My view

When we first moved to Manitoulin in 1993, I was astonished by how much the water and sky would change in colour, faster than I could paint it and photographs did not do it justice.  I began to make quick sketches into my journal just to name the colours that nature used to paint with through the seasons.  Over the years, I described this enthralling Eastern view of Manitowaning Bay at least a hundred times with my ball point pen into the pages of my journal, responding to the unpredictable gorgeous colours that changed by the hour.

In direct response to my view of Manitowaning Bay, I have made several large stitched textiles.

This one is an immense lightweight square that responds to the slightest breeze.  Monumental Simplicity was made in 2012 from plant dyed wool gauze and hand stitch 108” x 108”

These photos are from 2012.  We took them at dawn at the top of the ridge near where we live.  The photo above is of me sewing the textile to the cord that would then be propped up with wooden poles.  I look back on that experience with Ned as one of our good moments in a long marriage.

I love this view.  I love looking at it still.

It puts me into a reverie no matter what the colours.

This view of sky, water and that strong horizontal line of the Wikwemikong peninsula that devides them has been a constant in my daily life and as I get older, the more I find myself returning to the simplicity of this natural occurance that I live and breathe with.

my long view

For the last few nights I've been waking up at 2 am and writing or working with images for a variety of deadlines. I feel that this is the only time I have that's free, but I miss sleeping.

However, spring is early this year, the ice is going out of the lake and being awake when the sun rises is awesome.

one hundred views of wikwemikong

What endures?
life experience
meditation
memory
time passing
looking at the view
looking at the water
looking at the passage of a day and a year

empty space
inner life
making something visible inside us that we can’t name

I feel connected to women who have lived before me and looked at water

putting my self into art and then recovering myself with that art

Poesis

“I am thinking about what poetry can do. It can evoke something difficult to talk about without scaring it from the room. It can render something present without stating it. It can leave something unsaid while making it present. I am relieved when I turn to the dictionary and find the root of poesis is “to make”.

Ann Hamilton

Notice what you notice

I spent the morning watching the haze lift from the sky while doing some foundation piecing by hand. I took several photographs over the three hour period, but only a single moment is depicted in each. Photographs capture single moments. On the other hand, the period of time spent making stitched art is tangible. Add in the power of repeated human touch and the result is extra ordinary. Why is it undervalued?

Jay and Erika are here.

Thank goodness for CBC radio

Home again after another long day on highway 17.