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.   

I keep journals

Sometimes, we think that things we say or think are important.   

They are.  

It's worth it to think and feel and remember.

Not worth a lot of money, but worth a lot of SELF.

A notebook / scrap book / is a way to keep a conversation going with the inner inner.

It's a way to keep the self open and trusting and aware.

I spend time every day on my journal.

It's not a waste of time. 

I am worth it.  

I continue learning.  

I study and take notes

 

The above sketch is of one of Louise Bourgeois' sewn head sculptures.

When I come across old family photos I save them.   

I also save things I find in old journals like this poem by Louise Rogers.

At the front of every journal, I list the books I am reading and give a wee review.

I tape the year on the spine 

Every morning I start a new chapter with the day's date.  

You can't think "my life is more important than the work"   

You have to think that the work is paramount.

Adventurous

One new thing after another

say "what do I like?"

      "what do I want?"

Find out exactly what you want in life.

To progress in life you must give up the things that you do not like.

When you go along with others you are not really living your life.

Find your way.

Happiness is being on the beam with life.

Agnes Martin  said this and I copied it and found it and taped it.

There is a two minute video of me speaking about this on my vimeo account, click here. 

tuesdays in 2022

This post is about journal writing and journal re-reading, both important to my daily practice.

The wool quilt in the top image has been unfinished for years.  This year I'd like to finish quilting it and write more about it, but not today.  

Today, I've chosen just one photo from the first Tuesday of 2022, and another from the second Tuesday, and another from the 3rd Tuesday etc. for six Tuesdays total.  It astounds me how quickly time goes past and how my projects whirl around.  I abandon ideas as quickly as I start new ones.  Flitting from one thing to another keeps my work exciting but may also be my greatest handicap.  Accompanying each image is text from my written journal of the appropriate Tuesday.  Not the whole text - that would be too much.  I am sharing just an inkling.   One of them is a quoted poem, another is a description of two sketches.  They represent my daily notebooks.  I don't know what else to say.  

January 4, 2022: Water colour on paper

You never know.  You have to tiptoe to the edge and then continue on.  Tiptoe, tiptoe…. hands gesturing in front of you in case there is something cold and dangerous at this edge.

I feel blind.  I have to trust.  I’m timid but I’m brave.  

January 11, 2022:  bundled gunnera leaves, alpaca roving, naturally dyed wool, work in progress

Yesterday, I finally made it back into the town studio after months away.  It is a bit overwhelming.  All the stuff here.  Some abandoned pieces from the In The Middle of the World body of work, some stuff that we moved here as a way to get it out of bedrooms for the  Christmas visitors.  All my blanket wool is here and the dyed sheer cloth and several quilt tops that need backs.   A LOT of stuff. 

My journal from 1991 – 1992 was still open on the main table.  I’ve changed how I read these old journals so I brought it home and am now going through it and typing it into the laptop and wow it is inspiring.  

January 18:  sunshine and more sunshine hand pieced quilt top

I’m packing up Maia’s birthday gift (drawing supplies) and also some for Aili.  An orange for Suvi.   Also fresh chocolate chip cookies for Maia and some photos of their dad, two-year-old Jay, making pizza in Kenora when my mother came to visit and brought a kit.  My mother would have been such a good grandma if she hadn’t gotten sick.  Except her plan had been to live in B.C. alone, if she had not gotten sick. We never know each day ahead.  We need to carry on bravely.

I put my sunshine and more sunshine top into a brilliant yellow green backing cloth in the studio yesterday and today I’ll baste them together.  I'll listen to Possession some more while I do this, after the dentist appointment.

january 25:  elder sculptures in progress, old quilts that I have mended or otherwise altered

 As I read through my old journals this year I am finding so much that seems really important.  A life story full of drama.

Today from 2005, there is a sketch from the Telos book,  Art Textiles Japan volume 2 of the central figure in Scene of White by Noriko Narahira.  This sketch is evidence of how moved I was by the idea of a hanging female empty garment shape and how it influenced me.  I used it in my dissertation six years later.  When I worked towards the in the middle of the world exhibition last fall, I created four cloaks that were so important and new for that exhibition and I can understand now the influence of Narahira's work.  

Now, coming across that sketch again, I’m affirmed to continue with these kinds of sculptures.  I'm making Elders from old quilts.  Textiles that are older than I am.  I learn from them.  

February 1:  the mended butterfly quilt and an unfinished Amish wool quilt on our bed

A full page ball point pen sketch of a new sun quilt I plan to make.  The sun will be made from wedges left over from mending the butterfly quilt arranged in radiating circles and edged with triangle rays.  It is set low on a horizon.  There are some outline circles cut into the sky behind it and below the horizons are rows and rows of more wedge-shaped triangles.  Words are scribbled over the sketch.  

A second smaller ball point pen sketch takes up about 1/3 of the facing page.  This sketch is of another sun quilt but the sun is a bit larger and is centered in a square.  The wedges in this sun are pointier and larger than the first sketch.  A yellow sun in a yellow sky.  Yellow velvet dots, prairie point triangle edge.

I envision myself high up above, hovering in the sky. I drop my arm to softly create a new stitch.   Orchestrating each as one long continuous thread, I am like the moon, pulling and pushing the tides, rhythmic and pliant. Amber Jensen    

February 8:  a messy red thread nest on white handkerchief linen

A poem from the book Inside the Visible edited by Catherine de Zegher

All things

Are too small

To hold me,

I am so vast

In the Infinite

I reach

For the Uncreated

I have

Touched it,

It undoes me

Wider than wide

Everything else

Is too narrow

You know this well,

You who are also there

Hadewijch II 13th century 

tell us your story

the journals I'm working in now

How did you end up on this path?

After years of stumbling, pushing branches out of my face, tripping over holes I didn’t see, I am finally on an open road, with daylight and a breeze, that continues and continues, not cluttered.  

I’ve pared away many things so that I can spend my time doing the things I love.  I no longer knit, I no longer sew clothing, I no longer paint, I no longer play the piano and no longer teach it, I no longer teach art or quilting, I no longer have young children because my four have grown into adults, I no longer travel although I would if I could.

I do still read a lot of fiction and non fiction, I still write in my notebooks daily,  I try to walk every day on my country road.   I love to have flowers in the house, I love and am married to the same man for whom I cook and bake, but I spend most of my time making hand stitched textile art.  I collect cloth and dye it with plants.  I arrange it and stitch it in place very simply and slowly.

journals 2013 -  2021

How did you end up on this path?

I knew I wanted to be a textile artist when I was in my early twenties.  My new husband and I were making plans to return home to Canada after a year on bicycles in Europe.  We were deciding what we wanted to do next, what job?  He would return to Forestry he hoped, but maybe he would rather be a consultant to government, someone who might make a difference but not in starring boss type role, more in the back rooms.

For me, I had come to realize how important it was for me to have thread in my hands.  I longed to be able to spend my life stitching, and tried to figure out how I could create a position where that would be part of my day.  Even then, I realized how healing it was to sew things together, or wrap things, or mend, or just plain stitch.  Perhaps I could teach needle arts to children.  I was a teacher, I was a musician, but I wanted to stitch.  And although I have, over the years, taught both art and music and made quilts and stitched art while mothering the four babies, I wanted to do the stitching full time.

Now I’m here.  Now the road is clear for me.  I’ve been working on just doing it rather than teaching it for about 10 years, and I am not finished yet.  I’m not yet at the top of the hill.  

journals in my dye studio  

How did you end up on this path?

I started dyeing cloth and creating art from that dyed cloth when I was a young mother, using dyes that I could buy at the grocery store.  These were hot water dyes and disappointingly dull.  I learned about fibre-reactive chemical dyes soon after and became an expert in overdyeing.  I was able to create subtle colours for the story quilts I made in the 80’s and 90’s. 

I switched to natural plant dyes in the 2000’s beginning with onion skins, golden rod and indigo.  I am self taught in dyeing, relying on my own natural curiosity and also books by Jenny Dean, Indigo Flint and Rebecca Burgess.  The quilts I make now are very simple, with the subtle colours of nature arranged in archetypal shapes like circles, dots, squares, triangles arranged with a lot of empty space.   I hand stitch everything.  It is rare when I use a sewing machine or an iron, but occasionally I will. 

I have been helped to find this path because I keep journals.  My journals and notebooks are part of my daily practice and have helped me to find this path and to stay on it.   

journals in the bedroom closet

How did you end up on this path?

I grew up in a rural area in middle of Canada.  I spent a lot of time alone and took piano lessons.  My father was 100 percent Finnish, my mother was 100 percent intense.  

I grew up with art supplies and a sewing machine.  I learned how working with cloth and thread of all kinds made me go into my inner world and feel at peace.  

More than anything, more than Bach, I loved repeated stitch.  I think I might have been a bit strange.

journals in the laundry room cupboard

Tell us your story:

Once upon a time there was a princess who lived in a dream world.  She drew outfits on sheet after sheet of paper, imagining that they were already sewn into clothing that she would wear for wide variety of occasions, such as working in a big office with a tight skirt and high heels, or going to a ball in a strapless dress with huge puffy skirt, or riding a horse off into the distance, plaid shirt and tight pants. She never did any of those things in the real world by the way.  She is now a queen and still lives in a dream world most of the time.  Not all of the time, just most of it.  

a box of wrapped up journals

more journals and wrapped journals in downstairs bookcase

How did you end up on this path?

I have pared away many creative activities to arrive at just three.  Every single day, I stitch and do journal work and then usually three times a year, I also dye cloth.  I hand stitch about 6 hours a day, and the journals pile up around me.  I surrender to them.  Journals are very important to my artistic practice because thoughtful writing brings the inside me out into a safe place.  I re-read parts of a journal or two each day as a ritual.  My journals help me to stay on my authentic path.  

circles repeated and repeated

what endures?

old cloth

a spiritual place covered with marks

the directness of paint with the substance of thread

communication with the environment

large scale

immensity of space, minutiae of surface

the time we need to cope with life and death

journal work

 

my journals

I have a morning practice of reflection
I use hard covered journals to keep my thoughts and drawings

They've built up since 1985, the year I started writing in them.
The year my 3rd child was born.
The year of my first solo exhibition.

I re-read them.
I keep them in book shelves in my home studio.

Since we moved to Manitoulin 26 years ago, I began to deal with them as an art material.

I made party-fabric quilt tops paper-pieced with used journal papers (example here)
I wrapped entire journals with cloth, sometimes sealing them further with paint (see below)
Now I am cutting the pages into spiral strips to stitch to linen or wool bases (see above)

Handling the journals and re-reading them slowly is taking me on a journey inwards to self.
Each day I find that I know myself better.

It is surprising how many notes I've taken over the years while reading about art.
I copy what still resonates into my current journal.

I'm treating the journal from the year I turned 40 to gold paint and hand stitch. (above)
Maybe I'll do something with the ones I kept when I turned 50 and 60.

Maybe I will stop working with my journals someday.
not.

daily practice

I make large hand stitched drawings.  
My work reflects upon the place I live, a sparsely populated island in Lake Huron, Canada.
I use the aesthetics of simplicity, time, labour, and repetition in combination with the sense of touch.
I spend quiet time with the work, and make repeated, interesting marks.

At the same time, I keep hand written journals (about 200 so far) where I document my daily life, my thoughts, and notes on what I have read. 
Perhaps because I am a parent of four children, I’ve been interested in how mother artists and writers manage their creative lives.  

I have a daily practice of journal-writing.

This year I am paying even more attention to my journals.
I'm re-reading them.
I feel as if I'm really knowing my self.

I'm reminding myself about who I am, because its hard to stay true when one is easily inspired.

On New Years Day there was a super moon.
I stood outside and looked up at it around midnight.
It was awesome, large and bright, with a large ring around it.
The air was super crisp and cold.

I'm starting a new daily practice of stitched collage, using up a piece of contrary felt that I purchased in Alaska in 2009 as a base to stitch into.

A new thing here is that our daughter April will be based out of our house in January.
Her energy is sure to influence how I spend my time.
I look forward to being with her a lot, but I also want to hold on to my self.

My own work.

I feel that these collages will give me a place to play with patterns.
I will allow patterns.

We are given these shapes or archetypes or patterns and we just need to record them.

It's destiny.

In most of my work I try to pare extra shapes away, in order to give more empty space for dreams,
but in these collages, I will let them come.

The first shapes.