road trip after qn

 

 We drove east from Athens Ohio towards New York state.

 

 We wanted to see our daughter in the last week of her residency at Women's Studio Workshop.

 

April is curious about materials .
She's exploring ceramics and printmaking
She sets up situations that make use of the wsw's kiln and press,
She allows both tools and materials to do what they each do best

Her artwork arrives.
Her artwork makes us think about how we are just specks in this big world
I took more photos of her work - maybe later I will share them.

 

We made our way north and west back home to Canada by way of country roads.
We noticed the immensity of the USA and the emptiness

Pema Chodron teaches that there are three principal charateristics of human existence
Three facts of life
Stop struggling against them, she says.

The three principal characteristics of human existence are impermanence, ego-lessness and suffering.
The hardest one for me to understand is ego-lessness.  what does that mean?

it's the idea of just being in the world
just being
just going
there isn't really a sun'rise' or a sun'set'.  the sun just keeps going
and although the rainbow seems so vivid and real, in truth it is no thing
it just is

I will stitch my way through this idea of egolessness and my understanding of it

I love stitching.
Stitching and me, we just are.

Days

What if we knew the day we will die?
What if we could count how many days we have left?

Would we live each day more fully?

When I document my days with journal keeping, I am counting the days UP.
How can I make an artwork that counts the days down?

Let's say...300 days.
What does one do with that finite knowledge?
Maybe one thing would be to really think about what one wants to leave behind.

A clean house.
A body of good work..
Gifts for each child and grandchild.


NOTE: all images in this post are of Hannah Claus' installation Our Minds Are One 2014, on now in the exhibition Reading The Talk at the beautiful Maclaren Art Centre in Barrie Ontario.  The artwork refers to the Dish with One Spoon Treaty negotiated in the 17th and 18th centuries so as to ensure the shared sustenance of the 'bowl' or land between the Anishinaabeg and the Haudenosaunee peoples.
The text in this post is from my own journal.

thinking again

I've been thinking more about the Ontario Craft Council.

I'd say that the most important thing I got from being a member in those early years was the magazine, Ontario Craft, filled with stimulating images and text.

Looking at other people's artwork challenged me to work harder and get better.

Today, the internet connects artists to information, opportunities and images of beautiful and thought provoking art. I can't quite name what it is I'm feeling. Not isolation. Something else.

fire

I re-discovered something wonderful over the weekend. Everyone knows it, but we forget.
It is that we are small. We are little. Part of a huge continuum of connections between generations and with nature. The cottage is nearly a hundred years old, in Ned's family for generations. I remember so many things that happened there, he remembers more, but the place remembers the most. Looking up. Looking down. The spiritual feeling on that island warmed me even more than the fires did. I am not succeding at communicating the enormous sense of peace and happiness that filled me the whole weekend, but it seems urgent that I try. Solitude and quietness and closeness to nature, those things nurture us all, I am convinced. Maybe this is why I make quilts. They will outlast me.

I touch you

I notice the back of the embroidery. The reverse side of bokhara couching and stem stitch make an interesting, visceral drawing in thread. More like an animal’s pelt than a woman’s dress. This 'inside' seems vulnerable yet powerful and I want the viewer to think about the dualism of the dress and what it covers.

The outer shell / the inner rawness
Cool and logical / hot and emotional
Outer/inner

The inside of the hand seen on the reverse of the piece is thinner – the fingers like sharp blades. That hand reaches for the dress – it cuts thorugh the red banner/carpet. It is surrounded by the white and pale yellow threads that swirl and bend like a landscape of grass, a lake of white water.
“Touch me” it says
“I touch you” it says.

I am , I exist

Stitching adds the sense of touch, a sense that's more psychologically profound than the sense of signt.

Clearing my Clutter

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.
William Morris

Inner Self Revealed

Three ideas inform my work at this time. Emptiness. Isolation. Nature.

Art as quiet

I am staying in Kansas City for three more days to study with Sue Hammond West. We begin each session with a five minute meditation to leave behind what came before and commit to being in the present. The class of fifteen work without speaking to each other which I absolutely LOVE. Sue gave us this quote by the poet Rumi to help us focus on being silent.

A great silence overcomes me and I wonder why I ever thought to use language.
There is a secret core in everyone.
Every spoken word is a covering for the inner self.
Stop the words.
Open the window in the center of your chest and let the birds fly in and out.

Know yourself

I had a five hour lay-over in Denver airport on the return flight from Anchorage and used much of the time to browse the bookstore. You won a free totebag with the purchase of three books and so I bought Tao Te ching (tranlation by Stephen Mitchell), White Teeth by Zadie Smith, and Amsterdam by Ian McEwan. I acquired An Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai and two baby books for my grandson on the flight up. The portraits of The Sopranos by Annie Liebowitz in the new Vanity Fair magazine caused me to rid myself of some American money as well. I loved the Proust Questionaire of journalist Helen Thomas on VF's back page.

Sample questions and her answers:
Q What is your idea of perfect happiness?
A Fulfillment of personal goals and dreams. A lasting love.
Q What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
A Silence - when words were needed.
Q What is your motto?
A Know when you are happy, Know yourself. Know your enemy. Ask not for whom the bell tolls.

what is real?

Think

Women artists are not outside of history or culture.
Women artists just occupy and speak from a different position.
This position is essential to the meaning of western culture.

clear the clutter

I'm glad that the big day (Christmas) is now over. I have begun to clear the clutter that has been blocking my art making and am starting afresh.

the hand stitch

I believe that my work in textiles reaches others on a more emotional level than drawing or painting ever can. The reason for this is the very materiality of cloth and stitch. Cloth has a most intimate connection to the human body. Babes are wrapped in cloth within minutes of emerging from the womb. Cloth is fragile and wears out with age, like the human body. The hand stitch is a slow method of making a mark and seems to hold time and make it visible. This time spent repeatedly touching the piece expresses a thoughtful caring and tenderness. There is power in cloth that has been stitched by hand.

"Did you ever think, child, how piecing a quilt is like living a life?"

The above text is by Aunt Jane of Kentucky

We are given things in life. Things happen to us that we have no control over. Things like where we are born, or who we meet throughout our lives. Fate throws some accidents in but humans must find a pattern in what often seems like chaos. We must arrange things so that they make sense. We have to put the pieces together and build a life, like a quilt.

Metaphysical Thinking

Yesterday, I received an email from the Canadian Book binders and Book Artists Guild (CBBAG) that informed me that the travelling exhibition entitled A BOOK ARTS MOSAIC will be exhibited in Banff in May and then in Ottawa in June.
Last year I was asked to participate in this cross section of Canadian book artists and made thirty scrolls, twenty five of them for the MOSAIC collections. Each is concerned with the need many of us have to ponder on metaphysical issues such as “Who am I?” or “What is real?” Because hand embroidery is a slow medium it seems able to translate the considerable amount of time spent in this meditative state.