Rebecca Soudant

 "in this panel my water is breaking"   Rebecca Soudant

Sailing with John, cotton embroidery thread on canvas by Rebecca Soudant

Oh Rebecca.  Your hand embroidered tapestry, filled with colour and narrative, metaphor and beauty, time and power...communicates so much tenderness and pain.  

This tapestry panel is the first thing one sees upon entering the group exhibit I am Water, currently up at the steam museum in Kingston Ontario until May 2.

 Entirely covered with hand stitching, this is the second tapestry the artist has created about childbirth.

The earlier piece, "A tapestry of birth" is a thirty five foot documentation of the artist's first pregnancy .  For more photos and information about the artist,  click here. 

I believe I'm directly contradicting the way human beings are represented in our society.  
I think the universal is the male.  
And so in my deliberately turning this around and trying to universalize the female - 
-the rites of passage for women- 
birth, puberty, child-birth, death

would become the universal.  
I tried to challenge myself to look at the world as I wanted to,
as a woman artist, 
realizing the complexities of doing so because the world isn't really that way.

Nancy Spero

above photo of Rebecca by Asad Chishti,  

time

I'm glad that I have my stitch journal with me.

I don't get much chance to work on it here with dad, but every now and then there are minutes.

TIME by Kosso Eloul

Dad was discharged from hospital on Monday.  He has been back to doctor twice since then for new prescriptions.

The sculpture in the photo above is along the waterfront in Kingston. (more info here)
Notice the triangle of infinite space.  (photographed during one of my hospital-condo walks)

Not to know, but to go on.
A journal of a lived time (autumn 2010) visible...and also the time that I am living through right now because of my touching touching touching.

I'm with Dad this week

winter tree, an oil painting by my mother, now propped on the desk in dad's guest bedroom.

This is my view.

wolfe island and cloth

We went on the ferry. Dad's van is adapted for his wheel chair.I'll be bringing my mother's manuscript home, that novel she left behind. "The social metaphor that cloth offers up is incredible. Each thread is visible and necessary." Ann Hamilton "I am not ashamed of my helplessness" Louise Bourgeois

home safe

I drove home from Kingston yesterday. Spring dots of leaves and blossoms made a serene show in the bush for the ten hour trip. These branches are a remembrance of the 30 minute nap I took around 3 pm, on a pull off from highway 17.

It was nice (and important) to spend quality time with this gentleman, my father, who turns 87 this month.

field recordings of icebergs melting

Seen (and heard) at the Agnes Etherington art gallery: Michael Campbell's field recordings of icebergs melting.

The installation showed the work off well. Small sculptures made from driftwood, rusted metal fastened together with small copper headed nails evenly placed in rows like running stitches were installed at eye level on an arrangement of poles and rails. The sound of a roaring ocean over and under.

I am interested in the objects built to withstand the ocean’s energy; such as barges, wharfs and flat bottom oyster boats. These structures carry a history of continual maintenance in an attempt to remain functional for as long as possible. Michael Campbell

in Kingston

High speed internet has aided my awareness of the grandmother of performance art, Marina Abramovic. I am impressed with her work. In the afternoon, my father and I walked over to the river to visit the beech tree planted in memory of my mother.