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  

Colour With a U

2006

 In Canada, we spell colour with a u.  We also spell labour, favour, honour and neighbour with a u.

flesh and blood 2007

 That 'u' could stand for unique, unforgettable, universal, unity, understanding, utopia.

2008

 It could include the unusual, unexpected, unbound, unabashed, unaccounted, uncanny.

light of the moon 2009

 We care about the 'u', it makes us unique.  We care about the 'you', it brings us together..

2010

What do the Canadian values of diversity and inclusion mean to you?
How does your labour in your favourite medium honour your neighbourhood, your community?

energy cloth 2011

How do you colour yourself into our Canadian culture?

niagra falls 2012

We are looking for artworks that visualize these ideas and that together will give an insightful
perspective on our Canadian cultural identity.

2013

All types of work are encouraged, including representational, abstract, and social commentary,
in 2 or 3 dimensions.

lake 2014

Opening location:  Homer Watson House and Gallery, Kitchener Ontario Canada
March 15 - April 19, 2020

2015  providence

The exhibition will travel across Canada until March 2023.

This is a Studio Art Quitls Association exhibition for Canadian members of SAQA only.
Read the full Call for Entry at this SAQA link

Entries must be received by January 3, 2020.
For further questions, please contact Tracey Lawko, chairperson of the exhibition committee.

2016

 All text in this post is from the Call for Entry for Colour For A U for Canadian readers of this blog.

the cloud in me 2017  

 The images are a celebration of my years of blogging.
I chose one from each year:   2006 until 2019.

2018

See the sidebar for further details about this call and information about
the SAQA conference in Toronto 2020.

my awakened heart 2019

mississippi valley textile museum

I went to Ottawa in the middle of June to visit Grace and April joined us from Toronto.
On the Saturday morning, we drove over to Almonte to see Tania Love's exhibition on its final day.

Besides Tania's beautiful mixed fibre pieces, I wanted to re-visit the interesting and challenging gallery space at the mississippi valley textile museum.

The Rosamond gallery is on the main floor of what used to be a textile mill.  The thick walls and original windows have an authentic presence.

I'm extra interested because Penny Berens and I will be opening our own two person show in this gallery space in 2021 and I felt a need to walk through it.   I love this gallery space and have visited several times, one of those is described here.

Tania's work is hung from the ceiling and we moved among the vertical shapes.  There was an amazing communication between the kozo paper hangings and the spirit of this place.

 Lots of space for Penny and I.

Pathways: pigment on mixed fibre 2019  Tanya Love

The curator installs every exhibition with great respect.  In this case, these lightweight paper hangings that remind us of water tumble from the ceiling in variety of placements.  They evoke the river that runs through Almonte, and the waterfall in the center of town.  This exhibition honours water, our precious natural resource.

 Even the floor inspires me.

pathways 2019  pigment on mixed fibre  2019   Tania Love

On July 13, Those of Us Still Living,  an exhibition of repurposed denim by Jim Arendt opens at the MVTM.   Jim won the first place award at Fiberart International last month.    

Permanent Dangers by Anna Torma

I have been wanting to post images of Anna Torma's exquisite two sided embroidery that was part of the first Canadian Craft Biennial at the Burlington Art Gallery, Ontario since mid-October.  The co-founders of the Biennial, Emma Quin (director of the Textile Museum of Canada) and Denis Longchamps (director and chief curator of the Art Gallery of Burlington) indicate that the second Craft Biennial will happen in the spring of 2020.  Good news for all of us who love art that is materially based.

This piece by Anna Torma uses her now familiar language of child-like drawings of monsters, here in combination with human figures.  A very prolific artist who works completley in hand stitch, Anna's creates bodies of work for exhibition, such as Superlayers    Blood ties  (and also here) is a recent exhibit she held with her grown son.   I have written about her work before (here) but if you are interested in seeing her newest work, she is active on facebook.

Look at the amount of stitching!  These stitches are like drawn marks with coloured pencil.

The variety of scales and subjects in the imagery over whelms our senses.
It's different than  anything I would do myself.
It throbs.
It excites the viewer.

The two sides of this piece are each beautiful
Black cloth backing, white cloth front.
The thread drawings join these two opposites.
Then the artist stitched through all images and backgrounds - everything -
with thick white thread so that the back looks as if caught in a snow storm, and the front is quieter.
Not erased, but muted.

and the edges.
Don't you want to touch? 

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.

Penny Berens' Daily Scratchings

 This post is about Penny Berens of Nova Scotia Canada and her amazing Daily Scratchings.

"The section above starts with the woodpecker stitched on October 2nd, 2012 and then the next day, a depiction of a trip up the Annapolis Valley to see the eye doctor.  For the 4th, I did that line of looped stitches, representing a day spent with the group of stitchers and hookers called 'Loose Threads'.  For October 5th I was thinking of things in the negative!  And the next section was for Thanksgiving weekend.  I was thinking of how days wrap themselves around one another.  Cotton threads stitched on damask."  Penny Berens

"In this image, the journal starts on Monday the 12 November 2012, when I stitched a flight of Canada geese that made me think of hieroglyphs. Then on Tuesday the 13th I watched a Murder of crows pestering an eagle on my morning walk.  They surrounded him in a tree and made a huge hullabaloo.  This was followed by a day of rain.  Cotton thread on hand dyed cotton."  Penny Berens
In Daily Scratchings, Penny Berens recorded the seasonal changes that she experienced while walking in the rural area near Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia.   In the above image, Penny's work is shown installed in exhibition in the Yarmouth adjunct of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. 

Using hand stitched representational drawings and rows of abstract marks she documented the day that she had lived through.  

 

Penny’s visual and tactile witnessing of natural phenomena became a journal that holds four years of time. 

 On my most recent visit with Penny, she kindly brought out her journal and we went through the pages.  These photographs are from that time last October.

 

 Above, Penny's work as it appeared in the Inverness Art Centre on Cape Breton Island in Oct 2015.

Penny's love of the natural world and her close observation of it is communicated with joy, love and hours of time. After four years (2012 - 2015) of dedication, she stopped working on this journal.  

"On December 31, 2015 I completed the last stitched entry in my 'Daily Scratchings' journal.  I noticed towards the end of that four year project that my entries had become more and more exploratory rather than recording the small daily events in my rural life,  therefore the time had come to make a change.  Creating larger pieces of work through daily practice still fascinates me however, as well as setting myself small challenges."  Penny Berens

Visit Penny's blog to find out what happens next for this prolific artist.