what is it that I do?

new sleeve for Awakened Heart

You have to do work that's meaningful to you, and then you have to keep on doing it.  (Ann Gillen)

new sleeve for The Forever

I try to do only what I want to do.  

I try to do what feels necessary to do.

I do what I love.

view from the door of my town studio 

I got back into my town studio this month.  .

The Forever on the town studio table, side b

I was able to complete the sewing of a new sleeve for the largest of the blanket pieces, The Forever.

The Forever on town studio table, side a

I am returning it to it's original design - a horizontal swath of marks.  click here

The Forever on dining table at home

It's nearly 14 feet wide, 10 feet high.  It's larger than me.  

Moment to moment, day after day.

I stitch it.  My body touches it.

Eternity and the kitchen rug

The work I do takes a long time and I like that.

new sleeve for Eternity

My work is a statement about life itself, in a way.  About lived time.

Every day, we have to just go on.  Waking up and getting dressed and looking at the sky and being gentle with those we live with and touching them and moving out the door and interacting with the air and greeting strangers and getting in a car and hearing terrible news and picking up the bread and turning the key and putting on and taking off our coat,  zipping and unzipping, buttoning and unbuttoning and returning home and starting dinner and petting the cat and pulling the quilt up and kissing our loved ones and turning out lights. 

It's energy.

a new sleeve for Eternity side two

My work holds all that time.  That energy. 

My Heart and Her Arms Wrapped Round in the rocking chair

Time is my subject and my method.

new sleeve for Noble Tenderness

The images in this post are of some of the pieces that I'm getting ready for the Kenora, Ontario exhibition of In The Middle of the World that begins on March 30.   This exhibition was shown in late 2021 but I continue to improve some of the pieces.    

It's what I do.

My awakened heart / noble tenderness : A two-sided piece. 

 Time is packed into what I do

overwhelmed by everything

It's the weekend and I am resting.

 my fragile self

During this pandemic summer, I've sunk into Louise Penny's series about Armande Gamache.

While in the midst of serious internal growth, respect your need to rest.  Yung Pueblo

"You can't be three people"  Agnes Martin tells us.

continuing on

 everything is so alive

there are many possibilities

 I added energy marks to my blanket piece over the weekend

 It was Canada Day and my sidekicks were with us at the cottage

April made daily sourdough

 I started again with the grey blanket

and the sky continued to hold the moon

I said thank you

On Sunday I visited Dad and he was in the middle of something.  He was going to see a woman about a movie and was by the door so I opened it for him and we went out.  He told me just to wait a few minutes, he'd be back.  I said OK and found some shade and took out my stitching and he rolled his wheels away from me with his hands very slowly, getting stuck now and then.

He has dementia and I haven't had a real conversation with him for months and months.  Granted, I didn't see him during the ealry part of the summer when I had that broken leg, but now I try to go in every other day.  He knows me, but exactly who he thinks I am varies.

During today's visit I told him that I had just come from paying the rent for my studio and was planning to start working there again.  He asked me how much was the rent, and then told me that he had a space he'd like me to have for free.  Does it have high ceilings? I asked and it did.  He said it would please him very much if he could give it to me, so I said thank you.

Don't Worry

 

I've been spending quite a bit of time on this picture of red horses.  For some reason,  I feel that I need to finish it before going on to my real work but why did I even start it? Did I think it wouldn't take much time?  Wrong.

Did I think it would be something nice to hang as Christmas decor?  That's a good idea, but it was not the original intent.
It came out of me learning Janet Bolton's methods and seeing a photo of Swedish folk art.
This piece is a break from my abstract work.  A change.
A change is as good as a rest they say.

Maybe it is my don't worry cloth.
Maybe the horses are Ned and I, far away from anyone.  On a hill, with sun  and snow.
In our mid 60's lucky to have each other as life companions, on a timeline.
Too soon we will need to be changed, pushed, listened to.

Making it gives me space away from real life.
Making it gives me time away from real art.

This little thing gives me a place to not worry.

a lived life

Above, acrylic of daughter April by her older sister Grace - they were both in high school at the time.

This post is about a corner of my upstairs home studio that has been important to my process for quite a while - at least 10 years.

It's an additive collage of family photographs that have come into my possession over time.  I've pinned the photos to the wall as I've received them.  They tell my story to me.

The top photo in the above group was in my father's bedroom in Kingston - he had printed it himself on one of his large digital printers.  All of us are there - Jay, April, me, Grace, Oona and Ned - That photo is at least a dozen years old.

The post card above left is from Newgrange in Ireland, the embroidery below is something I removed from one of my pieces, the portrait is a photo Ned took because we needed one of me stitching...can't remember exactly why.  It's from 2009.

Photos of my siblings, my parents, Ned's parents and several of each child are up on this wall.  In the upper left photo is our oldest grandchild Everett with his dad and mom..he's 2 in the photo....now he's 8.

Here is Jack, crawling across his Alaskan kitchen door threshold from the deck.  8 months in the photo, he's five years now.

 above, the newest grandchild, Aili - very precious.

Things I've read go up on this wall.  That photo is of me  age 50.

Now I have to take this life collage down because Ned has been doing some repairs and the wall needs to be painted.  Thought I'd document it first.

key note

I take my work seriously.
I take it everywhere. When the kids were little I took it to playgrounds and ballet rehearsals.

Now I take it to doctor appointments and on air plane trips.  People ask me "what are you making?"
That is a difficult question for me and I answer very carefully.
Sometimes I avoid giving an answer.

Because the what is not as important to me as the fact that I am making.
I am a moving thread.
I am in the process of becoming.
But that is hard to explain.

We are here to begin a fibre festival.  We have come to this northern ontario town at this period of time to be with other people who get it.  Who understand how much we love to do it. We love to stitch, weave, spin, dye, felt..all these things.  We love the process.

Remember what the key is.  Fibre.
And what the note is.  The process itself.

......................................

(this post is a hint of the key note address I will be giving this coming Friday evening during the opening ceremony of the Espanola fibre festival.  The Manitoulin Circle Project will be on display, still room in some of the great workshops here)(wish you could all come)

eleven months of obsession

I pinned my daily stitching up today. The walls are nine feet high. The chair gives an idea of scale, the white bar in the image is part of the building. I've been stitching one skein of embroidery floss each day since last July. Not finished yet.

Not to know, but to go on