my open heart

this is how I feel today
more information about this piece here

looking back

secret garden 

In my older work,
I see triangles.
I used to put rows of triangles along the edges.

when asked : she replied

Either the triangle edging seems to protect heart-shapes
like thorns do when they line up on a rose's stem

all my life 

or the triangle edging creates an energy field
similar to how a child represents the sun.

For some reason I am looking back and thinking about the love and longing in my earlier quilts
and remembering the story that each holds.

The top quilt is a wall piece, about the size of a large watercolour (36 x 42 or so) Details here and here.  The other two are large enough to go over beds.  All are hand stitched.  The heart one details are here.  The self portrait in the bottom photo has detail here.

Husband and Wife

Quilts more than paintings carry baggage and metaphor with them.  Think about the bed and the life passages that happen there,  birth, death, sex, cuddling, holding, sleeping, dreaming, taking care of someone.  Margaret Atwood has termed quilts flags for the bed.   What better medium to use for the subject of Husband and Wife? "  Judy Martin

The front of the quilt has been made from a single 10 meter piece of lightweight cotton fabric that was hand-dyed a rainbow of colours.   It was then cut up and stitched back together.  The long tall panels have been roughly divided into warm and cool colours.  The left panel signifies the husband, while the right panel signifies the wife.  While working on the piece the artist discovered that it was a feminist project.  She wrote in her  journal at the time that she felt "a rage against being ignored, silenced because I work in craft media.  I am a woman and my work is silenced by my gender.  The heart shape is so feminine and the colours are so vibrant.  The tall narrow shape is phallic.  the feminine heart shape is trying to fit in with those tall columns.  each heart began by encircling personal journal text that was later removed. "  

"In designing their quilts, women not only made beautiful and functional objects, but expressed their own convictions on a wide variety of subjects in a language for the most part comprehensible only to other women.  In a sense this was a 'secret language' among women."  Patricia Mainardi

The language of the quilt goes beyond passing on knowledge of quilt making skills between women, it also provides women with a space to voice their own opinions and sort out their own stories, for themselves and for each other.  As Janet Berlo argues "quilts represent a counter-discourse, a covert female language that says the unsayable in a form of silent public oratory"  Janet Berlo

 "I am a Canadian heterosexual woman living in Ontario.  I'm part of the baby boom.  I am the most ordinary specimen.  I feel like I represent hundreds of women.  I gave a lecture to a group of women on Friday and everyone cried.  All that I'm doing when I make quilts is talking about my ordinary life and how much I love it. I don't know why I seem to have a need to tell personal stories, but I'm from a generation that believes that the personal is political.  What I do is give a voice to the ordinary Chatelaine-reading woman who is trudging along . I feel that I am a feminist speaking for many women in a beautiful way that they might not be able to.  I want to be a poet for a whole generation of women."  Judy Martin

 The hand stitching of this piece is a very integral component.  as the artist says, "It shows that the work has been touched.  Each stitch takes one second.  Stitching becomes visible time; you can tell that this woman spent two hours on these six inches.  Time spent has a certain weight to it, and I haven't taken that casually."  Judy Martin

Martin is very concerned with the fact that in earlier days, women had to spend their whole lives making cloth, while in the late Victorian age stitching was just something to keep women busy and out of art school (Chadwick and Berlo) .  She sees this as debilitating but at the same time she wants to show how powerful women and their hand work can be.  These quilt objects will become heirlooms because the work that went into them will not be taken casually and will last.  Quilts are like the nurturing work that women do such as raising a family but they are visible, unlike those invisible tasks such as meal preparation and cleaning.

On the back of the quilt there is a large yoni shape.  This large female shape exemplifies the immense power that shapes can hold.  Inspired by Mark Rothko's use of both shape and size, Martin embraces the traditional large rectangle for her quilts.  Like Rothko, she believes that due to their large size, quilts speak to the viewer on a profoundly intimate and spiritual level.  When the quilt is displayed, viewers are able to stand either four feet away and be enveloped by it, as well as standing twenty five feet away and seeing it from a distance.  Both are important.  Martin wants her work to be "large enough to not only cover a bed but to be large enough to at least metaphorically, cover a family.  Using traditional size and pattern helps my work to be understood by both women and men because their grandmothers spoke this language.  It's not foreign, it goes deep into a subconscious level.  It's reassuring."  Judy Martin

Using bleach, Martin has hand-written quotes taken from a press release she found in an article that discussed the intimacy of cloth and its increasing use in fine art.  Amongst the magazine text, anecdotes of the artist's intimate sex life were also interjected into the sentences, coyly hidden by other words.

"If you can glimpse a little bit of the maker, than their spirit or soul has come through and touched you.  That's the inner thing and is why I use so much handwork.  People can feel me breathing, and then they realize that they themselves are breathing and there is a connection to their own lives.  Their inner self connects with my inner self because there is this visual language for which there are no words.  They are touched by my touching.  When they understand me and subsequently themselves, it is a direct communication.   I want to communicate to my viewer."  Judy Martin

All text in this post are from our daughter April's essay that she wrote for her McGill  university art history course in 2008.   The quotes are from phone and email interviews about a quilt I made in 2004.

All images are of the quilt, Husband and Wife, which I am gifting to her this week as she leaves to study at the graduate level at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Q How to Live? A Don't worry about death.

2. Q. How to live? A. Pay attention

3. Q. How to live? A. Be Born
4. Q. How to live? A. Read a lot, forget most of what you read, and be slow-witted
5. Q. How to live? A. Survive love and loss

6. Q. How to live? A. Use little tricks

7. Q. How to live? A. Question everything

8. Q. How to live? A. Keep a private room behind the shop

9. Q. How to live? A. Be convivial: live with others

10. Q. How to live? A. Wake from the sleep of habit
11. Q. How to live? A. Live temperately
12. Q. How to live? A. Guard your humanity
13. Q. How to live? A. Do something no one has done before

14. Q. How to live? A. See the world

15. Q. How to live? A. Do a good job, but not too good a job

16. Q. How to live? A. Philosophize only by accident

17. Q. How to live? A. Reflect on everything; regret nothing

18. Q. How to live? A. Give up control

19. Q. How to live? A. Be ordinary and imperfect

20. Q. How to live? A. Let life be its own answer


New block prints inspired by the Chapter Headings of Sarah Bakewell’s biography and collected essays of Michel de Montaigne,  “How to Live: One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

heart to heart

Life is so fragile and precious.

Family is paramount.

 Visit people and connect with people as much as possible.

images:  three boxes I gifted last week
images:  a hanging sleeve I needed to add for world of threads 

text: from an email Jay sent last night 

Safe journeys everyone.  Connect.

making and thinking

I found these images of a piece I made in 2005. I remember wanting to use the materials themselves. The taffeta, journal papers, beads, and embroidered french knots enticed me. It's name, Secret Garden, comes from the use of those private journal papers, template papers for the applique and pieceing that were left as part of the work.
The theory is that we each have two sides - a side we present to the world, and an inner side, much more interesting. I can't remember which came first - the making or the thinking.

Maybe they came at the same time.

what I did today

woke up early, did not read novel, wrote that exhibition proposal, finally.

worked on some gifts for the friends I will be visiting this week in Nova Scotia

walked, something I have skipped doing all week. It's been so cold. packed for trip. Two suitcases, 50 pounds. Birkenstocks and hard covered journals weigh a lot. Oh well.

Talked to Oona on the phone. She was making a yoga pillow.

sewed the third meditation panel.

packed fabric and threads in the second suitcase.

love the questions themselves

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.

Live the questions now.

Someday, you will live your way into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke

her art

I'm getting ready to post my work to England for this term. Today I photographed these heart shaped boxes (which I did not make). They are filled with journal papers. (which I did ) Click on these names to see thought provoking art work.

Alice Kettle likes working on a large scale.

Polly Binns makes grids of stitch on large pieces of linen.

Susan Lordi Marker uses iron and copper in dot patterns on cloth.

Deborah Fisher writes poetically about making.

Ann Hamilton asks questions that engage me intellectually.

Rachel Brumer uses whatever material she needs to tell personal yet universal stories.

valentine for family

It's family day here in Ontario tomorrow, and still Valentine's day as I write this. An excuse to send out love to my far flung children. To Anchorage, Alaska, U.S.A.
To Toronto, Ontario Canada
To Manchester, United Kingdom
To Montreal, Province of Quebec, Canada.
Chocolates, Roses, Heart Shaped Rocks for you all.

Motherly Advice

How to think with your heart. Place your hand upon your heart. Shift your attention to an uplifting thing and hold that feeling for fifteen seconds. Think of something you love unconditionally for fifteen seconds. Take care, my child. Be brave. Live your life. Blue means faithfulness in love.

Grace phoned from the airport three hours ago, having safely completed the first leg of her romantic adventure. I stayed up late to complete this book for her.

the dress again

I've been working with the motif of my black dress for the last few weeks. The experiment pictured here uses one of my favourite combinations of materials, hot wax and ink. It's not finished yet but I'm putting this image up anyway because I'm excited about what happens with wax. Wax ages things with a fragrent transparent layer. It removes the artist's control of the image and replaces it with chance and intuition.

Its about the inner self in contrast to the presented self.
Its about invisible emotions and the visible control of those emotions.
Its about being here. It's also about being elsewhere.

The Circle

wholeness
original perfection
roundness is sacred, it is the most natural shape
self contained
the self
the infinite
eternity
time-enclosing space
timelessness - no beginning or end
spacelessness - no above or below
It was my birthday weekend and we spent it at the cottage. April made this beautiful cake to celebrate.

Opus Update

Since 2006, I've been studying for an honours fine art degree specializing in embroidery and mixed media textiles. The degree is validated by Middlesex University in London England and has been delivered to students in the UK and around the world by the Opus School of Textile Arts.

In February, Opus closed its doors. A new school started up and most of the teachers agreed to continue as if nothing had changed. This in itself is a vote of confidence for the new associate school. It's obvious to me that the main reason that Opus ran out of steam was because of the lengthy illness and subsequent death last November of its founder, Julia Caprara. In honour of that most inspiring artist, the new school is called The Julia Caprara School of Textile Art.

hearts, spirals, crosses

I called this work "my pleasure" during the six months or so that I spent on the hand embroidery
Hearts, spirals and crosses were stitched without pre-meditation. I was reading The Mists of Avalon at the time and Morgaine (the heroine) made an embroidery while in a trance.
Embroidery like this can be worked on anywhere and does not require a specialized studio or equipment like other art/craft methods do. This lack probably hampers the acceptance of embroidery in the mainstream art world. My age at the time is one of the secrets hidden within the stitches. Can you find it? Can you find the other secret word?

Gifting

I gave this quilt to Yvonne about twenty years ago. I wanted her to remember me when she was home in New Zealand. She'd been in Canada for a period of time working as a nurse in Northern Ontario and we had met during the early days of my marriage.

The blocks were given to me by Doris, the first neighbour we met when we moved to Kenora in 1983. Doris had noticed that I liked to quilt and handed me an unfinished pile of 9-patches made from sugar sacking and striped cotton. I added flowered fabric and appliqued a heart on a single blue block so that I could call the finished piece "Patch of Blue". These images are scanned from the only two slides I have of the piece. (I remember that I used a cotton muslin fabric for the backing that was really difficult to hand stitch. Dear Yvonne. Hello if you are reading this!

Notes re: Judy Chicago

I bought little notebooks for each of us at the nearest Shopper's Drug Mart before the lecture last Thursday. I like to scratch a few words to help me remember. Allyson Mitchell, the very intelligent, ambitious (and young) curator of "When Women Rule the World: Judy Chicago and Stitch" and its companion show "She will always be younger than us" moderated the panel. Allyson said: "Feminism is always as young as its youngest enthusiasts".

Jenni Sorkin spoke next and reminded us that Judy Chicago had worked in opposition to the current feminist themes of her time like performance and video, choosing instead monumental projects like 'the dinner party' and 'the birth project'. As well, Jenni raised the question of the marginalization of fibre art. With slides she showed that at the same time as the break through feminist collaboration 'Woman House' there was an exhibit of vibrant fibre art taking place nearly next door that has not been remembered in art history, not even feminist art history. Why?

Maura Reilly, respected New York curator and writer about women's art said that she was 'tear-jerked' when she saw the stitched pieces in the two exhibits at the textile museum. She said that she had never seen them together like this before and that the sheer amount of work as well as it's haptic quality affected her greatly.
(Maura Reilly is responsible for finally getting The Dinner Party a permanent home in the Brooklyn Museum in New york and is thus very familiar with Judy Chicago's work.)

When Judy Chicago finally rose to speak she answered Allyson's comment about the monumentality of her work by saying that she opposes ephemeral art by women because it just continues the process of erasure of women artists. Even worse, the women do it to themselves. She had found out that art institutions didn't want to exhibit women's work when she had so much trouble exhibiting 'the dinner party' and 'the birth project'.

Heart and Soul

My piano students and I played Heart and Soul today. The music drew other kids in from the hall (I teach in a school library) and one (not a student) played the duet with me. Music and hearts - well what can I say. They speak. Don't worry so much I tell myself. Visit this blog "Jump for art" and be cheered up.