Mended World on the dining room table

I brought Mended World home from the church so that I could package it up for exhibition at the International Quilt Festival in November.

Having it on the dining table rather over whelmed me.
There is so much touch in this piece.
So much time.
So much attention and intention.
It's 94 inches square.  Full image here.

In 1977, Adrienne Rich wrote about women's tasks.  She included world protection, world preservation and world repair in her list.

This quilt is made from donated or thrift shop table linens.  Over 100 people worked on it.

Mended World is the second panel (of four) in the Manitoulin Circle Project.  It was installed in the sanctuary of Little Current United Church in 2012.       

In 1971, Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro initiated Woman House, "a repository of the daydreams women have as they wash, bake, cook, sew, clean and iron their lives away"

Repairing the world while sewing our lives away.

My densely stitched quilts are so sensuous
they yearn to be touched

How many of them will it take to mend the world?

How many of them can I day dream my life away in?

To Not Be So Lonely

This post is about the performance Mariana Lafrance did at her vernissage on April 12 for her exhibition entitled To Not Be So Lonely at the Art gallery of Sudbury.

She used the two puppets that she had made earlier from cotton dyed with walnuts.  She set up a checkerboard for them to play with made from charcoal dust and flour and her grandmother's china.

During the performance Mariana manipulated the puppets to play the checker game with a pool cue, each taking turn.  She spoke for them, using a childish aggressive dialog in French and in English.
eg.

'What's your favourite colour?'
"C'est le noir"
'Black, you like black?  That's not a colour"
"Ce n'est pas une couleur?"
'Nope, not a colour.  Me, I like pink.  Purple too. Pink or purple.
Those are my favourite colours."
"Rose et mauve? Ça c'est des couleurs de fille."
"..."
'I can't wait to be a grown-up.'
'When I'm an adult, everyone will be nice to me."

 When kings were made, a cup was placed in a saucer and tea was poured.

"Do you want any sugar"
'Sure, I'll have some sugar'
"We don't have any sugar"

"What do I do with the history that belongs to me and to my family?"  asks the artist.
"Checkers is a war game."

As well as the assemblage left behind from the performance, Mariana's exhibition consists of 3 videos, 3 textile drawings and several photographs.  In every instance there is a duality or a feeling of twinning in the imagery.  Mariana also uses her hands very expressively in all 3 videos, giving them a sensuousness rare in this media.  The exhibition will be on view until May 14 2017.

She explained her ideas about Not Be So Lonely to the gathering who attended and I quote her below:

The intent of this exhibition is not about the loneliness of the individual but more about the process of opening up to people around you, both as a person and as a culture.  In the process of opening up, you find that the others around you are more similar to you than different, and you find that they are quite like yourself, like twins, in a basic and essential way.  You bring "you' to that other person, and that other person brings themselves to you. Once you've done this you start to see humanity as yourself and others,  mixed up and yet essentially the same.      Mariana Lafrance. 

Timeless

 I am making marks with a needle and thread.

Each mark, each stitch is unique.
Each mark a small texture.
Each mark a reminder of my hand's caress.

Not only do the marks express this gentle touch, they also carry the 4th dimension of time.

It takes months to put all these stitches into my cloths.
Months of lived experience.

Just consider what happens during that amount of time.
The daily waking up and going back to sleep
the events of the world and of personal life story.

It's awesome.
It causes wonder.

recall the past
leap into the future
think about how brief our time is to be alive
of what we might accomplish

our precious time
Think about all of these things at the same time

I want these individual one at a time marks to look as if they've always been there.

I want them to be timeless.