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. 

penny miranda studio visit

resting between night and day (left) resting at low tide (right) both pieces by Penny Berens

Penny Berens (above left) and Miranda Bouchard (right) came to visit on the weekend.    

Penny and I are having a show together in 2021 and Miranda has agreed to be our curator.

The work is still very much in progress.  

We met over the weekend to get a better sense of how it fits together and pinned our pieces up side by side on my pinwall. 

The blue piece in the above photo is Sky with Many Moons (Judy Martin)

We noticed contrasts and similarities in our work. 

My work is generally quite light, both in colour and weight (sometimes only one layer of sheer cloth).  It's usually quite tall.   I like people to look up at my work, as humans all over the world look at the moon.

I used to think of the sky as an invisible protective roof over the earth, my kids, everything.  I'm not sure that I still think like that.  Now I think of it more as magical, even spiritual, filled with star-dust. 
And spheres.

Above is a detail of Penny Berens' beautiful Whispering Cairns.

Penny's work for this show is more earthy.  She is thinking about the beauty of rocks and about the way they hold so much time.  She works with natural dyes too, but is adding more colour to her new work. In the piece in above photo, she says that she is thinking about "all the women who have gone before me in history"

Both Penny and I communicate our powerful love for the earth through the use of natural dyes and repetitive hand stitch / caress.

It's time to think more about caring.
We must care for the earth as lovingly as we take care of our bodies.
Many of us don't think about our bodies, yet still expect them to be ok.

We need to give ourselves self care.
We need to pay more attention.  To the earth and to our bodies.

penny and miranda with judy martin's work in progress

Miranda, our curator, says that she sees many simlarities in Penny and me as persons and artists.  

We both live in rural environments and are mothers and grandmothers.  

Our homes and yards where we each live are similar.

We both feel the presence and influence of a large body of water

We both have a country road, 

Penny lives near Annapolis Royal in Nova Scotia, while I live near Sheguiandah on Manitoulin Island.  Both places are steeped in history.  

We each have a long depth of life experience.  Some differences, but also many similarities. 

I like to think that my work is about reminding people how nature connects us to our interior selves when we stand still and look up and beyond the horizon while Penny's work is closer to what nature looks, smells, and feels like as we move within it, observing.

penny on left, judy on right - both works in progress

Our show will guide viewers through ideas that seem impossible to have at the same time: the swift passage of time that is being held for ages within the trees and rocks, the wounding self-awareness that comes over us when we look at the sky and understand that we are so small, yet immense within, full of past and present and future time.

Miranda told us that at times, to objectively see and speak about our work, she has to disconnect her eyes from her heart.

stone islands  by Penny Berens left, dark side of the sun by judy martin right

That's because there is an emotional power in work made with cloth and thread.
All that touching.  It goes deep.

judy martin,  miranda bouchard, penny berens  May 2019

Judy works from a combination of thought, research and poetry,
Penny observes her environment, says that she goes with the flow.

Both of us are star dust.  We all are.

Thank you to the Ontario Arts Council for funding Miranda in this curatorial project.

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