road trip back

The photos tell a story

of the beautiful northern Ontario drive

we made last week

to north western Ontario

via the north shore of Lake Superior

with all the rock cuts.

I don't have many photos of the actual destination.  

I didn't think to take photos of the empty fields

behind Burris and Devlin and LaVallee.

We went over to Morson

from Rainy River, past Blackhawk.

Exotic names for the tiny places where people live.  

I didn't think to photograph them. 

Those towns that we drove through or stopped at for soup on the way there and 

also when we were up  there in my home corner of North Western Ontario. 

The Fort Frances area, I tell people.

Besides places named poetically; Terrace Bay, Ignace, Schreiber, Upsala, Emo,

Grassy Narrows, Sleeman, Finland, Nestor Falls, Barwick

there were so many fields and forests that have no name.

That we drove by.  And I did not photograph.

Also, I didn't take enough photos of my children.

They flew to Winnipeg and rented a car to join us.

I do have photos of my brother and I standing in front of 

the trees that my mother planted.

Now giants.

I didn't photograph Ned fixing the gravesite

so that it was perfect.

How can I tell a true story

when most of the photos I have are of long views across big water and cliffs that have 

no relation to the rural pocket of Canada along the rainy river where I grew up.

We drove three full days to get there.

We were there three days.

We drove three more days to get home again.

I worked on Indigo checkerboard during the long drives.  

I stitch in the ditches and also 1/4 inch inside

vast areas of white muslin.

When my father was 22 he was hired to be the secretary of the local school board.  Three applicants interviewed for the one room school in Miscampbell and Pauline Paget age 17 was hired.  In September 1945 they had their first date, a play held at the Burris school.  Theatre continued to be important for them throughout their long marriage.

 

rya rugs from Finland

Wedding ryijy from central Finland 185 x 152 cm  (6 x 5 feet) (circa 1790)
Tree of Life in the center with two male and two female figures, accompanied by hearts and crosses.  

Spot design ryijy 1825      189 x 130 cm (6'2" x 4'3") 
The initials of the owner (MIT) and the year (1825) are in the upper central field.
  The central field is filled with dots.  The bright red and green colours are typical.  

My father came to Canada from Finland at the age of 5 years with his mother, Anna.

This is a post about Finnish rugs.  First I need to say that there are two kinds of rugs made in Finland.  One type is the woven rag rug, usually quite narrow, used as an everyday rug on floors.  I've written about the Finnish rag rug before (here).   My grandmother, Anna, was locally famous for how fast she could weave a rag rug.  My art piece Not To Know But To Go On references the Finnish rag rug, but is not woven, it is stitched.  

The second type of Finnish rug is the rya or ryijy.  Although the rya is considered as art for the wall now, it originally functioned as a warm bed or horse-drawn sleigh covering.   Rya rugs were woven from wool over a linen warp and have a shaggy pile, often on both sides.  This post is about the rya rug.

I'm inspired to write this post because of my recent discovery of  Tuomas Sopanen's collection of rya rugs.   His collection includes pieces from the late 1700's right through to the 21st century.  I am especially interested in the dot grid and the tree of life designs.     

Wedding ryijy 1825  pile on both sides  206 x 148 cm  (6 '8" x 4'8")
This is a wedding rya.  It has the initials of bride and groom ( ABSD and IIS).  

All the images in this post are from Tuomas Sopanen's book,  The Ryijy Rug Lives On. 

Art historian Leena Willberg wrote the text in the book.  

Tuomas Sopanen translated it into English.

Spot design bedcover ryijy 1843  with pile on both sides 174 x 127 cm (5'7" x 4')
Another red and green rya, made for AKSD 

I use grids of dots often as design elements in my textiles and see a connection to these 18th and 19th century pieces.   

 

spot design bed cover ryijy mid 19th century 184 x 154 cm (6' x 5')
When the multi-coloured dots are very dense, the pattern is called 'net'. 

Spot design ryijy 1860 183 x 129 cm  (6' x 4'2")
The dots are simple and sparse.  This rya is a bedcover for one person.

I feel that I made something very similar to a rya rug in 2012 with my green and red wool quilt, Canadian Pioneer.  

What is interesting is that I did not see the connection when I made it.  I knew about rya rugs and had researched them but did not come across images of the older ones.  I am floored by the pieces in Mr Sopanen's collection. The aesthetic of the antique rya is similar to mine - or should I say, my aesthetic is similar to that of my Finnish heritage.

I wrote about Canadian Pioneer on this blog here and here.   

Wedding ryijy 1799 171 x 130 cm  (5'6" x 4'3")
An ancient net design, can you find the date 1799 among the figures?
Diamonds / bridal figures / flowering branches / tree of life symbols in eccentric sizes.  
It was woven in two parts and then joined.

Wedding ryijy 1817   184 x 135 cm
The motifs in this rya are symbols of luck and protection:  hearts, hourglasses, crosses, human figures.
It is rare to have a cow in a Finnish rya rug.  
The initials of the bridegroom are in the central heart (INS) along with the year 1817. 
The pink and green colouring is a variation of the typical red and green.   

Look at the wool art piece that I made from two old blankets in 2021.  It too has dots in an orderly grid.  It has a textural pile on the reverse side.  I made it without consciously thinking about the rya rug.  

I am excited to find the heritage wool bed rugs that have been collected by Tuomas Sopanen.   You can order his book directly from this website if you are interested.  An exhibition of Tuomas Sopanen's collection of rya rugs is at the Saari Jarvi museum until May 22, 2022.  

Saarijarvi is my father's home village in Finland.  

sunshine and shadow

November 4: Mending my father's quilt for an hour, it's sunny outside.  The waves still come in, the aspen leaves still tremble.  Ned still brings me coffee.

November 5: The mending I did today was my navy house-coat and Dad's shadow-sun quilt.

November 6:  I'm mending my dad's quilt again.  It really is therapy to work with colour and sew squares.  Squares are such firm shapes.   It's a feeling like no other.  Very healing.

November 12:  I'm at my window, mending dad's quilt and feeling peaceful, thinking that it's nice to mend.  It's nice to add to something that already knows what's what.

I do love creating new work because it's such an adventure and it's gives me an exciting feeling.  

But not this week.  I am not able to be tentative and unsure this week.  This week I'm staying with one and a half inch squares and satisfying juxtaposed colour.  

November 15:  Been mending dad's quilt ALL DAY.  It's very dark and rainy and wavy.  I listened a bit to The Handmaid's Tale but mostly it's been silent work, and I felt myself sink into the November darkness.  Ned spent the afternoon repairing the little-girl bicyle we've saved for so long.  "You never know" he said. 

November 16:  Snowing today.  Apparently the article in quilting ARTS magazine is published.  Two or three people told me they've seen it.  I have not seen it.

I have a new idea.  To begin a linen tan and pastel sunlight and shadow quilt using my dad's for inspiration, one 9-patch at a time.

November 21:  Ask people who I have gifted quilts to over the years to please send them back to me and let me mend them.

November 23:  I am in a shift.  I am slower.  Zoom-type meetings drain me.  I'm emptying shelves so that I can find space for journals and I'm mending family quilts.  Those things are all I have time for.  

At one of the recent Zoom conferences, Marlene Creates was part of the panel and she asked the hard question.  "How can we keep making art in a world facing climate disaster, in the midst of pandemic, social unrest and looming fascism?"  And then she answered herself:  "We have to continue because art can move people in ways that science cannot.  We have to re-examine our own cultural practice and lead by example - not wasting, not poisoning."  

It was inspiring to hear her say that artists should look at their own practice and lead by example.  Heal through our work.  And it occurs to me that there is a connection how I'm feeling this autumn and my father's soft quilt that I'm making stronger each day.

It nearly fell apart.                                                                                                                                        It nearly died.

But with each day, it is becoming more lovely.  The more love I pour in, the more it returns to me.  

November 24:  Everything seems different today.  I am starting a new piece inspired by my dad's quilt and the citrus colours that April dyed last sumer.  I've lined up fabrics on the studio wall and today I will iron them and cut enough to start.  A shadow quilt like this demands a dedicated design wall.

 

I watch the mist hover over the grey waves,the constatnly moving horizontal ripples.

November 25:  Mended all morning.  

December 2:  Sunshine and Shadow.

I'm so glad to have started.  I pinned some last night and also this morning.  Now I'm piecing nine-patches by hand.  I take groups of 3 squares off the wall and then sit in the big leather chair to sew them together.  We listen to music.  

I think I will do only these 2 things all day tomorrow.  One hour cut and pin.   One hour sew 9 patches.

Solid and firm.  When I hold up a double 9-patch square, I feel so re-assured.

December 4:  All day, I cut and hand-stitched the shadow squares.  Maybe I will remove some of the red ones, I'm not sure.

It makes me feel amazing, to watch it grow.

December 5:  I came early to my window to stitch becuase Ned has put the coloured light tree in my line of site and timed it to come back on at dawn for a few hours.  I like to look at it, a beacon in the still darkness.  I'm stitching the new sunshine/shadow quilt top - 9 patches.  I've put in too much red and am removing some.

It's crazy how the balance of colour shifts so much everytime I add a new one.  Red is very powerful - such an eye magnet.  Yellow too, which I will cut and pin up today I think.  I'm afraid of yellow and red.  They are so powerful.  But I want them in this piece.  Truthfully, they are the whole reason that I've been ironing, cutting, pinning.  

It's satisfying to stitch nine-patches and place them one by one on the velvet pillow on my footstool, and then add them to the wall.  When I'm in the middle of a project like this - I feel really safe.

I fill the birdfeeder of my self.

December 6:  An object is not an object; it is a witness to a relationship.  Cecilia Vicuna

The Mother The Child and Joyce Wieland

In 1988 I was part of a group exhibition in Thunder Bay Ontario at the Definitely Superior Gallery that was entitled See Jane Sew Strontium.  The gallery had invited Joyce Wieland to attend the opening and give an artist talk and also a workshop the following day.  

I lived in Kenora at the time (6 hours by winter highway from Thunder Bay) and after a lot of deliberation, decided that I couldn't justify leaving my young family to attend the events.  I can't remember the exact reason, it may have been weather.

My friend Barbara Sprague was also included in this exhibition, and she was making the trip from Kenora to Thunder Bay and I asked her to deliver a letter to Joyce Wieland for me.   The other day, I came across the draft of my letter in a 1988 journal and that prompted me to find the artwork from that exhibition and re-photograph it for this blog post. The title of the piece is The Mother The Child.  

Dear Ms Wieland

First of all, let me say that I feel very connected to you through your work.  I saw your quilt, Reason Over Passion, at the National Gallery and it made such an impression.  I remember standing in front of it in awe.  Your femaleness comes through and it is such a rich, womanly, femaleness.  There is so much about being a woman that I can feel in your work, be it quilt or painting.  And you have a wonderful wit.

Anyway, I'm very sorry that I cannot attend the workshop and meet you.  I had planned ot attending until last week.  There are a lot of reasons I guess, but the main ones are distance, winter, and the fact that I have four children, two of whom are under three years.  I know I'm not the only woman who has very little actual control of how her life is spent.   I would like to have seen the exhibition.  I've only seen Barbara's quilt.  I'd really like to know your reaction to my piece.  Please, if you do have any time that you could spare, I would very much appreciate a written note.

I've used some photos that my father took and developed.  They are of my brother, my sister and me.  There are several of me at age 15.  There are also photos of the farm where I grew up in Northwestern Ontario.  I feel that our childhood and childhood landscape are remain within us always.  I think that these things are our inner core, the 'batting' layer inside us.  The painted tree symbolizes both growth and woman's connection to nature while the self-portrait is the 'outer self''  that I present to the world today, that of the good mother.  The baby is looking outward, the mother in this drawing is hiding behind her child.  

Anyway, with this letter I feel that I've made some sort of contact with you.  I'm just sorry it's not in person.  I'll see you next time.  Sincerely, Judy Martin

Joyce Wieland answered me and I've saved the letter....but I can't remember where.  I think I should find it and frame it.  Joyce Wieland  1930 - 1998

my early life

the images of my youth in this post have a freshness for me that my newer ideas can never have

my mother made her own clothes from vogue patterns

my sister is 5 years younger than me, my brother 20 months older

my father designed and built our house on the highway

I grew up on acerage in north western ontario, Canada

 In art you need two things

a)  a feeling of groundedness
b)  a place of risk where you are not quite sure what will happen

a vulnerable space
fragile

 I repeat myself all the time

what is our interior landscape?

why not pay more attention to the fragility of our own life?

pauses

stillness

the mark - and also the space around the mark

our son Jay scanned my father's slides