Not from the Real World

Yesterday,  I woke up and spread my Dresden plate quilt on the table.

Then I made a schedule for the five days I have before the Birmingham festival of quilts show is picked up from my house on Manitoulin  Island, Canada for delivery to England.

Saturday June 22:   Mend these Dresden Plate appliques with velvet. 

Sunday 23 - Wash and block this large quilt.  Finish making all display sleeves.  

Monday 24 - Make a list of the fourteen pieces.  Include measurements, insurance values and updated titles and send it to the organizers.  Finish all remaining sewing.  Begin folding quilts with tissue paper and plastic bags.  Start packing the boxes.  

Tuesday June 25 - Finish boxing up the exhibition with care.  Label everything. 

Wednesday June 26-  The boxes will be picked up between 10 am and 5 pm.

At the moment, the exhibition is stacked on chairs around the house.    

I've worked so hard for this solo show.  I've worked 10 hours a day for over a year.  

I've been able to do it by working on three different pieces each day for one week, and then switching to three new ones the following week.  I've had to abandon a few that I just couldn't finish.

Most of the pieces are large scale. Most are very simple, and have grids of dots or circles.

They are abstract, folk-like.  They are not representational.

Not from the real world.  Not from the news.

The quilts in this exhibition seem to be a throw back to a simpler time.   

The quilts in this exhibition speak the traditional language of quilts.  

They use traditional patterns.  They use fabrics that come to hand such as sewing scraps, repurposed domestic fabrics, and pieces of clothing.

The fabrics in the Dresden Plate quilt have faded.  Some of them are worn out and need replacing.  Why?  They are all at least fifty years old.  The fabrics in the applique's are from my high school and early marriage sewing projects.  I unpicked the circles from the worn white cotton that was the original background of a quilt I made as a bride, and placed them onto new squares of silk, linen, or lightweight wool cloth.  

I remember that sensuous time in my youthful life every time I touch one of those fabrics.

Now, touching the velvet replacement patches will send me off into a different kind of dream world.  

I look forward to sleeping with this quilt once the show is done.  The new title of the Dresden Plate quilt is You are a Single Star.

C.G. Jung called the circle and square combination a metaphor for the inner life.

poem blankets

I finished another poem blanket and then photographed all four, one at a time on the line with the beautiful morning light.   Two Rumi, One Neruda, and an Agnes Martin.

I like that these old blankets are worn, as if they are carrying lived time.  It is a most beautiful thing.  

This body of work addresses the bed.  Bed coverings connect to sex, death, birth, dream, the vulnerability of sleep, healing, reading, and that liminal space between sleep and wakefulness where we have the best ideas.  Blankets have a powerful voice.    

Blankets cause an emotional response. 

Emotional response is how I chose the text.  It had to be worth putting on a blanket.  

I thought that I could cover all the 'bed' things - but there are two love poems already.    

The final step is adding a wide strip of blanket cloth along the top to put a rod through so that they can hang on a wall.  

Old blankets bring past relationships to mind.  

They are connected to the body and to the most primal of human needs and acts.  (Radka Donnell)

spider circle webs in the grass

Try not to think that words are the material of thought.  The articulation of meaning can come through handling materials.  In fact, making through materials is a superior kind of thought.  Material is the most real thing that there is.  (Anni Albers idea) . 

"She clutched at her blankets as a faller clutches at the turf on the edge of a cliff.  Her eyes opened wide.  Here she was again, she thought, sitting bold upright in bed.  Awake."  

Virginia Woolf      To The Lighthouse

About the love poems.  Maybe it's OK if there are more of them than the other subjects.  

These four are going into a group exhibition next month and the images in this post are about preparing them for display and for shipping.   For more information about this show, please click here.

I don't think I'm finished with this body of work.  If I come across a poem that needs to be put onto an old blanket, I will put it onto an old blanket until I run out of old blankets.

Seen in Gore Bay yesterday.

help me to balance

I made another sleeve this week.

Making sleeves so that my quilts can hang on the wall is not my favourite part of making quilts.

The problem is that most of my quilts have two good sides.

I never know myself which one is really the front and which is the back and both sides are the right side in my mind.

The brown nine patch side of this flannel quilt is named Dear Earth.

The Dear Earth side will be the back-side for a SAQA global exhibition coming up in France.

The show is called Minimalism and it was juried by Dorothy Caldwell.

Dorothy chose the other side of this quilt, 'help me to balance', to be in the exhibition.

I made a sleeve from a narrow domestic wool textile already hand stitched with red thread.  It has a few moth holes, but I think it is OK.

I lined it with a silk tube and attached everything by hand to Dear Earth.

It's not invisible, that's for sure, but I think that it is functional.

SAQA exhibitions require that a cloth label be attached to the back

I had enough cloth to embroider a label and attach it to the lower right of Dear Earth, see above photo.

'help me to balance' old domestic sheets and towels, machine pieced, hand quilted with red thread,      90 x 66 inches, 2018.

Dear Earth.  Help me to balance. xo

Last Week

Feb 13

Yesterday,  it took me 12 hours total to drive home from Quebec which meant that I was able to drive in both red sunrise and red sunset.  The first red was along the Gatineau highlands (above photo).   Later, I was on highway 6 with the familiar Strawberry Channel and a magical February sky. 

time present on top, awakened heart beneath

Feb 14

the boxes for Kenora - to do today.  

This exhausts me so very much.

the forever with hanging device and hooks being placed

The Boxes

1 medicine earth in bag with tissue paper, my heart in a bag with bubble wrap, her arms wrapped round in a bag, all with labels

2 eternity bagged in a box, time past in a box, flowers bloomed with device in a box, the list made but not printed

3 underfoot the earth divine, rod is labeled, needs to be cut and drilled, time present (with device),  my awakened heart is labeled the rod needs to be drilled

4 the forever, time future not in box yet

5 rods

In The Middle of the World exhibition to be presented at the Douglas Family Art Centre in Kenora, Ontario March 30 - June 15 2023

time future with hanging device

Feb 15

Doing the boxes, the folding and arranging of my beautiful, heavy work, affects my body so much.

I am also affected emotionally.  I am over come. 

Resolved today to gather my thoughts about the nitty gritty installation requirements into a document.  Shall I pack shelf brackets so that some of my pieces can be mounted out from the walls?

Does the curator at the Muse have a firm idea already for how she will mount this challenging installation?

time past : island heart

'I would stand for hours at my window, watching the sky and birds, no need to make immediate decisions" Magdalena Abakanowicz

detail of island heart

Feb 16

Procrastinated and cried over the in the middle of the world work again.  It's so emotional for me to see all my work in vulnerable pile-ups around me.  All through the bedroom and living room and kitchen. 

For some of the pieces, I need to consider proper hanging devices, perhaps purchasing some kind of hook if we send shelf brackets.

Also, I need to make sure that each piece has an identifying paper label and fit the pieces into boxes. 

underfoot the earth divine

Feb 17

OMG, the work is so full of touch that my heart breaks open every time I unfurl another one.

earth divine fitted in box

Feb 18

All week I made good progress and am working all day.  My routine begins at 6 am with my half hour of old journals and then another hour or more working on the website. 

Yesterday, the curator in Kenora phoned me and gave me her opinion of shelf brackets that hold two-sided pieces five inches out from the wall.  "Ugly and Pointless".  She is going to hang everything from the ceiling.  She has a hydraulic lift and doesn't fool around with step ladders.

That phone call made me so happy. 

eternity fitted in box

Feb 19  

Yesterday I cried a little when Ned told me his Saturday schedule.  It didn't include my boxes. 

I need him to help me with the hanging devices.  Cut the rods down, see if the Forever hooks work.  We do have time to do all these things, I know, I know, we have all the time we need. 

time future and flowers bloomed piled in kitchen

Feb 20

I organized the courier pick up just now.  It will happen tomorrow with the delivery to Kenora by Friday Feb 24 before 9 pm.  We are worried about the icy driveway.  

Getting this Kenora artwork into boxes has been really hard, but I'm almost done. 

Social media is worried about Penny and I've written personal notes to several people who've asked about her.  I tell everyone that "she's OK".

Feb 21

We put all five boxes into the van and hope that will be easier for the Purolator guy to get.  It snowed last night so it's not a glare-ice driveway or at least it doesn't look like one.

Now that the boxes are all in the van,  I've spent an hour sewing a pink sleeve on a piece for the OTHER SHOW .  

It's too much for me.  I can't do it.  It's all too much.

but it's not, is it.   When we consider the larger global picture,  my problems and concerns described here are trivial.  

I am lucky to be able to create artwork from blankets and show it in art galleries.  I choose to do this strange thing.  I want to do it.  I love this work.  Sharing my artwork is part of being an artist.  Getting it out the door for exhibition is difficult for me, but still, I am glad to be able to do it.

Also, I am blessed to have a large family, all healthy.  Thank you thank you thank you, universe.

I am grateful for these things and I will say so here, in this public forum.  Please, if you are able, choose an organization to donate to that helps our broken world.  Thank you xo

p.s.  Purolator guy came around 4 pm.  He walked from road to front door and said he couldn't come into our driveway, he would get stuck.  I said "that's OK!  All the boxes are in the van."  And I drove it up to the road and he unloaded them into his vehicle and drove away."  xo

in the middle of the world

It's May.  My authentic self is back.   My exquisite courage.

I cleaned out my quilt cupboard over the weekend.

In the top shelf are the unfinished lamentation quilts, most of which I started during the pandemic.  

In the middle shelf are finished pieces that were going to be in a show that has been postponed.   

The pink one on the bottom is the beautiful doily stardust piece.   

In the bottom shelf are the pieces I've finished for In The Middle of the World.

In the Middle of the World is a two person exhibition that is scheduled to open this coming October at the Mississippi Valley Textile Museum near Ottawa, Canada.  My friend and colleague, Penny Berens, from Nova Scotia and I have been preparing hand stitched artworks for three years for this show.   We are working with a free-lance curator, Miranda Bouchard. 

Penny's work is about her experience of living close to nature.  She observes the small daily changes of growth, decay, seasons, and weather.  She is inspired by the patterns in nature and uses thoughtful, repetitive stitches to communicate what she sees and feels.  Here is an example of her work.

My work is also inspired by nature, especially the colours of early spring and late fall in my northern Ontario environment.  I'm interested in how running our eyes across an open space in nature can set off something deep and unnamable within, and I try to get close to that inner language with my work.

Miranda writes about us.  She listens to us and our work, and writes:  The naturally-dyed, slow-stitched textile works of Judy Martin and Penny Berens inspire ways of seeing, sensing and reflection that are simultaneously outwards, at our surroundings; and inwards, at the landscapes within us.   

The gallery is currently closed because of the pandemic, but we are all hoping that it will open to the public in the fall.  

The images of Manitoulin Island barns and fields are from the drive Ned and I did on Sunday.

I am blessed to have my stitching and my window and a partner during this time of covid.  

My heart goes out to the many, many humans in the world who are really suffering and living in grief and fear.  Each of us is in the middle of the world.

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.