rock cut on the lawn

rock cut side one, a two part sculpture to be hung from the ceiling,
rescued wool blankets and hand stitched wool yarn,
 each part 8 or 9 feet high and 13 feet wide, 
still in progress after 4 years of steady work by Judy Martin 

Two things:  repetition and simplicity.

rock cut part one, side one  French knots made with wool yarn on wool blanket

I use the same stitch.   Over and over.

Also obsession.

I get absolutely lost.  I enter a kind of dream world while my hands keep moving.

rock cut part two, side two, reverse of couching stitch, wool yarn on mended wool blanket

It's too much to understand, the hours and hours of time that are in the work.  

rock cut side two, a two-sided two part suspended sculpture,
rescued wool blanket, plant dyed wools, hand stitched 
each part 8 or 9 feet high,  13 feet wide,
looking puny on the lawn
but it is a big piece by Judy Martin, begun in 2015

Two sides.  That's because I want the viewer to move around the work so that the body is engaged, not just the eyes and mind.     

Because we know with our bodies.                   

where do your ideas come from?

What a huge question

The first thing that comes to mind is that my ideas come from MY LIFE.

It is the most obvious answer.  But our lives are so immense aren't they?  

answer:  Place
a)   the environment I currently live in and experience is a source of ideas.  It is awesome to live in Northern Ontario.  Driving to Manitoulin from any direction places me between rock cuts and close to clear lakes.
And Manitoulin Island is full of spirit.  I seek solitude here.  It is quiet with water horizon views.  
Also the SKY is a source of ideas.  Moon, sun, stars, clouds, blue-ness, hugeness, above-ness.

b)
where I grew up, a farm in North Western Ontario, with big fields and a spectacular lone elm tree.
I always felt isolated there.
My parents and siblings had a big impact on me, and still do.  

c)
I study art every day.
I look at reproductions in books and read about artists and their ideas and lives.
I write about these things in my journal, sometimes inspired to try something immediately. 
Art study is a passion of mine.

d)
My journals. 
I gather thoughts in them every day.
I re-read them.  I find and develop my own ideas in these journals.
There is true-ness in the journals

e)
My mothering.
It is ongoing, and continues to give me more than you can imagine.

f)
Strong emotions such as great sadness, furious anger, or physical fraility may be where I start a piece.
However, although these pieces may begin with vehement negativity, as I work into them with my hands, those emotions are displaced, replaced with a glowing serenity.
I feel serene after so much time with the work in my lap, and the completed works are calm.

What is an idea really?  So often it begins as just a glance - a speck
something off to the side.
after so many years at this art-game, now I recognize the feeling of that speck
I grab it from the air and write about it or sketch it into my current journal
and move on with my day.  
It usually takes me a few days of sleeping and moving before I feel it as an IDEA, not just a glance.

I have inner dialogue with my self.  
I imagine that all humans do to some extent.

My heart responds to stimulation so quickly and generously, 
and I want to make art that will allow my open heart to speak.
I want to make work that is as true to how I understand my life as possible. 
So that when another human encounters my work, that person will know me. .

And also, even more
I hope that person's heart and inner self will recognize something in my work
that resonates deep within them. 

And they know something more about them selves.

But I am side-tracked away from the question about where ideas come from.

I guess the short answer is that
I don't know.

To live an absolutely original life one only has to be oneself.  Agnes Martin

All images in this post are of a new large scale work in progress.

Tarpaulin # 8 Betty Goodwin 1976

In her art, Betty Goodwin reflects on the fragility and resilience of human life.

She often worked with found objects, such as clothing, which holds traces of the body and
that evoke loss and the passage of time.

While walking through Montreal in the 1970's, Goodwin noticed the large industrial tarpaulins that cover transport trucks,

their visible rips and marks a reminder of many journeys travelled.

The artist bought several repaired tarpaulins and reworked their surfaces with gesso, chalk and oil stick,

folding and refolding the canvas to add to the existing stains, scratches and seams.  By transforming this everyday object, Goodwin made it her own.

Tarpaulin #8, 1976     tarpaulin, gesso, rope, wire
by Betty Roodish Goodwin, born and died Montreal, Quebec, Canada.  1923 - 2008
(text quoted the gallery'swall signage)

I spent an entire day at the Art Gallery of Ontario and am now filled with inspiration, moved by the emotional authenticity of the contemporary art I saw there and of the respectful and intelligent way it was presented for the viewer.   

a big deal

I've been using the step ladder in my new studio
with those 10 foot walls.

Huge pieces.

It's all a big deal for me.

my pinwalls are made by covering the plaster with thin plywood and then
stapling 12 inch ceiling tiles, to that.   #husband did it

 I'm designing new work.

 Immense two sided pieces from rescued blankets and table cloths.

Soemtimes I'm dizzy ascending that ladder.

For a while, it felt as if I'd fallen in love.

Soft Summer Gone

I’m Judy Martin and this is my quilt,
Soft Summer Gone.

It’s large.  One hundred inches square.  8 ½ feet – 2 ½ metres square

It’s simple, quiet and empty, yet at the same time, it is luscious and full of touch and time.

It’s entirely hand stitched.  Even the seams are layered, tucked and sewn by hand.
The quilting is hand embroidery.

Wool yarn is couched into a large gestural drawing, a swoopy windy cross.

The threads are many colours of silk floss in stem stitch. 

The fabrics are silk that I dyed with plants that grow where I live.
I live on an island in Lake Huron, one of North America’s great lakes.
The various yellows are from golden rod collected from fields and ditches.
That bit of blue is indigo.

I use a large oval hoop in my lap to do this – it took two years just to do the quilting.

My aim is to create textiles that connect with our inner world.

Consider the reverie that happens sometimes in nature.
A sudden time shift and we go back into childhood memory or leap forward into future hopes and dreams.
A feeling of well being.

My work employs the sense of touch, more powerful than the sense of sight for connecting to our emotional inner immensity. 

My work is large, simple, quiet, full of touch and time, similar to nature.

All photos of the quilt in this post are by Nick Dubecki, from Sudbury.
The photo of me with my back to the world is by Judith Quinn Garnett, a fellow exhibitor.
The photo of me with my lovely certificate is by my husband Ned, who drove me to the opening
.
Soft Summer Gone received two awards in Surface Design at this year's Quilt National.
see here for complete list of award winners at this year's exhibition.

some questions to ponder

how does intimacy play into your work?

 is time always a central theme in your work?

 how do you conceptualize charting time through material?

can you speak about gratitude and surrender in the context of the quilt maker's relationship with her quilt?

 why do you often photograph your work outside in nature?

 you say that you make narrative metaphoric quilts, please explain

the raw edges of the torn linen damask express my open-hearted vulnerability
the wool string figure that stands up in the cloud of white air is slightly crooked
the self is both narrative and metaphor

when I realize that I can keep making quilts as long as I can thread a needle, I am full of gratitude

the stimulating questions in this post come from a young woman I spoke with on phone yesterday and I am still thinking about how I might best answer them
she was 21 years old, the same age I was when I made my first quilt.

"Love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.   Live the questions now.  Perhaps then, someday, far in the future you will gradually, without even noticing, live your way into the answers "  From Letters to a Young Poet by  Rainer Maria Rilke

Arms Race Catharine MacTavish

catharine mactavish arms race 1984 detail

I visited the Art Gallery of Ontario last week.
The most interesting piece for me was this painting by Toronto artist Catherine MacTavish.
I liked the scale of it.
I liked the layers of acrylic paint over and under beads.
I liked the slashes that are used as if drawn marks.

catharine mactavish arms race 1984 acrylic, glass and plastic beads, metal grommets

The painting dates from the mid 80's and I assume that the title refers to the nuclear arms race of that period of history.

The bead-marks are intuitive yet obsessive.  They attract yet repulse.
I yearn to touch them, even pick at them but they look as if they might rub away.

I'm afraid of that.

catharine mactavish arms race collection of Art Gallery of Ontario

It's white like a piece of paper, only extra large.
A cosmic scale.

arms race detail of acrylic and bead painting by Catherine MacTavish

It's hard to find information about this artist but there are several paragraphs on the Paul Petro gallery web site - here and here.

From these I learned that Catharine MacTavish studied at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, and then at York University in Toronto during the early 70's and that she then exhibited at both artist-run and public galleries.  I learned that her work is included in important public collections, (the Canada Council Art Bank and the AGO) and that she acquired a Masters degree in 2005.  I learned that although she removed herself from the art scene during the late 80's she continued to make art.

"Each piece entails a slow conceptual and technical percolation, she produces one dense painting every two or three years."  Paul Petro.