Slow Work

 

cloudy day

Sophie Anne Edwards interviewed me last month at the Art Gallery of Sudbury.  To prepare for the interview Sophie sent me questions the day before, and I wrote answers.  

During the actual interview, we didn't refer to our notes, and the conversation was quite casual and spontaneous. However, for this blogpost, I am sharing one of the questions Sophie sent me as well as my written answer.  

Island Heart

Question:      There is a deep care in your work, in the process, the slowness, the time of a life and the time of each stitch. I know people realize that fibre/quilting is slow work, but you work slowly in different ways (in some ways you work quite quickly in terms of volume). To me this slow stance is a radical resistance: to the pressures of capitalist logics of productivity and consumption. Your work challenges what we understand as fine art, and not just because you’re working very finely with a historically feminine practice, but because your work uplifts and forefronts what is historically downplayed (the feminine, the domestic); but also because we are so pressured to work quickly, to be productive in a way that is visible, consumable, implicated in the circulations of capital. The quilts aren’t easily consumed – they don’t give the whole story away, we don’t know all of your thoughts, some text is invisible, or only partially visible, the works are large, they can’t all be seen in one eyeful, one must walk around and through them, they aren’t reproducible, and as large works they are often not sold in the way that other art work is sold.

 

• Would you speak to how you move between the art ‘industry’ as a professional artist, and your commitment to slow, highly detailed work?

 

Answer

One thing that I want to say is that I studied classical piano as a child.  Classical music requires practice, a tedious thing for many people to do and they quit, but I did the practicing, not always with the greatest concentration, but I set the timer and I did it.  I think that the discipline of music practice may have made me able to do my slow work today.   I still use a timer, although I no longer play the piano.  My aim when I was preparing a Mozart sonata for an exam was to make it sound as if it was easy and that is why I practiced.   I wanted to communicate easily to my listener – and it’s the same with my quilts.  I want my viewers to ‘get’ my work intuitively and I think that they do because of the amount of time and touch held within the quilts.  My heart is there for them in an open and powerful simplicity. It’s emotional.  

poet in love

Giving one’s attention requires one to slow down.  Durational time like this requires me to stay with a project long enough to understand what it is doing and what I am feeling.  The viewer also has to slow down.   For me, going slowly allows my intuition more space to guide me through the uncertainty.  It’s important to me that the work is open to change and doubt and the piece is constantly evolving and in the process becomes more true.  

Also, working slowly with cloth, touching it as much as I stitch it, gives me ideas.  My imagination has permission and enough space to soar.  Thoughts come through the sense of touch. More ideas than we can understand or process –

my heart and eternity

Maybe what you mean by the art industry is the commercial art scene of galleries and art fairs.  

You know, I think that my work could fit into this just fine, because my work is authentic and true and beautiful and well made.  It’s true that it is not made to ‘sell’, but I think that people do eventually find that it is decorative and thought provoking enough for their homes.  It is not 'normal' though in the commercial gallery system.  Quilted textiles are against the grain. My simple abstract work is not group of 7 type landscape.  I like to think it is more like the early modernists like Paul Klee in the 20’s and Mark Rothko in the 50’s but with feeling.  

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This is just one of the eight questions Sophie sent me.  I can share another one in a future post.  In regards to the actual August 23 interview, I hope to be able to share it either by video or audio within the next few weeks.    

Hold Me

I made this quilt just as we were moving from Kenora to Manitoulin in 1993.

I remember stitching it in the truck during the 2-day drive back to Kenora to organize the moving van.  We left our kids with Ned's sister so that they could continue to attend their new schools.

I remember the beautiful views of autumn colour along the north shore of Lake Superior.
I remember quiet time with my husband in the vehicle as we drove back to the house I had loved.

I stitched, he drove.
We talked and looked out the window.

The text in the quilt borders is by Diane Ackerman from her book A Natural History of the Senses.  It reads:
When you consider something like death, then it probably doesn't matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, and care for one another too deeply, in an effort to know life.

I entered the quilt into the biennial Fibreworks show in Cambridge galleries the following spring, and it was awarded the purchase award by the jurors, one of whom was Ralph Beney.
It became part of the permanent Canadian Fibre art collection and has been in the vaults of that gallery for over 20 years.  Hard to believe.

I am moved to write about this piece today, (and scan the old slides I have of it) because the Cambridge Art Galleries are showing the entirety of the collection this winter.  The launch is next week and there will be a symposium about the collection in January.

I believe that it is important for public galleries to collect work of artists.
I am so proud that Hold Me is part of this particular collection.

Also, my work is in permanent collections of two other art galleries, both in northern Ontario.  Click on their titles for more info. When Asked: She Replied  and Canadian Pioneer.

cloud of time

We are delivering the work to the art gallery of Sudbury tomorrow and beginning the installation of the Mended World exhibition.  The sculpture I'm writing about in this post is the newest work in the show.  Don't tell anyone, but it's not quite finished.

I had the idea, after working on Not to Know But To Go On - the journal that documented three years day by day that it might be possible to make one year of time visible and tangible. This is not a journal.  When complete, it will mark 365 days as a new calender does.  It does not mark my daily life - it just marks a blank slate.  I've been stitching about six days each day since Christmas. 

It still takes me about 40 minutes to work through the complete skein of floss that marks each day.  That's three hundred and sixty five skeins of floss.....

When it showed in Thunder Bay it was 113 days, to which I added 62 more before the formal opening.

 This month I've stitched 103 more.  

That's still only 278.    

site specific

The Halcrow House on Highway 6 Manitoulin Island, on the hill above our house.

The degree work I am doing this winter has to do with creating site specific installations. We are asked to choose two sites, and ensure that the body of work we make fits well into both of them. That it does not impose on, but rather exposes the site. I've chosen the Sudbury art gallery and the Halcrow House as my two sites. Why? They are both pioneer houses built on hills looking over water is one reason maybe. That I'm interested in the house as metaphor is another, maybe. The Bell Mansion, Art Gallery of Sudbury

I think about the women who have lived in these houses and what they saw as they looked out over the water, how they managed their days. You can see a painting I made of the Halcrow house by clicking here.