all at once

new work

Layers.  Horizontals.
Plant-dyed,light-weight cottons and silks.

Small pieces of cloth, each ironed in half and the fold stitched.
Then joined together into rows.

 All by hand.

Yesterday, I worked in my Little Current studio
(10 foot walls and good light)

I'm basting the pieced strips to a lightweight foundation.

I am trying to express what it feels like to look at the sky

Looking up.

the cosmos ...... the earth......  the atmosphere

At home, I am sorting.

Spring is here.

everything something anything

Its overwhelming.  How do we do it?  Everything?   Something?   Anything?

I started a new system this fall to keep my bodies of work and my daily and emotional life on track.  I'm using the kitchen timer again. (not for the emotional parts)

First thing in the morning, I stitch by the window into this altered journal.  Although the timer is set to 15 minutes, I work until there is a natural pause.  Working in this journal has inspired further journal work.   I think that's good.

Then I do an hour of hand stitch on the 'weekly project'.  (shown: re-configuring moon cloth)

In this new system, I work on just one piece for a week and then fold it up and work on a different one the next week.  The rule is: I can have in 10 pieces in rotation for this morning stitching, but no more.

(The many others will just have to wait until I have finished one of those 10)
Also, I am avoiding my inbox.
I seek no deadlines...

About social media:
I post once a week on instagram of whatever I am currently working on.
I post nearly once a week on facebook.
I write in this blog once or twice a week.  I'm sad that blog readership seems to be down because of the three, the blog is the most true. 

The only-10-things rule has made room for new ideas.  I think it's good that they keep coming.
I neglect the in-progress pieces piled on chairs and the sketches, re-drawn countless times.

I do about 2 hours of stitch each morning, and then go into town to work on the 3rd body of work based on wool blankets.  These town studio pieces are huge and I listen to a pod cast while filling the blankets with stitch.  I like to listen to Writers and Company with Eleonar Wachtel.

Home again, I go for a walk and make dinner.  The day is nearly over.
My husband and I have our Netflix date around 10 pm
and I work on the piece I leave in the TV room.

It's the TV pieces that get done.
This finished flannel quilt (above) was posted on instagram Friday.

Here is the TV piece I'm working on now.
This photo was taken last weekend at the cottage. Canadian Thanksgiving

This post is about time.
There just isn't enough of it.
In a day.  In a life. 

I have too many ideas.
Most will get done.
Somehow. Anyhow.  Everyhow.xo

Lucy Wallis' quilt

Judy Martin home studio  collected inspiration wall

Lucy Wallis Circle on Square I 1984,  taffeta, velvet and cotton

This quilt by Lucy Wallis has been very important to me.
I saw it in a book published in 1990 entitled Quilts: The James Collection.
There is not much information about it.  Most of the text in the book is in Japanese.
Lucy Wallis lived on a farm in Somerset England when she made this quilt.
Apparently she made another similar quilt, but I have not seen it.

Circle on Square I by Lucy Wallis, page 108 and 109 in Quilts: The James Collection

By 1991 I had already discovered Lenore Tawney's amazing circle in square weavings (here's one) but this was the first time I felt that a quilt pulled off this important archetype.

Quilts: The James Collection  1990 Kokusai (published in Japan)

The book is still available online (at reasonable cost), and the actual quilt is part of the James Collection, International Quilt Study Museum in Lincoln Nebraska.  The museum dates Lucy's quilt at 1987 and orients it differently than the book.   see here

Judy Martin' collection of inspiration wall in home studio

I've used a large photo of the Lucy Wallis quilt for teaching purposes and came across that photo last week.  I pinned it on my studio wall.  (view old wall here)

Judy age 7 or 8 

This wall holds a collection of photos and momentos that I find such as this birthday card I made for my dad when he turned 86.

top: Aino Sibelius, the Finnish composer's wife
 middle, Lucy wallis's quilt Circle On Square I,
bottom Rothko's Orange and Tan 1954 oil on canvas

There is a narrow place by the closet that I use for 4 x 6 images.  Lucy's quilt has been here for a good long time, along with a quote by Jeanette Winterson and a photo of me from grade 9.

Judy Martin age 14 (new haircut)

Mended World, part of the community stitch project (2009-2013) is a response to Lucy Wallis' beautiful, complicated use of cloth and stitch.

Lucy Wallis Circle on Square I  detail  taffeta, velvet, machine embroidery (I believe)

Thank you Lucy.

And here's the Jeanette Winterson quote

Life has an inside as well as an outside.  Consumer culture directs all resources and attention to life on the outside.  What happens to the inner life?Art is never a luxury because it stimulates and responds to the inner life.    We are badly out of balance.

I don't think of art/creativity as a substitute for anything else.  I see it as a powerful expression of our humanity - and on the side of humanity under threat.  

If we say art is a luxury, we might as well say that being human is a luxury.

a lived life

Above, acrylic of daughter April by her older sister Grace - they were both in high school at the time.

This post is about a corner of my upstairs home studio that has been important to my process for quite a while - at least 10 years.

It's an additive collage of family photographs that have come into my possession over time.  I've pinned the photos to the wall as I've received them.  They tell my story to me.

The top photo in the above group was in my father's bedroom in Kingston - he had printed it himself on one of his large digital printers.  All of us are there - Jay, April, me, Grace, Oona and Ned - That photo is at least a dozen years old.

The post card above left is from Newgrange in Ireland, the embroidery below is something I removed from one of my pieces, the portrait is a photo Ned took because we needed one of me stitching...can't remember exactly why.  It's from 2009.

Photos of my siblings, my parents, Ned's parents and several of each child are up on this wall.  In the upper left photo is our oldest grandchild Everett with his dad and mom..he's 2 in the photo....now he's 8.

Here is Jack, crawling across his Alaskan kitchen door threshold from the deck.  8 months in the photo, he's five years now.

 above, the newest grandchild, Aili - very precious.

Things I've read go up on this wall.  That photo is of me  age 50.

Now I have to take this life collage down because Ned has been doing some repairs and the wall needs to be painted.  Thought I'd document it first.

the archetype of the cross

the cross is a universal symbol from the most remote times

the weaving on right is by Susan Johnson  Pot Calls Kettle Black

 it is a cosmic symbol, a point of communication between heaven and earth

a symbol of archetypal man/woman capable of infinite and harmonious expansion on both the horizontal and vertical planes

  the vertical line is celestial, spiritual, intellectual, positive, active, male

 the horizontal line is earthly, rational, intuitive, negative, passive, female

the combination of these two lines - androgyne

the cross represents dualism in nature

this cross - purchased through 10,000 villages,  - made in Africa

It is union of opposites      

the four elements of the world are united at the 5th point, the centre.

reference: J.C. Cooper

smile

It's my birthday today.

This vignette noticed before bed last night.

good news

Good news from here.

The snow is going.

I have a second studio space (bedroom sized) with new pin walls.

 Ned put the 12" square ceiling tiles up last weekend.

This was April's room in high school.  She pinned a collage of the cosmos to the ceiling. 

Pinning to the ceiling gives me almost enough height.  Pictured is an untitled piece from 2012.