my book

Have I mentioned that I'm writing a book?  

I want to put my life and my artwork into some kind of meaningful context.

At first I thought that if I  collected the entries from this blog into something poetic, that would be enough. ‘The Best of Judy's Journal’ kind of thing.

However, Judy's Journal is image based, and the photos in it are not of high enough resolution to be printed.  Without the photos, it wouldn't be half as interesting.  

And besides, ‘the best of judy's journal' is not really what I want to do.  

What I really want to do is gather up my life and work into a single document.

For the last dozen years I've been transcribing every word that I've written in over two hundred journals for 45 minutes a day into my laptop.  At the same time I'm organizing them into chronological order.

A couple of weeks ago, I started an edit and focused on those journals I kept during the Thunder Bay and Kenora years (before 1992).  This is the time in my life when I embraced quilt making as my art form.  It also happened to be the busiest years of mothering.   

I'm calling what I’m writing a first draft.  

I know it’s serious because I've been writing this thing during the time I used to spend stitching.  

(The barn photos in this post were taken from the back seat of our car.  Oona, our oldest, was visiting and to celebrate we went for a drive towards and along the southern part of Manitoulin Island.)

And then, 

Last night, I found a huge box of family negatives in the downstairs closet.  

I couldn't tell what the negatives were depicting until I taught myself how to scan them with my phone using an app.  I knew that they were of 'that time' in my life but I hadn't expected them to be so beautiful.  Magical.       

It seemed like the two things came together, my editing of that special time and then these nostalgic images. 

So that's what I'm up to this month.  

Just thought I'd let you know.   

making quilts

 Crown of Thorns 1972.  first quilt by Judy Martin
 re-purposed clothing and curtain fabric, hand pieced and hand quilted, 
(no longer exists)

I made my first quilt when I was twenty, and my second one when I was 24.  I've never gone to therapy like my children do.  I've made quilts instead.

self portrait, 1985
hand painted cotton, re-purposed maternity clothing, hand quilted 42 x 42 inches 

When I started having babies,  quilt making fit into my day better than any other art form.

Judy (31 years) with her two older children in 1982 

I live in Northern Ontario.  I've lived here all my life.  

The quilts I made during my 30’s and 40’s are shocking in their lack of skill.  I gave the baby quilts (learning samples) away to new parents who accepted them graciously.  

spider web baby quilt, 1983
polyester-cotton blends, machine pieced, hand quilted
this photo from 1999 when the baby was 16.  She was using it as a car blanket.

What's going on with them?  I look at the photos in this post and I could say so much about each one, but it would only be interesting for me.

They are soft objects that came together from materials I could touch, were real.

They also came from some kind of fantasy of what I hoped and dreamed and could not name.   

Skipping, 1988   fabric paint, cotton fabrics, machine pieced, hand quilted 

Quilts are slow to make.

There are a lot of repetitive tasks involved that put a person into a meditative state. 

And as I was making them, not only did I feel comforted, I also felt that here was the place I could say things that were not "normal".

About the photos in this blog post.  I spent all day yesterday writing and deleting text, but the images here have been stable.  I wanted to write about how I learned to quilt with no mentor.  

I studied fine art and received a fine art degree from Lakehead University while the kids were still little, but quilts were not part of the curriculum.    Quilts are not part of the fine art world.

Today, Yesterday, Tomorrow, 1995
hand painted clotton, overdyed cotton, machine pieced, hand quilted,
grocery list embroidered on reverse side

And the quilting world was very rigid at the time.  There were quilt police with rules and points and 12 stitches per inch.   My quilts were accepted into juried shows but they rarely won awards.  They were not understood in the quilt world. 

The quilts I made when I was actively mothering were related to my daily life as a mother and also to the fantasy I had about what quilts could be.  Even when they were finished, I maintained that fantasy and loved my own work.  I believe that making them saved my life.

We moved from Kenora to Manitoulin when the kids were 6, 8, 13, and 15 years old.  They went to school and I taught classical piano in a church basement.  

protection blanket  2005.  Chemical dyes on rayon embellished with sequins and ribbon,
machine pieced, hand quilted

In 2005, we had an empty nest.   I began this blog in 2006. 

I kept making my quilts.  I didn't know what I was doing in so many words, but I kept doing it.  

When I gathered up the few here I looked at them more critically.  They don't speak for me the way they used to but they remain evidence that I was here.     

prayer cloth: hope  2024    natural dyes on cotton, hand pieced, hand quilted with red thread 

This is a much edited post.  Thank you for continuing to read it.  

Psychic:  derived from the unconscious rather than the conscious.

Therapy:  care and attention

Making quilts:  still saving my life.

beauty binds us together

 What is ordinary daily life anyway?

Breakfast – housecoats – diapers – bath – crying – cleaning up 

TV  - tea – reading stories – snowsuits – writing letters, reading letters,

holding babies, making sandwiches – heating soup 

 folding corduroys – sorting socks – tea – coaxing two year olds

 listening to seven year olds – thinking – quilting – my art 

the radio – the window – the dishwasher 

thinking – jotting down ideas – peeling vegetables

pouring milk – talking – piano lessons – undressing – sex

How would I define myself?

I would have to answer ‘ a mother ‘

When you have a seven-month-old baby, it does really occupy you the most. 

But I feel that I am an artist too.  I can’t call myself one this year though. 

 Now I am first a mother.

Journal Text from December 13 1987 

Images of stitching and nature walks from this week.

 

work in progress

soul is the essence
essence  from within
it is where everything begins

Van Morrison

I look for the poetic in my world of experience and under my own skin.
In my heart.
A recovery of the world through poetics.
A reclaiming of sensory experience, seeing tasting hearing touching
A reclamation of the body.

Adrienne Rich

Above are four vintage ironing pads lined up left to right as they were layerd on the board, bottom to top.

The dark one on the left is natural wool and probably about 90 years old
I think the singed one next to it is also a wool felt.
The third one, also felt, but it might have acrylic mixed with the wool.  It is nearly new.
The last one is a scorch resistent metallic fabric that covers them all.

I've had these since 2006, the year Ned's mother passed.
I could not throw them away
They held something.  They looked like figures.

Maternal stories are forgotten and lost and our culture encourages this amnesia.

What is the poetic meaning held by these old cloths?

time
and heat
and labour and protection
and presenting ourselves neatly to society
and women standing up and bearing down
and daily repetition
and the smell of damp hot wool
and singe marks
and body-size and shape

why would I add red thread?
red thread is often added to domestic cloth as a marker, usually intials
red thread is also a protection element found in traditional world garments

The work of art is like an act of mourning.
Mourning is a way to work through feelings of loss.
All creation is a re-creation of a loved and lost object.

Melanie Klein

the body and the spirit
the self in the center
the layers of time and of labour

Cloth is like the body.
It gets old, it survives, it holds memories and dreams - all at the same time.

 sculpture

 not just pretty little stitching marks

reparation

Soul is what you've been through
What's true for you
Where you going to
What you're gonna do

Van Morrison

finished pieces can be seen here

think with your heart

dawn

put your hand on your heart
shift attention to funny, happy, uplifting thoughts

  hold that  feeling for fifteen seconds

my youngsters

then think of something you unconditionally love for 15 seconds

mother daughter wildflower book

I made a book about the walks I took with daughter April when she was six.  We had just moved to Manitoulin, and the wildflowers were abundant in June. We collected one every walk and then would go home to identify it.  Press it.

I also saved drawings that our two younger daughters made of powerful women, and seven years after that walk they were heat transferred to fabric pages.  The pressed flowers were placed behind hand stitched mylar.  The book also has some embroidered text that our third and oldest daughter said to me when she was fifteen and my thoughts about it.  I'll show  it another time.  Maybe. 

I'm packing the supplies that Sandra Brownlee has requested us to bring to her workshop 'Tactile Notebooks'  next week.  This book is just one of many cloth journals I've made over the years. Memories and conversations with myself made visible.  (I'm not taking it, just sharing it here)  

 

my work

 

 None of us are mothered enough.

 

I want to speak directly to women.

I wonder if my language is understood.