In a While, Crocodile

Here is another post about writing my book.  

Since 2000, I have been trying to archive my art work and relate it to the timeline of my life.   

In one of my bookshelves is a binder from 2001 that has images of my work beside typed and printed journal entries that match chronologically. 

It is fascinating - to me. 

In 2015, I began the My Process blog in another attempt to put my creative process into context with my lived life.  A photo of what is on the design wall is paired with the most recent entry of my written journal, just to explore how real life and creating art connect.  

It's fascinating - to me.

  

In 2019 I hired an assistant to help me put my archives in order.  Her job ended with the pandemic but I am very grateful for the google-drive lists of work and for the binders of organized pre-internet paperwork. 

It’s the daily practice of decluttering our house that brought me back to this autobiographical project.  Boxes of slides, envelopes of negatives.  What are they if not clutter?  There are now two APPs on my phone that translate slides and negatives into digital format.  (example of a slide below) 

morning kindergarten watercolour by Judy Martin 1985

I am so hung up on this project.   I only get so far before I talk myself out of continuing.   I think to myself: ‘Why would anyone read this?’ and also ‘What if someone reads this? 

What would they think?

Would they be hurt?

Would they be bored?’

Yet, if I had Judy Martin in my art quilting class, I would say to her:  "Why are you thinking about the audience so much?  Do what your own inner self tells you to!  Make your own self yearn to touch that textile.  If you don't want to stare at that art and contemplate it, who else will?  Give yourself permission to be comforted by your own quilt."    

 

And so, I will continue with my book.    

(I do not need to publish it)  

See you later. Alligator.

In a while, Crocodile. 

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.