never one to sit idle without needle and thread JUDY has created an incredible body of work. She says, "The exhibition it is about the process of making and the stitched objects are just the evidence of time and labour. Making things by hand is a very positive and nurturing thing for anyone to do. Creating the pieces for this exhibition has been healing for both my body and spirit."

I have been looking forward to (and working towards) this day for a year.  So excited. xo

We are not ashamed of our helplessness

No one really wants to have perfection - we dream about perfection

 I am not what I am.  I am what I do with my hands

A work of art doesn't need to be explained.  If it doesn't touch you, then I have failed.


All text in this post from art 21 video interview with Louise Bourgeois. (including the title)
The images are from July.   The quilt shown in them has since been undone and now I am re-doing it for that exhibition in October.

I have been hunkered down with my needle and hoop for the months of August and September.  I am so focused on finishing up the large pieces for this show that I feel my self becoming lost.  And I've started to think that in the big picture of our world, an exhibition of my quilts is only a speck.

I do.  I un do.  I re-do.  Louise Bourgeois
Art is a guarantee of sanity.  Louise Bourgeois

the cloud in me

I visited Connie yesterday.
Our visits are more emotional now.
She moved into a nursing home August 8.  She is 89.
I've written a bit about her before, here and here.
When we met I was in my early 40's and she was in her late 60's.

Actually, she is the same age as my mother would have been if she were still alive.

She has such yearning.
I reminded her that she has an inner cloud of memories inside her.
And dreams. 
She said that the memories made her sad....but I think that will change.
I think they will save her.

Images are of finished new work for my exhibition in October.
 still one more large one to go xo

more softness

I feel awe every day
when I look out at the sun glittering on the water
and every night when the moon does the same thing.

I live in a lonely beauty.
Manitou means God.  Manitoulin Island is Spirit Island,

and this spiritual place is embedded in my stitched art.

This work also is based on the ideas of destruction and reparation

and more softness.
honesty.

More humility.

Life changes in an ordinary instant.
We bleed.

My work is done in a rush of slow.

It gives me self-healing.
I hope that it communicates something to the inner inner of my viewers.

This piece arrived for me without too much thinking,
in a rush,
It came out of an almost erotic inner dreamworld
very sensuous and intuitive,

and then my hands touched and touched it.

I stitched and stitched
through the spring
throughout the summer
and now it is September

and all the while i knew it was art and yet it was also something else.
A healing cloth.
I felt myself becoming whole.

inner symbols
cosmic
circle-heart
almost a mandala

My work holds the whirl of each day
the rush of time
the emotions of life

I'm just doing the best I can.

breathing out

on a soft pillow I will lay down my limbs

 Eros shook my mind like a mountain wind falling on oak trees

 you came and I was crazy for you and you cooled my mind that burned with longing

 for the man who is beautiful is beautiful to see

 but the good man at once also beautiful be

I don't know what to do
two states of mind in me

 I would not think to touch the sky with two arms

 you will go your way among dim shapes

 having been breathed out

all text by sappho, translated by Anne Carson
images are of work in progress, The Cloud In Me - stitched cotton quilt

cloud of time

 A long time.  A cloud of time.

 A world of time.

A sun shine of life.

I noticed the little quilt that I made for my father - Sisu - folded, full of touch and time,

and saw that the USE of it was what made it so beautiful.
The washing and the drying and the time.
The time.

 This gave me the courage to wash and dry my re-configured cloud.  (see here for previous)

I wanted this piece to be more than just surface.
I wanted it to be transformed through near death by drowning,
and from hanging by its own vulnerable edge,
so that its own life experience would be its beauty.

I trusted.

Cloud of Time is an accumulation of days,
time made visible through hand work,
wisdom and beauty learned by the body. 

my early life

the images of my youth in this post have a freshness for me that my newer ideas can never have

my mother made her own clothes from vogue patterns

my sister is 5 years younger than me, my brother 20 months older

my father designed and built our house on the highway

I grew up on acerage in north western ontario, Canada

 In art you need two things

a)  a feeling of groundedness
b)  a place of risk where you are not quite sure what will happen

a vulnerable space
fragile

 I repeat myself all the time

what is our interior landscape?

why not pay more attention to the fragility of our own life?

pauses

stillness

the mark - and also the space around the mark

our son Jay scanned my father's slides