connected to the body

tablecloth, dyed red with procion, then overdyed with blackberry, then devore process to make a grid of holes empty spaces, lace, absence, loss, mortality

Cloth is like the human body. It holds memories and dreams at the same time. It wears out.

This can be understood

The colours in this quilt took a long time to be.

The fabrics are rayons and cottons dyed with procion mx fibre reactive dyes.


Some are overdyed commercial prints.

They were hand stitched and embellished.

After stitching, everything was dyed again, this time red procion mx.


The layers of dye have made colours that are un-namable but for some reason, they touch us.


I photographed the crosses on the front of the quilt, as a way to say fare well.

It was sold just after the local art tour. For a full view of the entire quilt, please click here.

Art is not about beauty!
Art is about exultation.
Art is about absolute emotion.
Art is about self evident authenticity.

Barnett Newman

Slow Cloth

I have been working on this stitching for over ten years. It started out as a rather traditional applique done in pink and green silk. Then I over dyed it black (along with the pieced background it was then on). I stitched into it rather obsessively with coloured threads in an attempt to make the image more visible against the similarly coloured background.
This summer I cut the urn and it's droopy flowers away from the black background and pinned it to artist canvas. The high contrast image became much more powerful and I am now appliqueing it to cream coloured heavy taffeta. Because I've invested so much time and touch, I feel that my own work is worth revisiting until it is right.
It is my stitching project when Ned and I have our regular TV date.
Here is a link to the new slow cloth group on facebook . It was started this week by Elaine, Jude and Glennis and already has over 250 like minded members.

digital photography

Just before Christmas I was asked to email an image of one of my string quilts for publication in a magazine. I haven't made a string quilt since 1999, I don't have the original quilts any longer and all the photos I took of them are in slide format anyway. It's been a while since I've used our slide scanner but here is my favourite of the bunch, Hestia's Hearth Rug. April took the quilt with her when she went to university in Montreal in 2005. The watercolour above is of her at age 8.(also scanned from a slide earlier today).

snow day

I was able to do a little work on this piece after months of neglect. It was a snow day, piano lessons were cancelled.

over dyed ambivalence

I'm interested in re-using popular consumer items in a beautiful way in my art form and have overdyed these cotton t-shirts from Value Village twice. I'm NOT thrilled with the colours and besides that, the soft jersey fabric is hard to push a needle through. I'm not ready to give up yet however, and shall keep on with working in this new material as well as with wool blankets in 2009.

Happy New Year to all my readers. Thanks so much for your encouragement over the last year and I wish you all a productive and healthy year.

Winter Dyeing Photo Essay

100 percent cotton t-shirts from thrift store - transformedbolt of light pink cotton from thrift store - transformed more snow

comfortable

Comfortable.
The kids are home.
Domestic life.
Hand stitch.
Conversation.
Cooking.
Too comfortable for art. But what's really important?

stitching again

I couched natural wool yarn over the seams of a cut up quilt during the ten hour drive home from Kingston yesterday. The mood and the texture of the overdyed cotton has become both softer and more visually interesting. I feel energized by this break from my figure work. I FEEL.

Contacting Toronto

I love the way quilts look like when they are stacked. This vignette is in my home studio.
Our son is a photographer as well and has some photos in the Toronto contact festival.

dye and over dye

Pictured is a quilt back that I just over dyed red. Much improved, it used to be green, orange and purple. Also shown are two pieces of hankerchief linen dyed red for my my class in Kingston this weekend. This fabric is so lovely and soft. I also tried tea-dyeing it with great results.

Over Dye

Before After

Like a gift

I love simple shapes and quiltmaking hands these over to me like a gift.

Pictured is I Love You To Pieces, number nineteen of one hundred quilts.

Bed

One of the reasons that quilts have the ability to touch people in a poetic way is their connection to the bed. The bed is where it all happens. We are born there. We are sick and need to be cared for there. We die there. We make love there. We create new life there. When one considers these connections, the quilt becomes a most powerful medium for visual artists.

Craft Convergence Ontario

I was not able to attend the opening of Craft Convergence at the Tom Thomson gallery on Friday, but Micaela did and took a photo of my piece and emailed it to me. It looks so wonderful hanging from the ceiling at the end of the space. Both sides are displayed. Thanks very much to Andrew Kear, who I believe looked after the installation and thank you so much for the photo, Micaela. Very thoughtful.

photo by Micaela Fitzsimmons

over dyeing

These are details of a quilt that I overdyed red in the washing machine. It had been completely finished right down to the binding.







Here it is before the over dye.

art textiles of the world

I have been doing a lot of reading this summer and recently re-read two of the amazing Art Textiles of the World books, Japan volume 2 and Great Britain volume 2. These books are really inspiring and I highly recommend any of the series. For example, here are quotes by some of the artists from Great Britain.

Jo Budd: "fabric allowed me to work abstractly" "I work from memory"

Alice Kettle: "I view the creative act as awesome and miraculous" "I am a contemporary artist. I work with modern materials. I am aware of the social dilemma around us"

Caroline Broadhead: "I am interested in the borderline between the self and the rest of the world. There is an outside and an inside. A side to be seen by others and a private side."

Janet Ledsham: "the spiritual and the functional find their expression in one artifact"

Polly Binns: "The answers come to me if I let them" "My fluency lies in my work"

Do it on purpose

"Find out who you are, then do it on purpose." Dolly Parton

Lady's Slipper

Two kinds of lady's slipper grow in clumps in the ditches alongside the country road I walk each night with our dog. Manitoulin Island is so quiet and is covered with wild flowers in June. I use wildflowers as a metaphor for human frailty.