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.
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January 4, 2022: Water colour on paper
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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.
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January 11, 2022: bundled gunnera leaves, alpaca roving, naturally dyed wool, work in progress
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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.
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| 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.
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january 25: elder sculptures in progress, old quilts that I have mended or otherwise altered
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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.
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| 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
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| 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
