Lonesome Dove

Been thinking about the blog again.  About why I write it?

And why it seems so important to me to share it?

The first question:  Why do you write this blog, Judy?

The answer:  I write it in order to have a record of when (and sometimes how) I made my quilts.  This is why I show my work in process.  The beautiful process of stitching is shown so well in the photos.  The more difficult process of designing a new piece is something that I also try to write about, but that struggle is not as beautiful.  

I write the blog so that my creative process is recorded.  

The second question:  Why is it so important to share your blog with the world, Judy?  For two years now, you've been sending out monthly emails to remind people that you've posted.  Why do you care that other people see your process?  

Actually, this question is what I have been thinking about the most. 

I started sending the email update newsletters because the main auto-subscribe service that I had listed my blog with told me that they would stop working.  So, I thought that it would be easy for me to just let people know with a monthly email.  In the same email, I could let people know that I have a design blog (my process) and a news blog (judy's updates) that are regularly updated.  Why?  

My kids advised me to start a substack instead, and eventually I did so.  It's called Judy's Newsletter, and right now, it is just a repeat of the monthly blog letter.  

But why mom?  

Answer:  I want to share this blog with you because it is about taking care of myself.  I make these quilts to take care of myself.  I share them with the world in exhibitions because I think that there is no other artform that is quite so motherly as a quilt. 

I want people to read the blog and feel inspired to start creating.  That's why I share it.

And I send the emails to people who are not interested in starting further social platforms like instagram and like substack.  I have a lot of those kinds of readers.

Judy's Journal is now in its 21st year of publication.  That's a long time.  I do celebrate that.  I am not tired of writing about my work, and showing photos of the works as they progress.  I might be getting tired of the monthly emails though.  Judy's Newsletter is free on Substack.   

   

Images in this post are of three new pieces that I am getting ready for an exhibition in Toronto this summer.  I've been listening to the very long and beautifully written novel, Lonesome Dove , while stitching. 

Grow your own heart

How do you grow your own heart?

When we feel and support our own happiness, we are nourishing our ability to love.

You can't offer happiness to another until you have it youself.

Learn to love and heal yourself, then you have something to offer others.  

Thich Nhat Hanh

Images of one of the quilts I've been growing my heart with this summer.  In progress.

journal entries from the middle of March

Sunday:  

Idea:  to work from the back, to use more colour, to cut silk in narrow strips, to couch it to the back.

I write this idea down before bed.    

Monday: 

Or, to cut holes into the circles on the back and reveal the inner black batt, and then stitch around them with black thread that would show on the front side.

To use coloured silk and chance and also holes and to work from the back with out knowing how the front will be affected.

Tuesday;

We made a trip to Lively for an 11:30 appointment for new computer glasses for me. 

I let the lady there pick them out.

The metaphysics of the ordinary.  The pared down aesthetic. Nothing strident.  Well made.  

Intensely worked surface. Not hard work, but careful work. Do not know how it will turn out.

Trust that it is going to work.

My work is about comfort and about the inner world and about the cosmic mystery.

It is not a call to action.  It is a call to reflection.

sun and moon of mine, you've come.

my sight, my hearing, you've come

ecstasy, you've come

eyes filled with sun, harvest of all my longing,

you've come.

desert bandit, penance breaker, silver moon beloved

you've come

Rumi

Wednesday: 

Went to book club today.   It was well attended.  Seven people.  We all liked the book.   Girl With a Pearl Earring.  Afterwards, I went to my studio in town.

Thursday: 

Poetry is an element in all my work.  Poems not to be read, but to be seen and touched without the need to understand them.  

Poetry arises from the desire to get beyond the finite and historical (the human world of violence and difference) in order to reach something transcendent.  (Ben Lerner )

Friday:  

Poetry comes from wanting to recognize a world where everything is connected.  Poems give a sense of prayer.  (Cecilia Vicuna)

Saturday:

We went to Sudbury yesterday.  It was a busy day.  A medical appointment for Ned.  A visit to see the gallery I'll be exhibiting in this summer.  

In my new quilt, I am couching long strips of silk around large unstitched circles.  I am loving the simplicity and the feeling that working this way gives me.  It's really slow.    I am enjoying my time spent with this piece.

I feel as if I'm painting or drawing - allowing my hands to do the thinking, not my mind.

Textiles are records of the every-day.  Textiles are records of endurance.  Textiles record the care and attention given to simple things that surround us. (Dorothy Caldwell)

Some souls have blue stars.  

Some souls have echoes of a burnt voice.

Crumbs of kisses.

Sobs from trees.

Tranquil whiteness.

Flocks of Songs.  

(selected words from several of Lorca's poems that he wrote in 1920)  

thing and spirit both

These past few weeks I have added more stitch and some velvet to this red cloth.

I thought the cloth was finished.  I put it in my show at the Homer Watson last spring. 

But this autumn, I felt that it needed more. 

More weight.  More time.  More definition.  Some darkness.

I began by adding brown silk thread. 

I also added a layer of dark grey velvet to the second side.

This cloth is for our eyes and it is for our hands.  

This cloth has given me a space for my heart to beat in.  

In pre-Columbian South America all liturgical ceremonies involved large quantities of textiles.  

Textiles were the major form of art, the conveyers of religious ideas.

Textiles were considered to be sacred objects.  (William J Conkin, archeologist)

I've started to call this thin, red, linen quilt:  Holy Holy.  

Through this past week, all I've wanted to do is stitch it.

I wanted to stitch by my window and listen to audio books all the time.  

I forced myself to do other things.  

I put the timer on so that I knew when I could stop doing those other things

and get back to my stitching.

I'm ready to break open.  I'd do it with my own hands.  

Maybe tomorrow if we're lucky and strong, 

Tonight I will learn to live in the inches,

As we spin the wind of this terrible age,  a place to sing

My voice, still raw and golden.   

       David Lerner

Hold your hands out over the earth as over a flame.

Touch the earth. 

Love the earth. 

Honour the earth. 

Rest your spirit in her solitary places. 

Henry Beston

It is a power cloth.

It is like a cloth from another world.

It is like a ritual cloth.  

A cloth full of holiness and spirit and touch and me.

My fingers swirling through it, or it through me.

I saw it.  

It was thing and spirit both: 

the real world: evident, invisible.  

Marie Howe

the world

I couldn't tell one song from another

which bird said what or to whom or for what reason. 

The oak tree seemed to be writing something using very few words. 

I couldn't decide which door to open

they looked the same.

or what would happen when I did reach out

and turn a knob

I thought I was safe, standing there

but my death remembered its date.

Only so many summer nights still stood before me,

full moon, waning moon,

October mornings: what to make of them?  Which door?

I couldn't tell which stars were which or how far away any one of them was,

or which were still burning or not - 

their light moving through space like a long, late train - 

And I've lived  on this earth so long.  70 winters.

70 springs and summers, 

and all this time stars in the sky - in day light

when I couldn't see them

and at night when, most nights, I didn't look.

The text in this post is The World, a poem by Marie Howe (slightly edited : 70 instead of 50)

The images are of my stitching these past few weeks.

Do you think the world has enough quilts yet?

the rescued Dresden plates from my earliest quilt,
re-appliqued onto new plant dyed linen, silk, rayon, wool

The title of this post is from my journal.

I wrote it a few days ago at 2:30 am when I was in the middle of un-stoppable creativity. 

 

You Are a Single Star

the round and round one-patch quilt that uses up my remnants of dyed damask 

I've been allowing myself to make and make without a plan or purpose, just a deep need to create.

What I make with my hands is related to the rhythm and finality of a human time span.

Your Fragile Life

I usually finish the quilts I make, but sometimes I don't.

Sometimes I come across false starts and don't understand them.

Other times I come across things I've started and become excited and need to work on them again.

 

on the wall left to right:  Suvi's baby quilt, White Cross, A Sky Full, and untitled, 
the folded green quilt was made by April, on the railing is Canadian Pioneer,   
left side of sofa is a wool grid backed with red silk,
right side of sofa is New Beginning, my pandemic patchwork

Creativity is a human activity. 

hand stitched cotton

I live my life.

I make quilts.

inspired by cloth and play and by that pink doily quilt I made a few years ago 

I know myself by making my quilts. 

Labour Day weekend

My quilts make my personal daily experiences meaningful.  

Marimekko cloth I have been hoarding

American sculptor, Anne Truitt, said that her work helped her to see her own life as something between natural and abstract.  

A Sky Full

"As I live, certain aspects of what is happening adhere to me as if magnetized by psychic gravity.  I have learned to trust this center"  Anne Truitt

The Countdown Quilt

"The process of art contains my intensities but also exorcizes those beyond my endurance"  A.T.

The Countdown Quilt with one layer of gauze upon which I've gone over with ink the weekly journal notes that I wrote on the back of the foundation blocks. 
One log cabin block each week, this quilt contains 49 weeks.  
I started it on our 46th wedding anniversary.  I appreciated every week that we both kept our health. 
 I was counting down towards the 50th, which happened this year.

"I depend on objectification for defense." Anne Truitt  

The weather this month was unreal.  

It poured light and imagination every day.