crazy busy September

3-D Expression
a SAQA global exhibition at Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum
Grand Rapids Michigan, September 23 until November 3 2019
These two photos were sent to me to show Not To Know But To Go On being installed
in the museum's lobby

There is a gorgeous printed catalogue with all the artists represented with photos and statements.
In the above photo, my work is in the background,
in the foreground is Saint Anastasia by Susan Lenz.

All Stitched Up
an exhibition of books that use stitch
My book Power of Red - is included.  It quotes William Wordsworth's text.
Collins Memorial Library, University of Puget Sound, Tacoma Washington
There is a printed catalogue available for purchase.
September 3 - Decemember 11 2019

Hard Twist 14: Entwined
My red catalogne is included, a safety blanket for the interior world.
notes, lists, thoughts, dreams and phone call doodles on paper, red thread, rescued linen tablecloth
A complete online catalogue is available with all artists and statements

Every year, curators Helena Frei and Chris Mitchell organize this exhibition
of conceptual textile art and mount it in the hallways of the 3rd and 4th floor of
the Gladstone Hotel.   September 5 2019 - January 7 2020

Craft Ontario 19
Ontario Craft Gallery 1106 Queen St West Toronto
My stitched 9-patch made from sketches I made with found cloth and acdrylic paint is included
title:  How Much I Tried Not To Worry (Best of North award)
September 5 - October 12, 2019

There is a beautiful online catalogue for this exhibition also, click here.  

are fairies real?

  I drove myself into the city last weekend so that I could spend some time with the 5 year old.

mommy-princess-fairy by aili

I usually avoid doing that drive by myself because of the merges and the exits and the speed of the 400 highways in southern ontario.

 I'm home now and finishing up this small piece for the Perivale gallery.

daddy-prince-fairy by aili

 Are elves real?

My friend Jane has advised  that I put this section of piecework into a frame.
(rather than insert it into larger textiles like I tried here and here.

So that's what I am planning to do for now.

fairy king by grandmom, daddy-fairy-prnce by aili

My grand daughter and I took turns with the ball point pen in my journal.

( what the world needs now is time to think - alighiero boetti  )

fairy nanny by aili

are fairies real?

an infinite changeless reality beneath the world of change

It's raining outside.
Our driveway has a slight up hill onto the road and it is ice.
Slippery wet ice.

I began a new journal today.
I fill one book a month.
When I die, they will be able to build a small house wtih the journals I've kept over the years.

Yesterday I walked on the road.
I used to love my walk but now it's such hard work.
I want to get back to loving it again.

I want to look forward to the moving meditation that was part of my daily routine.
Now with the leg, I look for reasons not to walk.

I long for the talking-to-myself-out-loud kind of walk,
not the counting-my-steps kind of walk that I do now.

Also, about the journals, if I didn't have them and the inner life they contain,
the poetry would be gone from my work.

This week I'm finishing up the three pieces I took with me to Mexico.
It feels good to be able to stitch again as much as I need to.

I've started to read the Bhagavad Gita, a book that Gandhi used as his personal guide.

Some say that this text is India's most important gift to the world.
It tells us that we are meant to be as much at home in our inner consciousness
as in the world of physical reality.

My copy is translated by Eknath Easwaran.  In the introduction he sums up the perennial philosophy of the Gita.

1. there is an infinite changeless reality beneath the world of change
2  this same reality lies at the core of every human
3  the purpose of life is to discover this reality through life experience

Representative stuff comes from out there.
Abstract design comes from inside.
The combination is what separates a work of art from the every dayness of experience.
It also gives the work an alien feeling that is mercilessly intimate. 
 (Frank Webb, painter)

journal paper stitched to an old table cloth
the deer in my driveway
my fragile life

my work with me

I am on vaycay with my husband. 

We had ten days in Mexico with our Anchorage family.  Now they are back home.
They survived the earthquake and are still experiencing aftershocks, but they are safe.

Then we had another week and Canadian friends arrived.

  I brought my work with me.

I don't do it all the time, but some times.

It holds the heat and wind of this place some how. 
Each stitch wraps time snugly.

This slow time in Mexico
is threaded to my heart and will remain.
Somehow. 

everything something anything

Its overwhelming.  How do we do it?  Everything?   Something?   Anything?

I started a new system this fall to keep my bodies of work and my daily and emotional life on track.  I'm using the kitchen timer again. (not for the emotional parts)

First thing in the morning, I stitch by the window into this altered journal.  Although the timer is set to 15 minutes, I work until there is a natural pause.  Working in this journal has inspired further journal work.   I think that's good.

Then I do an hour of hand stitch on the 'weekly project'.  (shown: re-configuring moon cloth)

In this new system, I work on just one piece for a week and then fold it up and work on a different one the next week.  The rule is: I can have in 10 pieces in rotation for this morning stitching, but no more.

(The many others will just have to wait until I have finished one of those 10)
Also, I am avoiding my inbox.
I seek no deadlines...

About social media:
I post once a week on instagram of whatever I am currently working on.
I post nearly once a week on facebook.
I write in this blog once or twice a week.  I'm sad that blog readership seems to be down because of the three, the blog is the most true. 

The only-10-things rule has made room for new ideas.  I think it's good that they keep coming.
I neglect the in-progress pieces piled on chairs and the sketches, re-drawn countless times.

I do about 2 hours of stitch each morning, and then go into town to work on the 3rd body of work based on wool blankets.  These town studio pieces are huge and I listen to a pod cast while filling the blankets with stitch.  I like to listen to Writers and Company with Eleonar Wachtel.

Home again, I go for a walk and make dinner.  The day is nearly over.
My husband and I have our Netflix date around 10 pm
and I work on the piece I leave in the TV room.

It's the TV pieces that get done.
This finished flannel quilt (above) was posted on instagram Friday.

Here is the TV piece I'm working on now.
This photo was taken last weekend at the cottage. Canadian Thanksgiving

This post is about time.
There just isn't enough of it.
In a day.  In a life. 

I have too many ideas.
Most will get done.
Somehow. Anyhow.  Everyhow.xo

Penny Berens' Daily Scratchings

 This post is about Penny Berens of Nova Scotia Canada and her amazing Daily Scratchings.

"The section above starts with the woodpecker stitched on October 2nd, 2012 and then the next day, a depiction of a trip up the Annapolis Valley to see the eye doctor.  For the 4th, I did that line of looped stitches, representing a day spent with the group of stitchers and hookers called 'Loose Threads'.  For October 5th I was thinking of things in the negative!  And the next section was for Thanksgiving weekend.  I was thinking of how days wrap themselves around one another.  Cotton threads stitched on damask."  Penny Berens

"In this image, the journal starts on Monday the 12 November 2012, when I stitched a flight of Canada geese that made me think of hieroglyphs. Then on Tuesday the 13th I watched a Murder of crows pestering an eagle on my morning walk.  They surrounded him in a tree and made a huge hullabaloo.  This was followed by a day of rain.  Cotton thread on hand dyed cotton."  Penny Berens
In Daily Scratchings, Penny Berens recorded the seasonal changes that she experienced while walking in the rural area near Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia.   In the above image, Penny's work is shown installed in exhibition in the Yarmouth adjunct of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. 

Using hand stitched representational drawings and rows of abstract marks she documented the day that she had lived through.  

 

Penny’s visual and tactile witnessing of natural phenomena became a journal that holds four years of time. 

 On my most recent visit with Penny, she kindly brought out her journal and we went through the pages.  These photographs are from that time last October.

 

 Above, Penny's work as it appeared in the Inverness Art Centre on Cape Breton Island in Oct 2015.

Penny's love of the natural world and her close observation of it is communicated with joy, love and hours of time. After four years (2012 - 2015) of dedication, she stopped working on this journal.  

"On December 31, 2015 I completed the last stitched entry in my 'Daily Scratchings' journal.  I noticed towards the end of that four year project that my entries had become more and more exploratory rather than recording the small daily events in my rural life,  therefore the time had come to make a change.  Creating larger pieces of work through daily practice still fascinates me however, as well as setting myself small challenges."  Penny Berens

Visit Penny's blog to find out what happens next for this prolific artist.