Home from England

It's easy to say - trust in yourself.

It's easy to say - just do one thing that you're sure of and as you do that, you will start to know what to do next.

It's easy to say - plunge in, and then go slowly.

It's easy to say -  not to know but to go on.

Working intuitively.

I think that this kind of approach seems mysterious and a little scary, 

but it really is very much like life itself. 

we went to a family wedding in Newcastle on Tyne in the UK..  There were peeling church bells

We don't know what will happen each day.

It helps to follow routines.  It gives a sense that we do know.  

For example I always sleep on the same side of the bed.

But many things happen over the course of a day that you cannot plan for.

You just have to react.  

A typical example is a conversation.

You cannot predict what the grandson will tell you or what your old friend will ask you, but you will reply.  And it will be a good reply.

The conversation will continue.  Something worthwhile will happen.

You didn't know that this would happen.  You didn't plan for it. 

Same with my stitching. 

When I begin, I have a general idea inspired by the materials.

For the torso piece in this post, I was triggered by the faded indigo silk.  

I took the faded cloth with me to England along with a wool backing cloth and some pinkish toned threads.

I honestly did not know what would happen with it. 

I started at the edges and with couching.    

I liked how they became strong and also lively.

I drew the piece into my journal,

Then I looked at some photos of pre-history Newgrange 

and put some dots and zigzags into my journal drawing. 

The British Rail system is really good.  Ned and I spent quite a bit of time on trains moving back and forth between the north of England and the south west region of Cornwall.

Couching is one of my signature techniques.

As I was doing it, I thought about another favourite technique, the reverse applique dot.

I could reveal the white backing cloth using that technique. 

We visited the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield to see the Sheila Hick's retrospective.  

While in England I stitched when I needed to. 

In the middle of night sometimes and also on trains and planes.  

Doing one thing and then another thing

Liking something and repeating it 

Not liking something and not repeating it.  

This is the way I work.

Our elder daughter and her teen boys and our son and his wife went to the wedding too.

Sometimes 'mistakes' happen, 

and I have to cut things up or in half and start again. 

I keep going.

I don't know but I keep going. 

It's me

It's me who begins to cry or needs to lie down or put my face into the wind. 

My emotions overwhelm me.  I become weepy or cranky.

Are you alright? the kids ask

I'm fine.  It's just hard for me to put a meal on the table these days, I say to them.  

We need to eat outside because we are still distancing ourselves, but it's not the meal that does it.

Not really.

It's all the other things going on.  The travel to England for one.

The Air Canada lady says that Pearson airport is worse than we can imagine and to get there 4 hours before a flight rather than 3.

I don't want to face that airport;  Ned and I leave on Monday.

He watches me, so wobbly most of the time.  If I ask, he hugs me and says "it'll be fine". 

I played board games with the boys and lost.  There was lots of teasing.  I am a good grand mom.  

(It's not every meal.  Most of them are fine.)

I say to myself "You're fine!"  

But it's me.  It's not them.  

I read Maria Popova's newsletter.  Recently, she wrote about the writer, Iris Murdoch.

Murdoch understood that we act out a 'middle - emotion' because it is too complex, contradictory, and category-defying for us to know what we are really feeling.  Unwilling to fully live into what we are, (anxious, uncertain, tender and terrified creatures), we act ourselves into being, costumed in false certitude. 

I turn to the large soft organic cotton quilt I've nearly finished.  

It's a real thing and it is very fine.

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. 

believing

 

 NOT that the art object is inherently significant

 

 meaningful or beautiful

 

 BUT THAT the value

 and meaning of art is actively constructed

 

 by the viewer.

 (Marcel Duchamp's belief)

the most beautiful thing

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
It is the source of all true art and science.

He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead - - - his eyes are closed.

The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion.

 

 

To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists,
manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty,

which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms.

 This knowledge,

 This feeling,

 is at the center of true religiousness.

 In this sense, and in this sense only

I belong to the rank of devoutly religious men.

Albert Einstein