Briefly Gorgeous

 I watched the sun rise yesterday.  It happens around 7 am these days.

 For a short while, it was a neon scar in the cloud bank above the Wikwemikong penninsuala.

I was reminded of the novel I read last month where the author talked about the sunset and compared it to a human life.

"relative to the history of our planet,
an individual life is so short,
a blink of an eye - 
so gorgeous, even from the day you're born to the day you die,
be gorgeous only briefly....
the sun sinking in a few crushed minutes,
it changes the way things are seen, including ourselves -  
sunset, like survival,
exists only on the verge of its own disappearing.
To be gorgeous, you must first be seen..."  Ocean Vuong

 A sunrise is also briefly gorgeous, but more hopefuly so than a sunset.

 A sunrise promises an entire day ahead.

 Later that day, I started a new stitch project.

 Clear and simple.  Black and white.

and this morning, I continue.  

To move slowly alongside

The solitude and quiet emptiness that I find on Manitoulin continues to be very important to my development as an artist.  I intentionally withdraw from people and put a lot of time into my work.  I touch my work a lot as I stitch it.

My pieces are large and simple, which makes it easy for my viewer to enter them.  They are safe, calm places.   I consider them a gift and am generous with the labour I put into my work.

I am planning an installation that uses old wool blankets to make a monumental walk-through corridor.  The rock cuts along the new highway 400 are the inspiration for this new work.  In northern Ontario, large areas of the Canadian Shield have been sliced open by blasting and heavy equipment to reveal eons of time and layers of beautiful sediment and crystals and minerals.

From the speeding car, we are able to look with awe at these magnificent grand pieces of Canada.  Trees grow on top of some of them.  There is something spiritual within these rock cuts.  The car keeps on moving.

My installation of blankets will encourage people to walk slowly alongside at an intimate closeness to the work.   I hope that people will experience the scale and weight of the familiar wool fabric, with their bodies.  Yearning to touch but not touching, and somehow feeling some deep truth of lived emotions that are part of our human experience.

The installation will have two parts, each part made from two or three blankets sewn together and bordered top and bottom with still more blanket cloth.  One part is shown in this post, and it measures 14 feet wide and 10 feet high.  The nick name for this part is Ash and Rose.

Blankets are already full of human time before I work with them.  Generations of time.  The marks of those hands and bodies have left signs of wear and all I have done is add more time and touch with hand stitch.  Both sides.

Materials such as blankets that relate to our universal human experiences in bed where things like birth, death, power or lack of power, pain, comfort, protection, and sex happen, are powerful metaphors.  Making crafted objects from them is contemporary art.

I work with hand stitch and used domestic cloth.
I make hand made things that invite the use of all our senses, especially the sense of touch. 

where do your ideas come from?

What a huge question

The first thing that comes to mind is that my ideas come from MY LIFE.

It is the most obvious answer.  But our lives are so immense aren't they?  

answer:  Place
a)   the environment I currently live in and experience is a source of ideas.  It is awesome to live in Northern Ontario.  Driving to Manitoulin from any direction places me between rock cuts and close to clear lakes.
And Manitoulin Island is full of spirit.  I seek solitude here.  It is quiet with water horizon views.  
Also the SKY is a source of ideas.  Moon, sun, stars, clouds, blue-ness, hugeness, above-ness.

b)
where I grew up, a farm in North Western Ontario, with big fields and a spectacular lone elm tree.
I always felt isolated there.
My parents and siblings had a big impact on me, and still do.  

c)
I study art every day.
I look at reproductions in books and read about artists and their ideas and lives.
I write about these things in my journal, sometimes inspired to try something immediately. 
Art study is a passion of mine.

d)
My journals. 
I gather thoughts in them every day.
I re-read them.  I find and develop my own ideas in these journals.
There is true-ness in the journals

e)
My mothering.
It is ongoing, and continues to give me more than you can imagine.

f)
Strong emotions such as great sadness, furious anger, or physical fraility may be where I start a piece.
However, although these pieces may begin with vehement negativity, as I work into them with my hands, those emotions are displaced, replaced with a glowing serenity.
I feel serene after so much time with the work in my lap, and the completed works are calm.

What is an idea really?  So often it begins as just a glance - a speck
something off to the side.
after so many years at this art-game, now I recognize the feeling of that speck
I grab it from the air and write about it or sketch it into my current journal
and move on with my day.  
It usually takes me a few days of sleeping and moving before I feel it as an IDEA, not just a glance.

I have inner dialogue with my self.  
I imagine that all humans do to some extent.

My heart responds to stimulation so quickly and generously, 
and I want to make art that will allow my open heart to speak.
I want to make work that is as true to how I understand my life as possible. 
So that when another human encounters my work, that person will know me. .

And also, even more
I hope that person's heart and inner self will recognize something in my work
that resonates deep within them. 

And they know something more about them selves.

But I am side-tracked away from the question about where ideas come from.

I guess the short answer is that
I don't know.

To live an absolutely original life one only has to be oneself.  Agnes Martin

All images in this post are of a new large scale work in progress.

artist talk

there are two significant things that I can say about this new body of work

left is my open heart, right is longing cloth side a

the first is concerning the dreamworld within us

clouds of pale spaces
similar to nature's open horizon views
full of small marks that distract just the right amount

left is Bidwell, right is my open heart

the eye wanders
and so does the mind
bouncing and leaping from memory to future desires

our inner world

the cloud in me

the open spaces beg to be touched

cloud of time

'pet me
caress me' they say

touch helps us get to the dream world inside
the unique but repetitive marks touch the eye

the other significant thing about the work
is the process of making it

each of the pieces went through several experiences
to eventually arrive at simplicity

left is longing cloth side B, middle is earth and air, right is Sisu 

destruction and reparation
being ripped
having holes cut

earth and air

most use damask table-cloths

all went through the washer and dryer
some several times

this to embed their texture
and give them the beauty of
aged quilted cloths

left is Sisu, right is Bidwell

 two of them bled

basic goodness

This post shows images of the seven new pieces in the exhibition The Cloud In Me up now at the David Kaye Gallery in Toronto, until October 29 2017, posted for those who do not live near Toronto.

For those who live close enough, I hope that you will find time to visit the work in person.

primordial faith

phenomenology is not a theory, it is a practice

have 'primordial faith' (merleau ponty)

have faith in my own perceptual experience

perceiving is not theoretical

this is just how it is

this is just how I experience it

a primordial dimension of experience

phenomenology does not replace everything that has gone before

it just tests it

phenomenology is lived experience

not denying anything

just clarifying

believing in the world

including myself in the world

sensuous

not forgetting

letting my heart break

things keep happening

sometimes it is confusing

whenever I don't know what to do

I look at the sky

it is accessible all the time