The Immensity Work

the cloud in me in the outdoor gallery

Immensity is within ourselves.  It is attached to a sort of expansion of being that life curbs and caution arrests, but which starts again when we are alone.”    Gaston Bachelard   The Poetics of Space.

These pieces from 2017 seem empty, but are in actuality filled with textural small marks put there one at a time with hand stitch.  I’ll never be finished with exploring the immensity within.    

longing cloth

longing cloth (verso)

 Longing Cloth 

I feel that yearning is our strongest emotion, more powerful than love itself.  I used indigo dyed velvet because it is such a sensual fabric to touch and a bright red inner layer, revealed by cutting away some of the cloth in the reverse of the piece. 

the cloud in me

 Luce Irigaray’s book To be Two  has a section about women and men and how each has a unique and huge interior life. 

"Each remote from the other, we are kept alive by an insuperable gap.  Nothing can ever fill it.  Is it because I do not know you that I know you are?  How do I protect without restraining?  You remain a mystery to me.  Our union will always remain a mystery.  Such is the union between woman and man.  I want to live in harmony with you and still remain other.  I want to draw nearer to you while protecting myself from you.  In which part of myself do I preserve you?  In which breath?  

How do I remain without suffocating? How do I make earth out of air and protect the cloud in me?  Neither mine nor yours but each living and breathing with the other.  What makes me one, and perhaps unique, is that you are, and I am not you.” 

I had to do some reflecting this past week because I'm being interviewed by Sophie Anne Edwards at the Art Gallery of Sudbury on Saturday and I remembered the thesis for my Fine Art degree from Middlesex University and the work that came from that.  

Beauty Emotion Spirit Soul

Beauty, Emotion, Spirit, Soul

When I was studying for the Embroidery degree from Middlesex University I had to develop a thesis.  I was encouraged to look around me, at art and at nature, and discover what it was that made an impact on me.  To identify it. And then to make my work using that thesis as a constant guide.

I looked at paintings and world textiles and American quilts and realized that it was the simplest ones that I loved the most.  The ones that relied on emptiness and repetition and a sense of space.   I looked at nature and identified how I felt when I looked at new growth in the spring fields and forests where I lived.  And how I felt when I looked across the body of water in front of our house into the empty not empty sky and the ducks swimming in the gentle ripples.

Beauty Emotion Spirit Soul reverse side

And developed my thesis:  Large Emptiness.  Small marks.  The feeling rather than the representation. 

I made a set of sketches using fabrics I was saving in my studio.  The sketches were all square, 13 inch  pieces of cloth that combined with other pieces of cloth and some thread and sometimes holes placed in them inspired by the sketches I'd made over time in my notebook.  The idea was that they were mock ups for what could be large-scale textiles.  100 inches square.  

When I graduated in 2012 from Middlesex University, my graduate exhibition was one large empty square that held many hand stitched small marks.  See it here as the cover image of my website; title is Monumental Simplicity.  Then seven years later in 2019, I used eighteen of those fabric sketches to make the fabric construction in this post.  Beauty Emotion Spirit Soul sold before I had a good photo of it but I contacted the collector last March and told her about my project to document my older work.  She happily agreed to loan it back to me for professional photography and now I am pleased to have these photos by Nick Dubecki and am sharing them here.

in the middle of my story

I am an artist.

I live on a large island in Lake Huron.

I have lived here for 26 years with my husband.

Before that, I lived in North Western Ontario for 40 years.

My cities were Winnipeg and Thunder Bay, half day car drives away. 

I dream all the time.

I have made art my whole life.  

While raising my family of four kids, I taught classical piano and continued my art.

I constantly study art.

I obtained two fine art honours BA degrees through distance education. 

 In December 2018 I received the Craft Ontario award for mid-career excellence.

The name of the award (mid-career ) is inspiring.

Does that mean that although I am in my mid-60’s and have pursued art my whole life that I am merely in the middle of my artistic career?   Yay.

Mid-Career - those words make me want to go closer to the edge. 

Those words make me want to go deeper into myself.

I want to go somewhere on my art path that I have not been before, and that I do not know.

I want to be brave in this journey.   I want to take more risks.

self 2005

I've been invited to have a display in the local library in Little Current for the month of February and have decided to show some early paintings.  Several were in my parents' condo and those along with a few others from our own collection make a decent show of 15 paintings, all of them featuring one or two of our four children, dated from 1981 until 2002.

While doing this search, I came across two self portraits from 2005.  I have never shown this one before. The other one ...click here.   These seemed to mark a turning point.  Both paintings are about identity.

In 2005, after 27 years of being a mother-artist, I had an empty nest.  I had grown in my art as much as the kids had grown up and flown off.   In 2006, I went back to school and that adventure has been well documented on this blog.  In 2012, I graduated with a degree in embroidered textiles at the age of 61.  

The penciled text in the upper corner of this painting is by Salman Rushdie

"...each of us is many different people. Our younger selves differ from our older selves; we can be bold in the company of our lovers and timorous before our employers, principled when we instruct our children and corrupt when offered some secret temptation, we are serious and frivolous, loud and quiet, aggressive and easily abashed.  And yet, unless we are damaged, or deranged, we usually have a relatively clear sense of who we are.  I agree with my many selves to call them all me."

Continuum in Germany

Freedom is Choice, Choice is Freedom

Marilyn Hall

Make Gloves Not War

Caroline Hibbs

Home

Lesley Turner

Left:  Place a Perfect Landscape
Right: Considering Pattern Darning

Ingrid Lincoln (left) and Denise Jones (right)

Flying Family Tree

Monika Bruekner

front: Collection
behind: Untitled

Val Cross (plinth) Jean Kirk (window)

Collection on plinths
Femininity on wall

Val Cross (plinths and Victoria Jenkins (wall)

monumental simplicity

Judy e Martin

Continuum opened in the Villa Wieser Gallery, Herxheim bei Landau, Germany on Sunday Feb 17. These images are from Denise Jones' larger photos of the beautiful installation.  Thanks for sending the images Denise.  Thanks also to Monika Bruekner who organized the ten of us into this European venue.  Most of the artists were present, and I wish that I had been as well.   This exhibit continues until March 10.

For those interested in further information about the work and the artists' intent, please re-visit the post I wrote last November when Continuum showed in Canada at the World of Threads festival.

privilege

 

 

 

Hand  ling the art work was a privilege.

collection, Val Cross, found objects and bare iron wire

I stitched her words: all we want is a better fairer human life, Denise Jones, silk thread on linen

Shimmer, Catherine Dormor, digitally printed silk satin and organza

Flying Family Tree, Monika Brueckner, stitched paper

Untitled, Jean Kirk, shirbori dyed and pin tucked silk organdy

Yesterday I shipped the last of thirteen parcels back to their makers in the UK and Germany.

Continuum Installed

simplicity monumental, installed in front of Oakville Town Hall north atrium window

We installed Continuum yesterday.  This is the graduate exhibition that was hung in Middlesex University last June.  Now that work is hanging in the Oakville Town Hall as part of the World of Threads festival.

Foreground,  one of Val Cross's spheres.  Visible in the background are Marilyn Hall's sculptures, as well as a glimpse of my large piece.  

Ten artists.  Innovative and personal work.  We are proud of how we were able to re-think our work and present it again after the degree.

Eight of us travelled quite large distances to Oakville in order to install our work and be present at the opening on November 2.   Monika came from Germany, Denise, Val, Viki and Marilyn flew from the UK.  Lesley flew from B.C.and so did Ingrid from Manitoba,  I just had to drive (6 hours) from Manitoulin Island. If you are near enough, I hope you will be able to visit the exhibition.

Jean and Caroline, we miss you but your work looks fab.  Hopefully we'll all connect in Germany in February. xx

art at the cottage

It's was Ruth's cottage.  She always called it "The Bay".  

We have made a few changes with the art here.  Pared some things away, added others.  Always with respect for for family heritage.  This photo by W.R. MacAskell was brought home from Halifax by Jay after one of his University work terms.

It's on the mantel, under the boat Ned bought to celebrate his 60th when we were in Normandy.

I purchased this photo by Jon Butler at the LaCloche art show to mark the year I was their distinguished artist. 

This photo of Janet Susie Ormsby, the family matriarch, has hung in the dining room for my entire memory of this place.    
April made that magnet we keep on her grandmother Ruth's propane fridge.  We have more art at the cottage, but this is enough for now.  Ned and I are beginning the close up.

Links:
You might like to visit Sandra Reford's blog as she is hanging TRADITION in TRANSITION over the next two days.  That is the exhibit of Canadian quilts that Sandra was was invited to curate for this year's Carrefour textile celebration in Alsace, France.  It opens on Thursday the 13th September.  (I have two pieces in it.)
Also, Finishing School, the new fibrequarterly magazine published by Joe Lewis is out and there is an article about us three Canadians who graduated from Middlesex University last summer with a degrees in Embroidered Textiles.

the big open (heart)

A lot has happened inside me during the last month.  The graduation for example.

and Jay's wedding, so beautiful.

Now it's time to get back to my very own truth.  

First Class Honours

The marks are in and I'm pleased to say that I will graduate with a first class honours BA degree in embroidered textiles from Middlesex University on July 20, 2012.  The ceremony will take place at the university in London, England.
The above photograph is of me at the private view of the graduation exhibition, June 20.  It was taken by my friend Wim.

Here is another photo that Wim took of me thanking Catherine Dormer, my tutor.  I shall miss the stimulating tutorials that I had over the last few years with her and with other favourite tutors, Kay Swancutt, Liz Harding and Joan Richardson.  Also in this photo you can see my dear Ned and also Wim's wife, my good friend of 40 years or so, Marjan.  Marjan and Wim came over to London from the Netherlands to support me through these final days of the degree.  x

Thank you to those who read this blog and have encouraged me through many thoughts and worries.  Your support has been nourishing and I really have felt your caring  

xxx

Wow, I'm finished!