Love absolutely

Q   How did you develop your own style and inner voice?
Q   Was there a defining moment for you or was it a gradual process?

A   I think it was a gradual process.  The main thing I did right from the beginning was to choose a subject that I absolutely loved.   It had to be something that I needed to personally communicate, not caring if it would be acceptable in the larger art world.

I started my career with what many would term gendered subjects and gendered techniques.
When I was a young mother, I painted my children in watercolour.  I started stitching when they were young because I could take the work with me to the sand pile or playground and it could be picked up and put down when I was so often interrupted.

I also read anything I could find about women artists and writers and found out that the best were true to themselves, and this inspired me to do the same.  It sounds easy, but to follow an inner voice or dream is actually quite a brave thing to do.

This self-directed study helped me to do my art while at the same time living my so-called normal life of wife and mother.

Once the kids left home, I started the embroidery degree from the UK through Julia Caprara’s school of textile art, OPUS.  My inner voice became even clearer through this directed study and I continue to work from the thesis I developed at that time.

Particularly important are Gaston Bachelard’s writings about inner immensity, Agnes Martin’s writings about paring away the unnecessary, and Ann Hamilton’s ideas about how we arrive at knowing through every sense, especially the sense of touch. 

I’d like to especially thank my tutors from the UK, Catherine Dormor, Kay Swancutt and Joan Richardson.

I do believe that making and exhibiting art is the best way to express our inner selves and communicate heart to heart with others.

self 2005

I've been invited to have a display in the local library in Little Current for the month of February and have decided to show some early paintings.  Several were in my parents' condo and those along with a few others from our own collection make a decent show of 15 paintings, all of them featuring one or two of our four children, dated from 1981 until 2002.

While doing this search, I came across two self portraits from 2005.  I have never shown this one before. The other one ...click here.   These seemed to mark a turning point.  Both paintings are about identity.

In 2005, after 27 years of being a mother-artist, I had an empty nest.  I had grown in my art as much as the kids had grown up and flown off.   In 2006, I went back to school and that adventure has been well documented on this blog.  In 2012, I graduated with a degree in embroidered textiles at the age of 61.  

The penciled text in the upper corner of this painting is by Salman Rushdie

"...each of us is many different people. Our younger selves differ from our older selves; we can be bold in the company of our lovers and timorous before our employers, principled when we instruct our children and corrupt when offered some secret temptation, we are serious and frivolous, loud and quiet, aggressive and easily abashed.  And yet, unless we are damaged, or deranged, we usually have a relatively clear sense of who we are.  I agree with my many selves to call them all me."

Middlesex University

I received an email from the associate dean of academic development at Middlesex University yesterday. She told me that she looked forward to shaking my hand at the spring 2012 convocation in London England. Thank you to those who have expressed concern, it looks as if everything will be OK for those few of us who were nearly finished. Happy Canada Day!

It can't be true

Today, students and staff received the news that the Julia Caprara School of Textile Arts has closed. I cannot believe this. My heart goes out to those who had to make this difficult decision. My work has been transformed by the rigor and challenge required of me. It has been affirmed by attention paid to it and the one on one feedback by tutors I respect. Fellow student Gina Ferrari has written an informative post about this. She says what I want to say. The images in this post are of work from the first year or two of the degree. Twelve of us were to graduate May 2012. I'm numb.

school news

Daughter April just found out that she has been accepted as a sculpture major at Concordia U in Montreal. Although she has been an independent student a year or so, acceptance into the program is big news for her. Congratulations April. This ship is an example of her work in clay. What I admire about April is that she has no fear and has done some powerful work with all manner of materials. In her last email she was cutting steel ! Here she is wrapping grass with foil on Manitoulin two years ago. I have a lot of photos of her making stuff over the years. So proud.

On a side note, I have posted 3 months of work over to the UK for my own assessment and am recovering here with blogland and red wine. Guess I should go clean the house.

starting over

The inside is what I'm concerned with.
The inner self. I started over. I thought more about what is inside. I gathered winter branches. Balsam fir. Cedar. And wrapped them. They yielded. They seemed to like being wrapped into themselves. Springy. Light as birds.
Stitched shut. Bursting with life.
They smell like outside. They are female.
They are full of promises. They are full of memories. They are protection and nurturance.

Bound by time and place

I emptied my pin walls in the studio over the weekend. I need to begin a complete new body of work for my graduate exhibition in May 2012. I'm trying to let my heart lead me rather than my head. Today it was too cold to leave the fire so I replaced the zipper in Ned's fleece. It seemed easier than facing those white pieces of drawing paper. Tomorrow is another day.


...the art you can make is irrevocably bound to the times and places of your life.

from Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland

Aino Kajaniemi

Aino Kajaniemi lives in the central area of Finland, close to where my father was born.

Her female subjects cause me to wonder what has just happened, what are they thinking about?
At the same time, I recall private moments of my own. Aino Kajaniemi is one of the artists I profiled in my dissertation. I've posted what I wrote about her and some of the others in my other blog, modernist aesthetic. (in the side bar)

rhizomatic writing

I made this sketch during Monday's phone tutorial when Catherine Dormer told me that my writing was rhizomatic (like a root that sends up many shoots) as opposed to arboreal (like a tree, logical with a single strong trunk). She said it was a compliment. I'm working on the theoretical section of my dissertation this week, trying to make sure I don't lose my focus and have been using my wall to organize the various shoots. Catherine told me I needed to back up my ideas with psychoanalysis, phenomenology and some feminine writing. New writers for me are Juhani Pallasmaa, Melanie Klein, Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray. I have not read Freud, Jung, Lacan and Merleau Ponty in their original texts....yet. The beautiful writing that follows is from the prologue of To Be Two by Luce Irigaray.

Earth,

you who house me but with whom I share,

you who are fecund with so many children, who do not resemble one another,

you who grow without respite, both in secret and in the light,

you who bear seed, flower and fruit,

you who never cease to repair life,

you who at every time of the year work for the becoming of the living,

Earth,

you who are still lavish with sun when the frost comes,

Earth,

safeguard me, faithful one.

wonder

It is a given fact that there are two purposes for textiles. Either they protect and nurture or they demonstrate social status and cultural belonging. These purposes continue, regardless of the time or the culture.

But art textiles do a third thing. They enable Descartes’ first passion, wonder.

We are surprised by wonder. Wonder is beyond intellect, an aesthetic experience that takes us to the brink of our senses. It is when wonder happens that we experience the existential condition of immensity within ourselves. Nature can give us this feeling. Art can give us this emotion.

Art made with textile materials or technique has texture, rich material, repetitive gesture and many nearly identical marks. Even the simplest and pared down minimalist examples of textile art have those things. When the art is pared down, the touch of the hand and even the movement of the maker’s body are embedded in the work. The intensive labour, the many considerations and small adjustments, and all the time it took to make is embedded in the work. When these things are combined with the aesthetic of simplicity, the result is a space for contemplation. It's similar to what we feel when we are in nature. These images are from the 'motherly advice' book I gave April last Christmas juxtaposed with my essay writing.

Two from Finland, Two from Japan

I have made the final selection of artists that I want to write about for my dissertation.

I kept changing my mind. At first I wanted to write about artists whose work was similar to mine.

Then I wanted to write about artists whose work was similar to Agnes Martin's.


Then I decided to go with my own emotional pull to the work.





the above image is by Noriko Narahira from Japan
from her Scenes of White series 1999
machine stitch, felt

Aino Kajaniemi from Finland
Memory 2008 tapestry

I found that there just is not enough information about some artists, and this discouraged me. I would find an image of them in a book, but nothing online. Especially artists of the generation before me - still working, but not as digitally savvy as we need to be today. This made me realize how important the Internet is. I imagine that the Internet is changing how young people learn about art. Merja Winqvist from Finland
Tree 2002 paper, shellac

I prefer books, but was introduced to many artists from my two chosen cultures, Japanese and Finnish on the web. Kyoko Kumai from Japan
Blowing in the Wind 1999
stainless steel filament

These four are my final choices, selected because their work is simple, emotional, rooted in labour, grounded in nature, based on repetition, and expresses concern for our world.