Lonesome Dove

Been thinking about the blog again.  About why I write it?

And why it seems so important to me to share it?

The first question:  Why do you write this blog, Judy?

The answer:  I write it in order to have a record of when (and sometimes how) I made my quilts.  This is why I show my work in process.  The beautiful process of stitching is shown so well in the photos.  The more difficult process of designing a new piece is something that I also try to write about, but that struggle is not as beautiful.  

I write the blog so that my creative process is recorded.  

The second question:  Why is it so important to share your blog with the world, Judy?  For two years now, you've been sending out monthly emails to remind people that you've posted.  Why do you care that other people see your process?  

Actually, this question is what I have been thinking about the most. 

I started sending the email update newsletters because the main auto-subscribe service that I had listed my blog with told me that they would stop working.  So, I thought that it would be easy for me to just let people know with a monthly email.  In the same email, I could let people know that I have a design blog (my process) and a news blog (judy's updates) that are regularly updated.  Why?  

My kids advised me to start a substack instead, and eventually I did so.  It's called Judy's Newsletter, and right now, it is just a repeat of the monthly blog letter.  

But why mom?  

Answer:  I want to share this blog with you because it is about taking care of myself.  I make these quilts to take care of myself.  I share them with the world in exhibitions because I think that there is no other artform that is quite so motherly as a quilt. 

I want people to read the blog and feel inspired to start creating.  That's why I share it.

And I send the emails to people who are not interested in starting further social platforms like instagram and like substack.  I have a lot of those kinds of readers.

Judy's Journal is now in its 21st year of publication.  That's a long time.  I do celebrate that.  I am not tired of writing about my work, and showing photos of the works as they progress.  I might be getting tired of the monthly emails though.  Judy's Newsletter is free on Substack.   

   

Images in this post are of three new pieces that I am getting ready for an exhibition in Toronto this summer.  I've been listening to the very long and beautifully written novel, Lonesome Dove , while stitching. 

never giving up on the art

september 28  hand quilting on something started earlier this year

 

september 29  hot wax, black cloth, a beautiful day

september 30  town studio

october 1 a new beginning

october 2  hot wax encaustic in Barb's studio

  october 3  visited the Cambridge art galleries with Barb
 Justin Ming Yong's two-sided piece, Sun In Eyes in foreground

october 5 recovered my studio bag with pieces of cloth that came to hand 

october 7 adding quilting stitches to the sleeve for Far Away Stars

october 8  packing up Far Away Stars / Cloudy Day to ship to Quilts=Art=Quilts

october 9 town studio

Blog update:  

For the next couple of months, I need to concentrate more on the neglected website. judithemartin.com  

My Process and Judy's Updates will continue as they are because they are both super easy to write, but the main blog, Judy’s Journal will morph to a photo journal (like today's post) for the next little while. 

Although I will continue the monthly emails until at least the end of the year, I may switch over to substack for updates.  We'll see.   

Thank you friends, for your continued support.   Never give up on your own creative practice.  

Why I haven't written

all my life   
hand stitched cotton quilt with silk self portrait (etching)  made in 1990 by Judy Martin

I think it was because I prepared a presentation to give over zoom on Dec 1, and doing that took most of my reflective brain, leaving me almost empty.  However, I am grateful to have been given a reason and opportunity to consider how my life and work fit together and what my thesis is.  I hope to be able to share those thoughts here soon.  The talk was recorded.  

Otherwise, I've been staring out the window a lot.  I've been re-organizing my bookshelves.  I've been dyeing a little every day with onion skins, sumac leaves or berries.   I've been doing a lot of stitching.

Thank you for reading this blog.  xo

baby quilt in progress for 3 year old grand daughter - all new fabrics , hand pieced.

Underfoot The Earth Divine

 

In this post I am trying something new.  By using the online record keeping that Judy’s Journal and My Process provide, I can show in a single post, the making and exhibition history of one of my best quilts,  Underfoot The Earth Divine.   

To view the original posts, just click on the date.   

January 1 2019

The sewing started from the middle on New Year's Day, 2019.

January 5 2019    

January 19 2019  

technique: machine piecing                                                                                                           materials:  a variety of linen damasks coloured with natural dyes.

February 17 2019    

I cut holes into the pieced strips and inserted velvet strips  to add interest to the sky area of the large emptiness.

September 10 2019    

Hand quilting starts from the centre with an oval hoop.  The backing fabric is naturally dyed linen damask, the batting is wool.  To make the large piece easier for me to handle in my lap,  I turn in the outer edges at first.  

February 7 2020    

The hand quilting is finished.

February 19 2020    

The back. 

July 17 2020    

Then the pandemic happened, and everything flipped including this quilt.  I turned the quilt so that the velvet pieces are at the bottom and added a couched yarn circle.  I was reading Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.  

"This then is life, here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and convulsions.           How curious!  How Real!  Underfoot the divine Soil, overhead the sun" 

September 13   2020  

December 31 2020    

I had professional photos made.  The reverse side has a name:   "Overhead the Sun"  

September 15 2021     

Underfoot the Earth Divine is part of the two person exhibition with Penny Berens, In the Middle of the World.  The show opened October 2 at the Mississippi Valley Textile Museum and I was advised that a black sleeve would disappear into the dark ceiling when it was installed so that visitors could walk around it, and view both sides.  

July 30 2022        

I made a new sleeve for the Fine Art Textiles Shortlist exhibition in the UK.  (honourable mention award)

February 21 2023    

The second rendition of In the Middle of the World happened in spring of 2023, and Underfoot The Earth Divine was shipped to Kenora, Ontario.    

 November 6 2023    

Underfoot the The Earth Divine won the Schweinfurth Award at Quilts=Art=Quilts in Auburn, New York, last weekend.  

what does Rothko mean?

Then Rothko would sit and look for long periods.

Sometimes for hours, sometimes for days, considering the next colour, considering expanding an area.  He worked on more than one painting at a time.  The veils of colour were  actually applied quickly and spontaneously.

Most of the time in his studio was spent sitting silently on his bench and looking.

Dan Rice, Rothko's assistant  (quoted in James Breslin's biography of  Mark Rothko)

I don't know if he knew what he was doing.  I don't think artists always need to know what they are doing.  Artists often do more than they know they are doing.

David Antin art critic  (also quoted in Mark Rothko: a biography)

This post is a copy of the one I wrote when I studied Rothko for my UK degree.  Click here to see another 2007 post about Rothko that contains a self portrait of moi.

Click here for my post about Rohko on the modernist aesthetic blog.  

Haptic Vision

I just read an essay by Victoria Mitchell that I found in  Textile volume 19, issue 3.

It is entitled  Judith Scott: Capturing the Texture of Sensation and analyzes Leon A Borensztein's famous photo of Judith Scott hugging her own sculpture.  Why does this photo have such emotional power?   This photo was chosen for the cover of  Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy and Performativity by  Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick. 

The borders between interior and exterior, between subject and object, between imaginary body and sensed body are activated through this photo of Judith Scott and her work.  Scott's body presses against her artwork with all the windings and bindings, embracing it as if it were alive.  Her face penetrates its surface and this exchange comes to us through the membrane of the photo.  Victoria Mitchell 

The article was about how photographs can elicit strong emotional response within the viewer.  

Reading it, I considered my own blogging and how I try to make my photos reach out and touch the reader by including my own hands at work.  

Some words used in the article:

Affect:  the effective mobilization of feeling which is non-conscious and pre-verbal but also relational and active  

Haptic:  an experiencing of touch that we feel not only with our skin but also inside our bodies.

Haptic Vision: The eyes function as an organ of touch.  

Texture rich photographs of textiles are transformative of that which they capture.   

Textiles have such tactility that they rub uneasily against the eye.  

Smooth surfaced photographs of textiles act as a mediator.    

When the flesh of a human body engages with textiles and is captured in the smoothness of a photograph and then the cornea, it's affective.

When arms and hands are caught in the act of touching cloth, the texture of the cloth can be felt through the photo.  Better than if the body is absent from the photo.    

There is an affective moment when we feel we are being touched through the photograph.

The viewer becomes bound emotionally into the image.

All images are of a new piece made from a re-configured wool blanket.   

I'm couching one side of it like a drawing, and I like how the reverse side is like a carving.

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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