about orbits and dreams and also about bed / boat and melancholy / fragility / durability and also about stars

In this dark month, 

I'm looking at things differently.

Embroideries I made in a younger time,

for a different project,

are cut and re-arranged into a garden,

stitched to new cloth.  

Seeing them being reborn enlivens me.  

enlarges my spirit. 

This new work is round and bright

and fragile and soft.

Stitching it, making it

helps me to accept the winter coming

and my ageing 

I have been stitching new circles

one after the other.

Bowls of silence.  (Rumi's words)

Circles and dots

that represent Gaia's rhythm.

The natural cycles of the sun and the moon and the planets and the stars

and how they relate to earth. 

Cosmic time pieces.

The earth revolves on her axis in one day,

the moon orbits the earth in one female month,

the earth orbits the sun in one year.

Gaia rhythm.

Earth clocks.

under the blue sky my clock-faced flowerbeds reflect the orb of the sun

they never sleep

lying awake under the starry constellations, they listen to the music of  time.

they chuckle, yes they chuckle 

and gossip.

I walk in this garden holding the hands of dead friends  

Old age came quickly. 

Cold, cold, cold, they died so silently.

My gilly flowers, roses, violets blue, 

sweet garden of varnished pleasures, 

please come back next year.

                                                                  Derek Jarman

a wrapped package

I created this shadow box after reading about Louise Baldwin in an old (2002) Embroidery magazine. I was freshly inspired when I read about her use of collections and how she considers the idea of 'the curator'. Why do we place things on a mantelpiece. What do the odd things collected in boxes, bowls mean? What do we decide to save, what do we decide to throw away? What kind of story happens by placing images and objects next to each other?

Our driveway is glare ice

I have been enjoying Lesley Turner's photographs of Indian textile dyeing and block printing. Lesley is a Canadian Opus BA student like me and lives in Calgary. We have not yet met, but know each other because of the internet. Christine Spencer, also at the same Opus level as Lesley and myeself, lives in England. From the look of Chrissy's blog, she's way ahead of me in the course we're both embroiled in right now with our tutor Mary Cozens Walker.
Pictured is the mixed media piece I'm donating to the arthritus society in Sudbury for a fund raiser at the end of the month. Embroidered With Wildness.

Ah, fill the cup

As I contemplate our daily life here in Northern Ontario I sense the fragility of this calm place. How precious and unreal it is.

available

biography

Judy Martin has participated in over a hundred solo or group exhibitions across Canada and internationally. She holds a fine arts degree and creates paintings and collages as well as dyed and embroidered quilts. Originally from Northwestern Ontario, Judy currently lives on Manitoulin Island, the largest island in a fresh water lake in the world. She regularly puts images of her work into Judy's Journal, a blog that communicates her philosophy that life and art are all mixed up.

with them

I'm with my parents this week.