Slow Work

 

cloudy day

Sophie Anne Edwards interviewed me last month at the Art Gallery of Sudbury.  To prepare for the interview Sophie sent me questions the day before, and I wrote answers.  

During the actual interview, we didn't refer to our notes, and the conversation was quite casual and spontaneous. However, for this blogpost, I am sharing one of the questions Sophie sent me as well as my written answer.  

Island Heart

Question:      There is a deep care in your work, in the process, the slowness, the time of a life and the time of each stitch. I know people realize that fibre/quilting is slow work, but you work slowly in different ways (in some ways you work quite quickly in terms of volume). To me this slow stance is a radical resistance: to the pressures of capitalist logics of productivity and consumption. Your work challenges what we understand as fine art, and not just because you’re working very finely with a historically feminine practice, but because your work uplifts and forefronts what is historically downplayed (the feminine, the domestic); but also because we are so pressured to work quickly, to be productive in a way that is visible, consumable, implicated in the circulations of capital. The quilts aren’t easily consumed – they don’t give the whole story away, we don’t know all of your thoughts, some text is invisible, or only partially visible, the works are large, they can’t all be seen in one eyeful, one must walk around and through them, they aren’t reproducible, and as large works they are often not sold in the way that other art work is sold.

 

• Would you speak to how you move between the art ‘industry’ as a professional artist, and your commitment to slow, highly detailed work?

 

Answer

One thing that I want to say is that I studied classical piano as a child.  Classical music requires practice, a tedious thing for many people to do and they quit, but I did the practicing, not always with the greatest concentration, but I set the timer and I did it.  I think that the discipline of music practice may have made me able to do my slow work today.   I still use a timer, although I no longer play the piano.  My aim when I was preparing a Mozart sonata for an exam was to make it sound as if it was easy and that is why I practiced.   I wanted to communicate easily to my listener – and it’s the same with my quilts.  I want my viewers to ‘get’ my work intuitively and I think that they do because of the amount of time and touch held within the quilts.  My heart is there for them in an open and powerful simplicity. It’s emotional.  

poet in love

Giving one’s attention requires one to slow down.  Durational time like this requires me to stay with a project long enough to understand what it is doing and what I am feeling.  The viewer also has to slow down.   For me, going slowly allows my intuition more space to guide me through the uncertainty.  It’s important to me that the work is open to change and doubt and the piece is constantly evolving and in the process becomes more true.  

Also, working slowly with cloth, touching it as much as I stitch it, gives me ideas.  My imagination has permission and enough space to soar.  Thoughts come through the sense of touch. More ideas than we can understand or process –

my heart and eternity

Maybe what you mean by the art industry is the commercial art scene of galleries and art fairs.  

You know, I think that my work could fit into this just fine, because my work is authentic and true and beautiful and well made.  It’s true that it is not made to ‘sell’, but I think that people do eventually find that it is decorative and thought provoking enough for their homes.  It is not 'normal' though in the commercial gallery system.  Quilted textiles are against the grain. My simple abstract work is not group of 7 type landscape.  I like to think it is more like the early modernists like Paul Klee in the 20’s and Mark Rothko in the 50’s but with feeling.  

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This is just one of the eight questions Sophie sent me.  I can share another one in a future post.  In regards to the actual August 23 interview, I hope to be able to share it either by video or audio within the next few weeks.    

My quilts help me to be brave.

Last Tuesday Rachel from Breaking the Blocks / Crafty Monkees interviewed me.  She asks artists to talk about their lives and how their artwork helps them cope. I woke up that morning wondering what I might say. 

What are my "blocks"?  

How do I "break" them?  

One block would be isolation but the internet broke that one for me. 

Another could be the mothering of four kids.   Many people would say this.

Except that I truly believe that motherhood gave me a subject and a reason to create so it was not a block for me.  It was a door.

Maybe I could talk about the breakthrough that happened when I became aware of my inner world and how huge it is and how stitching gives that world to me.  

It's interesting that this interview comes along at the same time as I've been working on my memoir.

My recent self study gave me more confidence when I spoke with Rachel.   

1.  I grew up in an isolated rural place with lots of books and art supplies and plenty of solitude.

2.  I met and married Ned early and had the four kids.  We determined to raise them with natural beauty outside their door.  Around age 30 I discovered how I could use traditional quilt pattern as a code to tell the intimate stories that were happening in my life.  I did a lot of teaching of watercolour painting, art quilting and classical piano for about 20 years along with full time parenting.  It was a busy time. 

3  In 2005, we had an empty nest and this began a new period.  Digital photography.  The internet.  

In 2006, I started writing this blog.   I took a degree in embroidery from the UK.  I retired from in-person teaching.  Over the next twenty years I stepped back into solitude and into the inner world.  

4  I guess that I am now in the period of my 'late work'.  

The unavoidable fact of life is death, but handmade quilts challenge that.  My quilts will outlive me.

Human mortality is a major 'block' for everyone but those of us who create hand-made objects break that block.   

All the images in this post are of a piece that I thought was finished.  See it here on my website.   I cut it in half up the middle and put a lovely wool batt in between the two pieces.  I've really been enjoying stitching it during this beautiful month of May.  

The title will stay the same:  Sky With Many Moons.

The podcast is available where ever you get your podcasts. Rachel called our podcast The Art of Imperfection.  Here is a link.   

All the Time in the World

you are a single star - finishing the quilting 
a week ago

When I run after what I think I want

                            you are a single star - sewing on the binding - in the car on way to cottage                                         Thursday June 6

My days are a furnace

love the soul inside of me  - making a sleeve
Friday June 7 

of stress and anxiety. 

the good and the true - making a display sleeve for it
Saturday June 8

If I sit in my own place of patience, 

Ned's 75th

what I need flows to me, 

April with some of her work at the cottage
Monday June 10

and without pain.  

Ben holding up my Cloudy Day piece 
Monday June 10

From this I understand that

home on Manitoulin with my garden
Tuesday June 11

what I want also wants me, 

The promotion for the interview begins
Wednesday June 12

is looking for me and attracting me.  

making a sleeve for your fragile life
Thursday June 13

There is a great secret here

love meditation: intimacy and new sleeve
Thursday June 13

For anyone who can grasp it.          Rumi

Friday June 14

Click HERE to view the hour long interview on YouTube.  Thank you Fibre Arts Take Two!  
 

Outdoor Gallery

prayer to the sky  by Judy Martin
three layers of wool, indigo and madder dyes, hand stitched and slashed 60 x 64.5" 2019

Currently my work is simple.

I have to keep reminding myself about the aesthetic of simplicity.
It is challenging to be simple when the materials are lush.

I am concerned with the passage of time and use hand-stitch as a metaphor for time and touch.

red thread hearts by judy martin
 sixteen women's handkerchiefs, damask table linen, cotton and silk theads, hand stitched 76 x 76 "  2019

Subjects I keep returning to in my work are: vulnerability, female-ness, the inner dream world and love relationships.

The sense of touch is the mother of the senses.
I use it to reach the emotional inner world of my viewers.

I try to hold spirit within my work.

podcast interview

I was recently interviewed by LaChaun Moore for the WEAVE podcast and I'm putting the link here for those interested.

Early in the talk I speak about how my mother introduced me to the power of the sense of touch through cloth.

not to know but to go on

Later, the conversation leads me to mention how my father is connected to my long journal piece, Not To Know But To Go On.
It's interesting how conversations go.

all things can be mended   watercolour and thread on paper

I also speak about painting my children when they were little and the ritual of my journal-keeping.  LaChaun and I discuss how the pandemic is affecting our creativity.

The podcast is on the GIST yarn website
Here is a direct link to episode 108: The Aesthetic of Simplicity and Hand Stitching . 
Or perhaps go to where you get your podcasts.  It is on the Weave podcast site.
It's about 35 minutes long.

Thank you LaChaun

Evelyn's questions

Not To Know But To Go On 2013  13" x 220' installed in the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts in St. Bonaventure, New York as part of the SAQA Global Exhibition  ..  3-D Expressions

Q  Where do you find inspiration to work from?

A  Inspiration is not really 'found'.  It arrives.  Agnes Martin says that inspiration falls like rain when we are asleep.   The key, I think, is stay open.  I keep a journal beside me all the time and use it to catch those ideas that hover close to me when I'm reading or looking or listening.  Making note of what resonates with me is noted and then when I re-read the journal,  I find inspiration.

one entire skein of cotton embroidery floss was used up each day for over a thousand days

 Q  Thinking of the piece that you have in the exhibition, why did you decide to make this piece 3-dimensional?

A  Not To Know But To Go On is basically a time-line for three years of my life from 2010 to 2013, full of ups and downs, loops and circles, repeats and unknowns.  Each day that whirled past is a cycle of sunrise and sunset, each month is a cycle of moon, and each year a cycle of seasons.

the fabrics are from Judy's collection of favourite cloth from her life, torn into strips and couched to artist's canvas

The meaning of the piece is expressed by its form: a line.

like a star in my sky 2020 three layers of wool with wool thread, hand stitch, second side

Q  Once you have conceived an idea, how do you start?  Do you make sketches, do research, look at other works before you begin?

A  My work always begins with a rough ball point pen sketch in my journal. 

like a star in my sky in progress (first side) plus wrapping cloth 2014 second side showing

Q  How do you decide when you have the idea?

A  I think the idea develops as I sketch.  Drawing is a way to think.

My design wall is important.  As the piece progresses, I keep pinning my work up to gaze at and draw what I see and make new sketches of possible changes.

Judy Martin with Not To Know But To Go On as installed with 3-D Expressions at the Gerald Ford Museum in Grand Rapids Michigan in 2019.

Also, and this is very important.  I don't necessarily know what the end product will look like when I make that first sketch or catch the first idea with word or two.

Cloud of Time 2014  13" x 88 feet rescued domestic linen and variety of blue fabrics couched to artist canvas with 365 skeins of cotton embroidery floss in order to represent one year of time.

 I don't work three-dimensionally unless it is the best way to express the meaning of the piece.

Evelyn Penman is the Assistant curator and Director of the gallery that is hosting the 3-D Expressions exhibition.  Because the gallery is closed by the quarantine, the exhibition can be viewed online on April 29 along with a zoom interview of four of the artists.  More information is at this link. 

Love absolutely

Q   How did you develop your own style and inner voice?
Q   Was there a defining moment for you or was it a gradual process?

A   I think it was a gradual process.  The main thing I did right from the beginning was to choose a subject that I absolutely loved.   It had to be something that I needed to personally communicate, not caring if it would be acceptable in the larger art world.

I started my career with what many would term gendered subjects and gendered techniques.
When I was a young mother, I painted my children in watercolour.  I started stitching when they were young because I could take the work with me to the sand pile or playground and it could be picked up and put down when I was so often interrupted.

I also read anything I could find about women artists and writers and found out that the best were true to themselves, and this inspired me to do the same.  It sounds easy, but to follow an inner voice or dream is actually quite a brave thing to do.

This self-directed study helped me to do my art while at the same time living my so-called normal life of wife and mother.

Once the kids left home, I started the embroidery degree from the UK through Julia Caprara’s school of textile art, OPUS.  My inner voice became even clearer through this directed study and I continue to work from the thesis I developed at that time.

Particularly important are Gaston Bachelard’s writings about inner immensity, Agnes Martin’s writings about paring away the unnecessary, and Ann Hamilton’s ideas about how we arrive at knowing through every sense, especially the sense of touch. 

I’d like to especially thank my tutors from the UK, Catherine Dormor, Kay Swancutt and Joan Richardson.

I do believe that making and exhibiting art is the best way to express our inner selves and communicate heart to heart with others.