working through the winter

So far this winter, I have been blessed with a beautiful rhythm in my work.

Nearly every afternoon I've gone into my town studio and have just about
finished the huge piece I've been working on for nearly 5 years.   (see pinwall)

At home,  I've been designing and starting new pieces in a rush.
Pieces that I did not think about.  (see pinwall)

I just started them, and they're great.  (see pinwall)

In other words, I've been lost in my work,
although it feels more as if I've been found.

I completed the quilting on a large piece I've worked on for more than a year
during the evening Netflix date with Ned

 and it's ready for the adjusting and finishing.   (see pinwall history)

 'Just do your work' Kiki Smith says

"Just do your work and if the world needs your work,  

it will come and get you.

And if it doesn't, do your work anyway."  Kiki Smith

kiki smith

I marvel at Kiki Smith's ability to portray both great sadness and awe.

She is bold.

woman on barge

Her evocative figures - always females - are so exposed.
Arms open.

I feel that many of them are about mothering
nurturing, protecting

and about feeling vulnerable.

I have no idea how to apply these emotions and ideas to my own work,
but I want to.

constellation 2007

 she uses the floor

she makes visual her concerns
her work makes me ask myself
'what are my concerns? '

girl and white blankets

Every day I do the same things.
I cook dinner and worry.

flight mound

In 1997 she made a floor installation entitled flight mound from 68 quilted blankets.

the material reality instructs us - Gaston Bachelard

night

(text from 2014 journal, images from google search) 
here's an earlier post about Kiki from 2012

My talk for Halifax

Thank you Nova Scotia for giving Penny and me this beautiful space to show our work.

Penny and I love to stitch and are happiest when we are stitching.
This show reflects our happiness.     

Our work complements each other.  Penny observes the small details that add up to make a big picture, observing, recording, remembering specifics as she documents nature and life's events.

I am concerned about the whirl of it all.
About how time and life go by so fast.

 Not To Know But To Go On is three years big.

 Cloud of Time is one year big.

The three drawings on the wall add up to be six months big.
Time is a material in this work.

American artist Kiki Smith said that art is something that moves from the inside of us into the world.
Art is a way to think, it is a form of communication.

The slowness of the stitched mark gives me thinking time.  As I work with cloth on my lap, I find out from my hands what is in my heart.

The large stitched journal that hangs in the middle of this space  began as a way to slow down and celebrate my turning 60.  I started it on my 59th birthday and ended it on my 61st.

I used up fabrics saved over my lifetime, and every day for three years, I stitched up an entire skein of embroidery floss.   A luxurious amount of thread was used, over 1000 skeins, yet the piece has the simplicity of a Finnish rug.  The colour of thread was chosen without looking, because we don't know, do we, what each day will bring?  Chance is an important element in this piece, as it is in life.

Domestic life, the sheets we fold, the dishes we wash, so much of our lives are spent doing repetitive tasks, most of them every day, in order to accomplish the bigger things.  Those repetitions disappear within the whirl of time.  This piece holds them.

You can't change things.  Change yourself.  Be alone. Take every opportunity to be alone.      Not To Know But To Go On.   Agnes Martin

For more about this exhibition and the opening,
please go to my updates and also to Penny Berens' blog post about the opening.
Thank you to my husband Ned for all the arty photos in this post. xo