studio work

I went into my town studio on Friday.

I pinned Medicine Earth on the wall.  It didn't seem right anymore.  I turned it on its side.

At home, I started a new pieced cloth.  I used up all I had of some soft wool cloth.

It's extremely simple.

Walnut dyed.

I've been sewing a lot of squares together lately, and I can't really explain why in words.  It just feels best for me now.

The textiles I make are documents.   At the same time, they hold me.   Also time.  Also touch.

Time is my obsession:  Not to waste it, not to lose it.  Time is an object to me, something you can almost take hold of,  if I could just collect enough of it in one clump. Anne Tyler (Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant)

new biography

Judy Martin was born (1951) in the Fort Frances area of North Western Ontario and grew up on a large property with a lone elm tree that could be seen for miles.   Her father built and constantly renovated the family home,  her mother landscaped the yard with evergreens and filled the house with books and art supplies.

Judy married Ned Martin when she was 22 and the couple raised four children in three beautiful Northern Ontario locations, Thunder Bay, Kenora, and Manitoulin Island.  Judy and her husband continue to live and work on Manitoulin.

 Martin made her first quilt when she was 20, undaunted by the difficult pattern, Crown of Thorns.   She continues to make quilts but although her work has become simpler, it has not become smaller. Her textiles are like drawings, made from plant-dyed wool, silk, or re-purposed fabrics that have been sewn into artworks measured in feet rather than inches. 

 Martin believes that the sense of touch is the most effective way to make an emotional connection with another and her surfaces are covered with hand stitches. 

The repetition and weight of these marks over broad expanses of cloth seem to give access to our inner world.

While living in Kenora, Martin acquired an honours BFA degree from Lakehead University.  Her thesis exhibition included a sewn walk-through house and a wall quilt entitled Hold Me.  

Throughout the 90’s, Judy exhibited tender watercolour paintings of her children as well as quilts made from dyed and over-dyed fabrics.  In these textiles, she worked with two or more traditional quilt patterns in order to create a story or a poem using that feminine code.

 In 2012 Martin acquired a second university degree.  (first class honours BA in Embroidered Textiles from Middlesex University in the UK)  

She continues to study fine art and literature on her own, and keeps notebooks to help organize her constant search for meaning. 

Judy’s work has been widely exhibited across Canada as well as Europe, the United States, Japan and China. 

 In 2015 her stitched artwork was featured in the book Slow Stitch: Mindful and Contemplative Textile Art by Claire Wellesley Smith and in 2018, she received the Craft Ontario Volunteer Committee Mid-Career Award for Excellence. 

p.s.  It has been a while since I put information about my parents and my children into one of my biographies or about that lone Elm Tree that I grew up with.  More about the images can be found in the New Work blog, here  and here. 

voluptuous time

It's about time

We had bonfires during the Easter weekend

 The previous week we were on the road and I stitched.

It's medicine, this piece.
I also took photos of the winter trees and of the emerging earth through the car window.

I'm using black wool thread to make the repetitive stitches.
Each mark is different.  They are all the same.

The kids were home for Easter

They've gone back to the city now.
And the fire is out,  the ice still in

One of the first things that Ned did when we moved here was make this fire pit.
That was over 25 years ago.

It's all about time

my work

It is all about time

voluptuous time

new work that grows

There's something un-real about the month of December,
as if real life deadlines go on hold.

I've been stitching 9-patches, making new cloth from tiny squares.

In the busy days
in the dark time of December
I retreat into the grid.

I sit by the window with the bird feeder view and hand stitch.

mrs cardinal

mr cardinal

I pin my work up because it is impossible to see it when it is in my lap.

I plan to organize the finished quilt with a horizon.

I've been looking at the open water, it's always moving, the ice not in yet

The moving water makes me think that I always am asking why?
Why do I ask why?

Trust myself.
Learn why

"what does it mean to say "I lose myself"  asked Immanuel Kant in 1786

I  lose myself in this grid

it's dark by 4:30
It's the shortest day.
But the cloth gets larger.

In the evenings I plug away on the sunny-rainy piece.
The stitches make it denser, but it doesn't get bigger

Our girls come home on Saturday.

my work with me

I am on vaycay with my husband. 

We had ten days in Mexico with our Anchorage family.  Now they are back home.
They survived the earthquake and are still experiencing aftershocks, but they are safe.

Then we had another week and Canadian friends arrived.

  I brought my work with me.

I don't do it all the time, but some times.

It holds the heat and wind of this place some how. 
Each stitch wraps time snugly.

This slow time in Mexico
is threaded to my heart and will remain.
Somehow. 

Red Cross Signature Quilt 1918

 this stunning antique commemorate's the 100th anniversary of armistice

It was made in 1918 as a fund raiser

nurses paid to have their signatures embroidered on the white cotton

This antique is currently on display at One Sky Gallery in Sudbury until November 11.

It has been used and shows age, but that adds to the poignancy

lest we forget