aesthetic pleasure

 

I have been procrastinating about writing anything this month.    

I will share some photos 

of the layers of linen and wool and sheer that I have been stitching with black and red thread.

It seemed so urgent that I stitch every day.

I thought I might get this one finished.   I told myself that finishing it was why I was stitching so much.

But that was not true.  

I was stitching so much because I was letting my own hands do what they do so well. 

My hands take care of me.

These past weeks, I read essays by women in old magazines and attended panel discussions on Zoom.

I went into my town studio a lot, and came home by the back roads, 

because the trees and ditches take care of me too.

In the essays,  I kept coming across words like care and nurture and support and retreat. 

The water in the lake is beginning to freeze.  

Can you can see the misty fairy hair?.

Aesthetic pleasure is important now, not just for its own sake, but to revive us, to give us the wherewithal to fight another day.      Aruna d'Souza             Canadian Art winter 2019

This piece is called Inner World. 

I'm finishing it up for an exhibition next spring.  All the work in the exhibition is two-sided.  

Most of the pieces are made by stitching first on one side and then another, 

and when they are displayed,  the 'other' or the inner side faces outwards.   

Inner World

Art has begun to feel not like a respite or an escape, but a formidable tool for gaining perspective on troubled times.                       Olivia Laing         The Guardian     April 2020

Stitching helps me because, for the several hours each day that I spend stitching, 

real time is stopped.  

The whirl of it.  The fear of it.

Making my art is like being in a zone of enchantment.

  

Whatever brings the consciousness into a state of pure attention, in a time of perplexity, will also give back an answer to the perplexity.          D.H. Lawrence  1928

The stars.

The sky and the stars.

In current climates, the act of taking time out of our day to make, time to look after yourself, time to be with loved ones, is important.  Modern quilting is all about time.  The moments we share with one another and the processes we choose to adopt to take care of ourselves.                                                    Julius Arthur           Embroidery Magazine      July/August 2021

There's a lot going on with my kids these days.  

Inner World

The title of the exhibition is Inside Out.  

Mark making is a way to make an effect on our own world.                                                          Margaux Williamson             Canadian Art     Winter 2019 

Art is an articulation of resilience.                                                                                                      People create art through war and pandemics and hardship and the work lives on for hundreds of years.                                                                    Tatum Dooley  The Guardian     April 2020                 

studio work

I went into my town studio on Friday.

I pinned Medicine Earth on the wall.  It didn't seem right anymore.  I turned it on its side.

At home, I started a new pieced cloth.  I used up all I had of some soft wool cloth.

It's extremely simple.

Walnut dyed.

I've been sewing a lot of squares together lately, and I can't really explain why in words.  It just feels best for me now.

The textiles I make are documents.   At the same time, they hold me.   Also time.  Also touch.

Time is my obsession:  Not to waste it, not to lose it.  Time is an object to me, something you can almost take hold of,  if I could just collect enough of it in one clump. Anne Tyler (Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant)

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. 

inner horizon

Again and again I pull this piece into my lap.
She's un-finished.

When I get close to finishing her, something makes me re-think and un-do and today I mended her again.  Those slices I made last August opened her into a female figure
but she's no princess.

She's been through a lot.
She's been generous with her time.
Listening and holding me thorugh a winter of doubt,
a spring of uncertainty and travel,
and a summer of family.

I like to say that I approach my work as if I have all the time in the world, but the truth is, I don't.
This moon is waning.

I worked the stitches from the back, the distortions and un-planned marks guided me.

This is me.
This old moon.
My surface smoothed out and easy, hiding that inner turmoil on the inside.
Not very well.

This old emotional moon.
Patched and stitched with circles.

Why do I keep coming back to blue circles?

It's not just me - we all do.
We all go back to where we started eventually.
That is who we really are.

When I draw a circle quickly on paper, I start it at 12 noon and go counter clockwise.  I go against time when I rush like that.  But when I stitch circles, I can go either way.  Stitching is a slower way of marking a circle and it encourages stepping not running.  Breathing in a considered manner.
In order.  Kind of.

She is just as interesting on either side.

When I worked on paper, I never worried about what the back of my painting looked like.
It didn't seem important.
But when I stitch into cloth, there are two affected sides.
I noticed this first when I made the quilts and the backs became as important and beautiful as the fronts.
There are two sides of everything.
All things contain their opposites.

Works in cloth are full of metaphors.
I love that.

The deer made their small heart marks in the snow just before I went out for my walk.
They didn't think about it.
I love that too.

organic, labour intensive, energetic marks

no. IZ  detail  Yayoi Kusama  

No. IZ  Yayoi Kusama  (Japanese born 1929)  oil on canvas 1960 

The First Part of the Return From Parnassus  detail  Cy Twombly

The First Part of the Return From Parnassus  Cy Twombly (American 1928-2011) oil, coloured pencil, lead pencil, wax crayon on canvas,   1961

Vast Ocean  Gunther Uecker (German born 1930) paint and nails on canvas over wood  1964

Vast Ocean Gunther Uecker detail

The three artworks in this post are just a taste of what I was able to see in Chicago earlier this week, selected because of their simple yet lively marks.

The three artists who made them were all born within two years of each other. They were toddlers at the same time but lived in different countries.  They turned twelve during WW II.  When they were 30, they made paintings like these that fifty years later remain relevant.  

Human experience, imagination, risk.  Our connections.

Ned and I visited our daughter this week.  She is studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and these pieces are part of the collection of the Art Institute's gallery.   I'm glad I was able to experience them face to face.