Red Sky / Red Water

Just a quick post about my quilt, Red Sky / Red Water.  

Red silk fabric and silk threads, 64 x 36 inches, 2024
 

It was inspired by my daily experience of the sky and water.  

Sacred Ground 

wool dyed with leaves and barks from my environs, hand pieced and hand quilted. 64 x 36" 2024 

Red Sky / Red Water is the back (second side) of Sacred Ground    

The quilting of this piece is unusual.  Cotton embroidery floss is laid down in horizontal lines across the face of the quilt, and couched to the quilt with red silk sewing thread.   

 

I loved the idea of the wrapping with red thread because in many world cultures, red thread is a used on garments for protection.

I wnated to write about Red Sky / Red Water now because it is part of Convergence, the exhibition currently on view at the Tom Thomson gallery in Owen Sound until early January.  We attended the opening on Saturday, October 18.  I was glad to see that my two-sided quilt, Sacred Ground, was beautifully installed far enough away from the wall so that the second side could be glimpsed.

The best part is that there is a pink glow on the wall.  A reflection of Red Sky / Red Water. 

Look at that!  

For those interested, I wrote quite a long post about the Convergence opening on my update blog.  Here.

The whirl of 2024

January 14  1:50 pm

February 16  7:16 am

March 14   7:22 am

April 9   8:09 am

May 15  6:54 pm

June 12  8:25 am 

July 14  8:48 am

August 16  6:23 am 

September 23  9:34 am

October 7  6:48 pm

November 10  7:12am

December 21 4:34 pm

I thought about using this space to show the interior of my house with all the finished and unfinished quilts piled up or unfolded across beds and chairs and on the floor and on the wall, because then you might understand how much work I do and how I am always busy ....but...

this constant view of the Wikwemikong peninsula across the water of Manitowaning Bay is truer.  

I stare out the window half the time it seems.   That colour full sky gives me an answer, even when I didn't really ask a question.  Here it is.  

Here is the answer.  Our lives are fragile and our timelines are speeding forward.  We must be kind to each other and kind to ourselves.

It often does seem like there is an urgency to get things done, made, out there, but really, there is no rush.  Don't rush. Go slow.   I wish for you, my dear and appreciated blog readers, the very best for the new year.  Be tender.  Be slower.  Allow softness and kindness to rule.  Let's care.

The ice went out

March 1 2024

When we left on our road trip at the beginning of March, the ice still covered Manitowaning Bay,  

and while we were gone, the ice went out.  

March 15 2024

Over the past few days, I've finished the couching on my new wool textile.  I love to hold the heavy cloth.   I love to run my hand over the dense threads.  I love how the six strands of cotton floss have a sheen and the red sewing thread that holds it has a strength.

Did you know that the back is red silk?  

Last Thursday, I placed an organza circle and regarded it.  What should I do?  I worried and obsessed for a complete day.  It was snowing outside.

Ann Clarke, RCA acrylic painter, at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston Ontario, 2024.

By the way, one of the reasons that we made the trip to Eastern Ontario was so that I could attend an artist talk by my former Lakehead University painting teacher.  She was having a 6 decade retrospective at the Agnes Etherington gallery in Kingston.  My sister, Nancy, and I went together.  When it was time for me to graduate from LU in 1993, it turned out that I needed a painting credit and Ann Clarke had just arrived in Thunder Bay.  I was privileged to have this dedicated abstract painter as one of my advisors and teachers.  I wrote about her retrospective on the Modernist Aesthetic blog, please go have a look.  

March 18

March 23

This view.

It is very important to my work.  I lose myself in it.  

Sacred Ground by Judy Martin, wool and hand stitch.  

the world

I couldn't tell one song from another

which bird said what or to whom or for what reason. 

The oak tree seemed to be writing something using very few words. 

I couldn't decide which door to open

they looked the same.

or what would happen when I did reach out

and turn a knob

I thought I was safe, standing there

but my death remembered its date.

Only so many summer nights still stood before me,

full moon, waning moon,

October mornings: what to make of them?  Which door?

I couldn't tell which stars were which or how far away any one of them was,

or which were still burning or not - 

their light moving through space like a long, late train - 

And I've lived  on this earth so long.  70 winters.

70 springs and summers, 

and all this time stars in the sky - in day light

when I couldn't see them

and at night when, most nights, I didn't look.

The text in this post is The World, a poem by Marie Howe (slightly edited : 70 instead of 50)

The images are of my stitching these past few weeks.

June gratitude

a single tulip, with this view   

a new bundle for my Gore Bay exhibition

our exhibition catalogue, nearly ready to print

our 5 month old twins and their mother

These four images are from three Mondays and a Saturday.  To keep in touch with you.   

Vincent's words in my head

 I must continue to follow the path I take now.

 If I do nothing, if I study nothing,

 If I cease searching, then, woe is me.

 I am lost.

That is how I look at it -- keep going.

Keep going come what may.

 But what is your final goal, you may ask.

That goal will become clearer, will emerge slowly but surely,
much as the rough draft turns into a sketch,

 and the sketch into a painting through the serious work done on it,

 through the elaboration of the original vague idea

 and through the consolidation of the first fleeting and passing thought.

Vincent Van Gogh said these things.