quilt in use

Aili Evelyn 30 months

 It's nice to see Aili using the quilt I made her .  She had it in her crib last October when we visited.

 Her room is filled with colour and light, another of my quilts is on a wall.

That one (pictured above) is inspired by an Emily Carr painting, and is covered with blanket stitch embroidery - quilting.

 I was pleased to see that these quilts are such an important part of my grand daughter's life.

We visited Aili again just before Christmas, and found out that she has moved out of her crib into a big girl bed. After all, she's going to be a big sister in January!

I hope that her quilt will help her through this big transition.

beautiful blocks of time

"I can no longer look at nature and stay calm.  

 It sweeps me up, embracing me, swirling and moving in one continuous breath.

 Everything is connected: the forest, life, and myself.

 I wanted to paint these enormous feelings in a way that was big and free.

But painting in oil is slow and expensive, and watercolour is not intense enough, so I invented a new mixture: oil paint and gasoline.

 The oil paint goes further and the colours stay clear and bright.  Can you feel life and movement quivering in every brushstroke?  " emily carr

Before I wrap up my journals with cloth and threads,  I open them randomly one more time and read whatever page opens up.  Today, it happened to be this clipping of Emily Carr's text and painting (see below) in a journal from 2000.

I have seventeen journals wrapped now and it has taken me nearly a year to get this far along.  I spend half an hour every day going through one, reading it as I type very quickly to enter the family story and my art making into my laptop in chronological order.  Occasionally, I come across a gem that still resonates and I re-write or sketch it into my current journal.  

It pleases me to wrap up these books and not look at the words and clippings and drawings any more. Now I just see them as beautiful blocks of time.

emily carr skies

 I couldn't tell which stars were which or how far away any one of them was,

 or which were still burning or not - their light moving through space like a long

 late train - and I've lived on this earth so long -

 and all this time stars in the sky - in the daylight

 when I couldn't see them,

 and at night when, most nights, I didn't look.

All text in this post is by Marie Howe
The images are by Emily Carr, found in Doris Shadbolt's book about the artist.