quilts=art=quilts award winner

Canadian Pioneer, wool quilt (detail)

When I packed up Canadian Pioneer to ship to Quilts=Art=Quilts in Auburn, New York, I noticed something.

 

Those wool bundles that I had folded, tied onto the surface and then felted seem to resemble a bush of trees.  They make me think of the huge thick forests in Canada that seem to act as barriers to human interaction with the land.

Trees protect the land,  Maybe they hug it.

One of the jurors, Kathleen Loomis has written about this piece here.  She explains why it was given a first prize.  Further information about Canadian Pioneer is here in my New Work gallery.

here comes the sun

Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here

Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been clear

Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been here

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
And I say it's all right

  Sun, sun, sun, here it comes

Sun, sun, sun, here it comes
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes

text by George Harrison 1969

Canadian Pioneer in Toronto

warm, heavy, useful, brave   
wool, pieced, slashed, bundled, felted, layered, blanket stitched, quilted 

 I managed to see my wool quilt, Canadian Pioneer, on the last day of Craft Ontario '13.  It felt fantastic to see it from the street, beckoning city folk in to the white space with its rough red heart.

It was installed near Christopher Reid Flock's paperclay sculpture, similar in more ways than colour.  He used slab construction to create a new piece, which he then dropped.  The resulting pieces re-assembled made something newer.  More interesting.  

From the several textile pieces in this exhibition of fine craft my favourite was Marianne Burlew's Limb 1, an organic sculpture that looks as if it began as a sleeve, but changed along the way into a three dimensional wall mounted oval.  Larger, stranger.  circuit wire crochet. 

She survived the slashing.  

In fact the mending stitches made her stronger, more self-aware.

All those bundles tied and stitched? 
They survived the drowning.

In fact, felting made her more interesting.
Tougher.
Optimistic.

Canadian woman pioneer

Protection

protection study, wool yarn knitted and felted with metal buttons


Grace is moving to England on Monday. She wanted to learn how to make a Christmas turkey, so that was today's project. It's been great to have her home as this past week.

She came to the circle project with me yesterday.

snow day

I was able to do a little work on this piece after months of neglect. It was a snow day, piano lessons were cancelled.

Metal sampler

Oona's here.
Everett's here.
April's here.
Em J's here.
Tor's here.
Mal's here.
Gordon's here.
Ned's here.
Iris's here.
I'm here.

Gifted

from april

from grace


from oona

These are some of the hand made gifts that talented local elves created. Thank you girls. Alas, there were many other gifts exchanged here over Christmas that I did not manage to photograph before they were packed into suitcases.

All Done

My brother and eldest daughter went with me to Gore Bay yesterday to help dismantle the Red Thread exhibit.






As our wee grandson would say: "All Done".

Reading again

Q. How is it possible to read three different novels in one day?
A. Audio books.

I listened to the most excellent Margaret Atwood novel, The Robber Bride this morning while stitching. At my studio in the afternoon I listened to Running With Scissors, an autobiographical thing by Augusten Burroughs. Earlier in the morning I completed my usual two chapters of the latest Giller Prize winner, Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay. Elizabeth Hay writes like how I want to make art. She has such an easy style yet there's a haunting depth that lasts all day. I'm on the last chapter of all three of these.

Pictured is the felted result of my wool embroidery pinned to my studio wall as I try to make the central area square by using heat, moisture and stretching.

where angels fear to tread

Here's a photo of my new embroidered quilt before I threw it the washing machine to felt it. I'm very interested in the felting process and in the (quite often) lovely result. I followed Ju Ju's advice and purchased this book (after doing the deed). Well, I didn't know what I didn't know. I'll post the results sometime later this week. For now let's just say that fools rush in.

The Circle

“first shapes”
These shapes (circle, square, diamond and zig zag) occur all over the world and have done so since primitive times. Plato called them primal; “By beauty of shapes I do not mean the beauty of living figures. I mean straight lines and circles and shapes that are made by lathe, ruler and square. These are not beautiful relatively, but always and absolutely."
They are what Carl Jung called archetypes; essential images that universally communicate without words.