Remembrance

Floating World by Linda Finn   acrylic on canvas 24 x 30 inches

This post is dedicated to the memory of Northern Ontario artist, Linda Finn.   (1945 - 2025)    obituary here

It's also about some other late artists from northern Ontario Canada, a place I have lived for over 30 years.   I feel that each of them worked very hard to support art and artists in our beautiful, spread-out community.  I’m writing this post to  sing out their names with respect.  

Linda Finn's paintings, prints and assemblages were a constant at the Perivale gallery  here on Manitoulin. I sought out her innovative work whenever I visited the gallery.  

The War Letters Project in the Art Gallery of Sudbury  
'April 1917' is on the back wall.  Screen print on bible pages, acrylic on paper , photo etching and lithographs on paper, assembled in 2007 by Linda Finn

In 2017, Linda Finn had a solo show at the  Art Gallery of Sudbury and displayed The War Letters Project. an ongoing body of work that she had begun in 2007.  The project included a wide variety of art pieces; assemblages, paintings, prints and book-works and toured to eleven Ontario galleries over a period of years.  

detail of Linda Finn's assemblage of bible pages printed with repeated images of a soldier 

Each piece in the project started from letters that Linda's grandmother Essie received from soldiers over the two world wars.  The artworks are all shown with better photos on Linda's website (here).  While there, you might be interested in the 20 minute video (The Old Tin Box) that tells the story of this project.  

Essie's letter, monoprint with chine colle on paper, 2008 (detail) by Linda Finn

Now, I want to take a moment to mention three other artists who I personally mourn.  Each of them reached out to me and made me feel part of the art community of northern Ontario when our family moved to Manitoulin from Kenora in 1993.  I looked to them as mentors, although they were only a few years older than me.  They developed their careers before the internet which means that online images of their work are rare.  I’ve provided each artist with two links however, and more information and some images can be found if you click. 

 I apologize if this post seems too personal or dark.  Death is not talked about much.  But you know, I feel that I’m not actually saying enough about these friends of mine when I consider all that they have done for Canadian art.  I’m just naming them.  

Ann Suzuki   (died 2021)   her obituary here

ear hear earth heart by Ann Beam, acrylic on paper, 24 x 30 inches

Ann Beam     (died 2024)   her website here     

Ray Laporte   (died 2022)   his obituary here

My friends.  Remembered here.   I miss them and continue to be inspired by each of them.  

Now, in the spirit of memory and joy,  may I show you the prayer cloth that I finished last night?  

Perhaps it is more of a play cloth.  The transferred painting was done by my middle daughter, Grace, when she was five years old.  She painted the mermaid and the merman on paper which I then transferred with a hot iron to polyester fabric. I was teaching this kind of art in the schools at the time and we used the technique at home for birthday party t-shirt-making and the like.  The heart at the bottom was painted just once, then ironed three times onto the cloth, each time getting a little fainter.  I will be seeing Grace this weekend and will give her the quilt.  I think that the twins can use it for their dolls.  

Mermaid Quilt by Judy Martin,
heat transfer on polyester, dyed velvet, hand stitched, 28 x 33.5 inches  2025,
original painting by Grace Martin when she was five years old

our hands sing red

A document.

Each person who has stitched or otherwise helped in the creation of the four meditation panels of the manitoulin circle project will be named in a permanent book.   I'm asking for a tracing of each person's hand which I then can use as a pattern.  I have painted paper with a variety of red and flesh coloured transfer dye that is then cut into the hand shapes and heat transferred (with an iron) into a large book.  (100% post consumer waste hand made paper from India)

We sign in each Thursday that we stitch together so I have each person's signature.  Scanned and flipped in the computer these are transferred to the hand made paper with solvent.

Two volumes filled.  141 participants.  

Robert Rauschenberg

Blue Urchin (Hoarfrost) - Robert Rauschenberg

Textile artists continue to be inspired by Robert Rauschenberg’s radical use of cloth. The Hoarfrost series that he made in 1974 was very well received by the critics of the time. In them he used a variety of transparent, translucent and opaque fabrics ranging from humble cotton cheesecloth to exotic satin and silk on which he printed text and images from newspapers and magazines.

Displayed by pinning the fabrics directly to the wall at their top corners, the stress lines of the hanging soft material become part of the composition.

home alone

Sonnet XIV detail, 25th anniversary quilt 1998

Ned went to Toronto for a few days to take in the boat show. I stayed here to teach piano and write my essay and stay with the dog etc etc. I am happy to be home alone as I am able to devote time to my art stuff and not be distracted by so called normal activities.

It's really really cold here though. We heat our house with wood and I miss him already.

The ROCI project

what am I waiting for? 2005

On December 14, 1984 Robert Rauschenberg initiated his ROCI project (Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange)by inviting representatives of the art world to the United Nations in New York. His U.N. presentation stated that one-to-one contact through art was a non-elitist way to share exotic and common information. He had given up on the politicians.

"It's now up to the artists to wage peace" he said, and travelled from nation to nation, creating art about what he experienced and exhibiting it. He visited places like Tibet, China, Japan, Mexico, Venezuela, Chile, Cuba, and Moscow over a period of twelve years. Record - breaking crowds attended the exhibitions. He acted on his long-held belief that "the artist must be engaged in determining the fate of the earth, that the artist cannot stand aloof as an observer."

He did the ROCI project when he was in his 60's. "I decided that instead of having a mid-life crisis I'd do something about the world crisis."

Get Well Soon

I hope that your cold gets better soon, dad.

L'il Abner and a monkey

Happy Birthday Dad!

She designed clothing

When I only have one photo of someone, like my grandmother, I use it over and over and over.

Three Sisters

My mother was one of three sisters. She told us that her older sister Olive was the popular one, while her younger sister Ruth was the beauty. She herself was the nice one. Pauline was the one who would stay late after lunch and wash the dishes for her mother.

chick day

I spent the day with my daughter and her baby. We bought a goose to have on Christmas day.

My beginnings

Q: When did you become interested in embroidery and other textile arts?
A: I became aware of world embroidery at age 24 when I was travelling in Great Britain with my new husband. I bought Perle cotton, embroidery floss and a pattern book in a street market and worked on small linen sample during the evenings by our tent. I carried the work in my bike pannier over a period of 14 months. I also covered all the clothing I had with me with embroidered imagery. It was 1975. I still have some of those garments.

Q: What background did you bring to your interest?
A: Around the age of ten I had learned to embroider by following stamped designs on pillowcases. I remember loving this activity. My mother helped me with some of the simple stitches.
When I was twelve I began sewing most of my own clothes. Throughout high school I made the latest styles for myself such as flowered pants with solid co-ordinated jackets and zip up leather jumpers (made from upholstery fabrics). I loved the challenge of creating them myself.
I also made a lot of Barbie doll clothes at that time for my younger sister’s doll and was hired by several mothers to make wardrobes for their daughters’ dolls. These clothes were very imaginative and I used my mother’s sewing scraps for them and very tiny buttons and trims that I found in the local Stedman’s five and dime.
I'd like to send birthday good wishes ( a little late) to my oldest daughter. We so enjoyed your visit home, dear child.

The world within us

The world about us would be desolate except for the world within us

Wallace Stevens

their early days together

still overwhelmed

Cry me a river
Forty feet wide.
Cry me a river
Toss me inside.
And when I'm drowning and holler for help.
Don't come a running.
I'll save myself."

This was what my mother would say to us kids whenever we felt sorry for ourselves.

Almost sixty years

My parents were married in 1947 and pictured is a detail from the small hanging I made for their 50th anniversary. I took a photo of it in their living room here in Kingston,Ontario, where I am presently putting in some daughter time. I'm very glad to be here to help out.