I open myself.

new work : hand pieced in 2021, working title Lamentation currently being hand quilted 

Why do I doubt?

This is the real me.  

This is my old self, my toddler self.

That kind of old.

The old that goes back in time, not ahead to wrinkles, but back to when I was new.

I discover that true self when I slow down and stitch.

old work:  a large wool diamond in the square quilt with embroidery 
that I abandoned / worked on over twenty years. 
 I plan to finish quilting this beauty in 2022.

the movement of my hands

the textures beneath the fingers

the weight of cloth, the familiarity, intimacy of touch

all these things give me access

to my own interiority

I stitch this piece in the day time, by the window.

Words too.  

Just by writing these words down

I understand my inner world a little better.

I see myself through these words. 

But see is not the word I seek...

I know myself.

The yellow-green piece is new.  It needs to be hand quilted.    

I hear myself.

My poetic nature hums.

I touch my soul.

Yes

Touch, that's the important sense.

I stitch this piece in the evening time with my husband and our show.  

Strings of words I write.

Threads.

A yarn

and yes, I dream.

I dream walk.

Solitude allows this.

The Bear's Paw quilt I made in 1990 covers our TV couch. 

No one else needs to accompany me on my dream walks.

It would be difficult anyway, 

I flit and fly all over, back and forth, future - past

it would be hard to keep up.

Don't worry about me.

I cherish my window time.

Sometimes, I close my eyes

in order to feel more deeply. 

I retreat into my body while  

flying in a place of no-time.

It's hard to describe.

I give myself up to hand work

and find my self.

Images are of the quilts I've been stitching this past month.

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about orbits and dreams and also about bed / boat and melancholy / fragility / durability and also about stars

In this dark month, 

I'm looking at things differently.

Embroideries I made in a younger time,

for a different project,

are cut and re-arranged into a garden,

stitched to new cloth.  

Seeing them being reborn enlivens me.  

enlarges my spirit. 

This new work is round and bright

and fragile and soft.

Stitching it, making it

helps me to accept the winter coming

and my ageing 

I have been stitching new circles

one after the other.

Bowls of silence.  (Rumi's words)

Circles and dots

that represent Gaia's rhythm.

The natural cycles of the sun and the moon and the planets and the stars

and how they relate to earth. 

Cosmic time pieces.

The earth revolves on her axis in one day,

the moon orbits the earth in one female month,

the earth orbits the sun in one year.

Gaia rhythm.

Earth clocks.

under the blue sky my clock-faced flowerbeds reflect the orb of the sun

they never sleep

lying awake under the starry constellations, they listen to the music of  time.

they chuckle, yes they chuckle 

and gossip.

I walk in this garden holding the hands of dead friends  

Old age came quickly. 

Cold, cold, cold, they died so silently.

My gilly flowers, roses, violets blue, 

sweet garden of varnished pleasures, 

please come back next year.

                                                                  Derek Jarman

quilts as women's art: a quilt poetics

The body of the quilt is the work of coming to like in yourself what was only adored or ignored by your mother, or other objects of your love or your lovers;

The body of the quilt is the work of coming to like the work of another woman, and the passing through of all rejection and neglect by another woman or man;

The body of the quilt is the work of coming to like yourself as a little old lady and an old little girl and a new little sister;

The body of the quilt is the work of going over all your mistakes and lost dreams liking yourself all the way all over inside and out and all around the whole border not knowing where to start and not knowing where to stop;

The body of the quilt is the work repeating all your moves and liking the fact that you did it all, did all the moving;

The body of the quilt is the endless search, your endless search, but as your companion as you go through the motions of work, as you work your way: by focusing, waiting, turning, twisting, aligning, matching, fitting, pulling in the faraway, visiting with the absent, drawing out the ineffable, amplifying the vestigial, leaving well-enough alone, enduring the unendurable, practicing readiness for the other, learning the lesson late and liking yourself for forgetting it again, and you’re finally looking up and seeing the body of your quilt behind your cat, behind your potted plants, up to your neck, coming out of your ears, and before the body of your quilt you see the people you want to see the body of your quilt and they like it, more than anyone every liked your body, and said so, and you know now it does not matter whether you did because you’ve come to like yourself even more than the body of the quilt, and you can look at it and like it by yourself.

Radka Donnell

The Quilt's Body by Radka Donnell is on page 113 of Quilts As Women's Art:  A Quilt Poetics.  

I read this book at age 40.  It gave me the foundation of my career as an artist/quiltmaker.  I copied many things into my journal at the time, including this entire poem.  

New Beginning, the other side.  I speak about making it in the lecture my pandemic summer.

"Quilts are to mainstream art what poetry is to prose".  Radka Donnell

simplicity unafraid

Q:   What was your route to becoming an artist?

A:  I will answer this question, but it will take several posts.

I've been working steadily away for a long and rich time.   

The posts will include photos of my most current work as well as links. 

The links go back to earlier posts from this journal.

These are the inspirations that helped me find my voice as an artist. 

Amish Quilts

Women who originally designed our traditional North American quilt patterns  inspired by the awesomeness of nature

Women who designed the traditional patterns inspired by the connection to the bed.  (This link goes to more autobiographical info so be warned. 

I have been maintaining this blog for 14 years.  So much has happened in the world in that short time.  Take good care my friends. xo  

Vincent's words in my head

 I must continue to follow the path I take now.

 If I do nothing, if I study nothing,

 If I cease searching, then, woe is me.

 I am lost.

That is how I look at it -- keep going.

Keep going come what may.

 But what is your final goal, you may ask.

That goal will become clearer, will emerge slowly but surely,
much as the rough draft turns into a sketch,

 and the sketch into a painting through the serious work done on it,

 through the elaboration of the original vague idea

 and through the consolidation of the first fleeting and passing thought.

Vincent Van Gogh said these things.

creativity and confusion

This post consists of photos of my work and life during the last few confusing weeks.

Creativity has returned for me and I am grateful for time spent with new work.

I have several new starts, and if they were all pinned up side by side, I think we would see that I am following a new direction.  I don't quite understand it yet, but you know,  that's OK.
I just want to get this work out of me.
Although it makes me calm to do it, I am also in a kind of panic.

Our two youngest daughters are with us.
April has been here since the beginning of April and Grace arrived on June 4.

 I've been going into my town studio since June 1 - every week day.

 

When I'm there I use the large work table to support a piece I'm working on that is based on three old blankets.  It's immense, and each day's stitching is only a tiny mote.

Sometimes I listen to the podcast Sandy and Nora talk politics while stitching. 

 Just as often, I enjoy quiet.

I won't lie.
This pandemic time and this white fragility time  are very confusing and very heavy.

"There is no such thing as good painting about nothing." Mark Rothko

Take care of each other my friends.