Tom Thomson

Humans are enthralled by the horizon line. What is it that puts us into a reverie when, in solitude, we seek out that horizontal line in nature? The open spaces on either side encourage contemplation, while the line itself is an edge for the eye to balance on. Small natural marks, ripples in the water below the line, wisps of cloud in the sky, are glimpsed and the alive-ness of the quiet simplicity gives us back our own huge selves.

The images are reproductions of oil paintings by Canadian artist Tom Thomson (1877-1917)
The text is from the introduction to my dissertation. (2010)

Being emotional today

The Coronation of the Virgin by Tommaso Del Mazza, Louvre, Paris

We are so used to having emotional responses that we are not consciously aware of them. We respond to beauty with emotion. We respond to nature with emotion. We respond to art with emotion. Because we don’t stop to name our feelings, we have not recognized them. In order to encounter immensity within ourselves, we need to stop thinking so much and recognize our emotions more.

“Our emotional life is really dominant over our intellectual life but we do not realize it.” Agnes Martin


To have an emotion engages everything, body mind and soul. The opposite is the case with thought. To have a deep thought it is necessary to separate the mind from the body and soul.

intimate, repetitive, slow, the body

Last night, I found areas that needed mending. Touch precedes language

Textiles are about touch

Textiles are intimate Textiles are slow to make

Textile processes are repetitive

Textiles are made with the body On the surface of a table were 14,000 human and animal teeth arranged in patterns according to their shape and size, not their species. These teeth were set into red iron oxide powder in a pristine manner as the slightest movement would stain the teeth. The hours of labour by Ann Hamilton and her colleagues was evident. The gathering, cleaning, and placing of this community of teeth one by one, omnivore beside herbivore beside carnivore was reverent and ritualistic.

These visceral materials, teeth, red staining, and the scientific order brings up ideas of the last supper, the holocaust, and lost time. Freudian and Jungian dream analyses tells us that when teeth fall out in dreams, they are symbols of loss.

The red coloured images are from Joan Simon's book about Ann Hamilton, illustrating her installation Between Taxonomy and Communion (1990)

memory or hope?

Luce Irigaray speaks about the invisible self and how it is accessed by the caress. The caress helps humans, both genders, into intimacy with the self.

Our inner world is glimpsed through our hands. Using the senses, specifically the sense of touch, is the way to reach that temporary moment of loss and realization. The inner self does not respond to didactic thought, but to suggestions of experience, recollection, and dream. A thread, a mark, a colour, a pared down open space distract us and invite contemplation.

Le Nouveau Louvre opens today in Sudbury. An image of my other piece can be seen on Judy's update.

tropical update

Ned and I are visiting with relatives in Barbados for a week. We have never done this much traveling before.

I am fascinated by the tropical fauna every where. We walked Welchman's gully yesterday, feeling the moist air, experiencing the 100 year old tropical trees of every variety. Pictured is a huge bamboo.

My dissertation haunts me however, and I am being a wonk about it in the early mornings before any one else gets up.

Wonk: a studious or hard working person obsessively devoted to academic activities at the expense of social activities. (Canadian oxford dictionary)

rhizomatic writing

I made this sketch during Monday's phone tutorial when Catherine Dormer told me that my writing was rhizomatic (like a root that sends up many shoots) as opposed to arboreal (like a tree, logical with a single strong trunk). She said it was a compliment. I'm working on the theoretical section of my dissertation this week, trying to make sure I don't lose my focus and have been using my wall to organize the various shoots. Catherine told me I needed to back up my ideas with psychoanalysis, phenomenology and some feminine writing. New writers for me are Juhani Pallasmaa, Melanie Klein, Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray. I have not read Freud, Jung, Lacan and Merleau Ponty in their original texts....yet. The beautiful writing that follows is from the prologue of To Be Two by Luce Irigaray.

Earth,

you who house me but with whom I share,

you who are fecund with so many children, who do not resemble one another,

you who grow without respite, both in secret and in the light,

you who bear seed, flower and fruit,

you who never cease to repair life,

you who at every time of the year work for the becoming of the living,

Earth,

you who are still lavish with sun when the frost comes,

Earth,

safeguard me, faithful one.

my release and salvation

My world is cerebral at present. I read entire books in single days. I stay up until 2 am to find solitary time to write my dissertation. One skein of embroidery floss every day, I look forward to stitching it.
Getting out in my yard for a little to rake, I need to do it.

Two from Finland, Two from Japan

I have made the final selection of artists that I want to write about for my dissertation.

I kept changing my mind. At first I wanted to write about artists whose work was similar to mine.

Then I wanted to write about artists whose work was similar to Agnes Martin's.


Then I decided to go with my own emotional pull to the work.





the above image is by Noriko Narahira from Japan
from her Scenes of White series 1999
machine stitch, felt

Aino Kajaniemi from Finland
Memory 2008 tapestry

I found that there just is not enough information about some artists, and this discouraged me. I would find an image of them in a book, but nothing online. Especially artists of the generation before me - still working, but not as digitally savvy as we need to be today. This made me realize how important the Internet is. I imagine that the Internet is changing how young people learn about art. Merja Winqvist from Finland
Tree 2002 paper, shellac

I prefer books, but was introduced to many artists from my two chosen cultures, Japanese and Finnish on the web. Kyoko Kumai from Japan
Blowing in the Wind 1999
stainless steel filament

These four are my final choices, selected because their work is simple, emotional, rooted in labour, grounded in nature, based on repetition, and expresses concern for our world.

home again

How it is when one comes home, after living out of only a suitcase and a sewing basket for two weeks.

The house seems so full of stuff. I spent some of yesterday eliminating, clearing, giving myself some space to breathe. We were away for so long that I finished the seventh journal panel and have begun an eighth. Each holds about two weeks. I had planned to show the diary-like effect of the stitching, but I still have 7000 words left to write for my dissertation, due in December. The topic is the "roaring silence" (John Cage) feeling that I see in some contemporary artwork, specifically that from Japan and Finland, specifically textile art. Some of the essay will be in a pared down style, but the rest needs to be more scholarly.

Not minimalist

More earthy, more hand crafted than that

Not expressionist

Quieter, more spiritual than that

Not sublime

More personal, more nature based than that

Something alive

Something spare

An aesthetic of simplicity


Touch precedes language

Textiles are about touch


intimate

slow to make

repetitive processes

made with the body

blue ridge

We are heading north. We drove the blue ridge parkway, or rather Ned drove while I tried to capture the immensity of it through the opened car window. Journal stitching was interupted constantly, but I did get some done. Although the fall colours were lovely, this post is about blueness.
Blueness and vastness and repetition. This trip is making me understand the united states in so many levels. I haven't processed them all yet. The original experience is a pale reflection of its repetition

A series of small disconnects

Moment after moment

The differences are endless

A new habit of looking

A way to organize the world

A way to integrate our fragmented selves

A way to heighten our experience

A way to set up an interior monologue

Infinite patchwork