making quilts

 Crown of Thorns 1972.  first quilt by Judy Martin
 re-purposed clothing and curtain fabric, hand pieced and hand quilted, 
(no longer exists)

I made my first quilt when I was twenty, and my second one when I was 24.  I've never gone to therapy like my children do.  I've made quilts instead.

self portrait, 1985
hand painted cotton, re-purposed maternity clothing, hand quilted 42 x 42 inches 

When I started having babies,  quilt making fit into my day better than any other art form.

Judy (31 years) with her two older children in 1982 

I live in Northern Ontario.  I've lived here all my life.  

The quilts I made during my 30’s and 40’s are shocking in their lack of skill.  I gave the baby quilts (learning samples) away to new parents who accepted them graciously.  

spider web baby quilt, 1983
polyester-cotton blends, machine pieced, hand quilted
this photo from 1999 when the baby was 16.  She was using it as a car blanket.

What's going on with them?  I look at the photos in this post and I could say so much about each one, but it would only be interesting for me.

They are soft objects that came together from materials I could touch, were real.

They also came from some kind of fantasy of what I hoped and dreamed and could not name.   

Skipping, 1988   fabric paint, cotton fabrics, machine pieced, hand quilted 

Quilts are slow to make.

There are a lot of repetitive tasks involved that put a person into a meditative state. 

And as I was making them, not only did I feel comforted, I also felt that here was the place I could say things that were not "normal".

About the photos in this blog post.  I spent all day yesterday writing and deleting text, but the images here have been stable.  I wanted to write about how I learned to quilt with no mentor.  

I studied fine art and received a fine art degree from Lakehead University while the kids were still little, but quilts were not part of the curriculum.    Quilts are not part of the fine art world.

Today, Yesterday, Tomorrow, 1995
hand painted clotton, overdyed cotton, machine pieced, hand quilted,
grocery list embroidered on reverse side

And the quilting world was very rigid at the time.  There were quilt police with rules and points and 12 stitches per inch.   My quilts were accepted into juried shows but they rarely won awards.  They were not understood in the quilt world. 

The quilts I made when I was actively mothering were related to my daily life as a mother and also to the fantasy I had about what quilts could be.  Even when they were finished, I maintained that fantasy and loved my own work.  I believe that making them saved my life.

We moved from Kenora to Manitoulin when the kids were 6, 8, 13, and 15 years old.  They went to school and I taught classical piano in a church basement.  

protection blanket  2005.  Chemical dyes on rayon embellished with sequins and ribbon,
machine pieced, hand quilted

In 2005, we had an empty nest.   I began this blog in 2006. 

I kept making my quilts.  I didn't know what I was doing in so many words, but I kept doing it.  

When I gathered up the few here I looked at them more critically.  They don't speak for me the way they used to but they remain evidence that I was here.     

prayer cloth: hope  2024    natural dyes on cotton, hand pieced, hand quilted with red thread 

This is a much edited post.  Thank you for continuing to read it.  

Psychic:  derived from the unconscious rather than the conscious.

Therapy:  care and attention

Making quilts:  still saving my life.

what has been sweet

self portrait 1985 judy martin 

Ask not what has been real and what has been false,
but what has been bitter, and what has been sweet.

Maggie Nelson, Bluets  (211)

(read about this quilt here)

My mother, my self

This year I am reflecting on my  life and on my body of work.   Finding a voice that reflects who I am has taken several decades yet my starting point remains my response to personal relationships and to the passage of time. Much of my work reflects on my experience of a childhood in rural north western Ontario, Canada.

I made this quilt 30 years ago in 1985 as a way to help me understand my mother and it did help. Now as I reflect, I realize that my mother was only 59 when I made this quilt, (I was 34). I suppose that my daughters don't understand me either, but as I age, I am beginning to understand my mother.

Visit body of work at the top of this blog for more info about this quilt.

The Un Doing

Over the years, in my practice as an artist, I find myself un-doing.
I'll make something beautiful, then cut it up, take stitches out
start again
It’s a real communication with the work

At first, I add
I look, I think
I add another thing. I try to imagine what the piece will look like.
I add another thing

I look ,I think
I re consider



Then I undo

painted ruin

It took twelve hours to drive home from Kingston yesterday. We had a lovely family visit with two kids, their partners, my father). I was also able to see my sister who lives nearby. The visit with my aging father seemed more emotional this time and once back in the studio today, I fell into my art as a kind of therapy. I may have ruined monumental simplicity. It's really hard to stay cool and minimalist. The paint did become lighter once it dried, and I am now in the process of removing months of red thread. The idea is to show absence.

we are heirs to the glimmering world

Our daughter April's first solo exhibition opens tomorrow in downtown Montreal. We are very proud of her and know that the show will be fantastic. The gallery is in the Belgo building, one of Montreal's most important venues for contemporary art.

The image in this photo is of the reverse side of the quilt she made over the summer. I showed photos of her painting this silk fabric last June. Click here to re-visit those.

Also, please read her artist statement and see a sample of her art by clicking here.


we are heirs to the glimmering world
April Martin
October 6 - October 16 2011
Vernissage Saturday October 8, 15h - 18h
Tuesday - Saturday 12 - 17h30 or by appointment

Visual Voice Gallery
421-372 Ste. Catherine O.
Montreal QC H3B 1A2
www.visualvoicegallery.com
514 878 3663


Did I say I was proud!

Trunk Show #2: self portrait

I'd like to start at the beginning of my quilt story. Self Portrait 1985 Painted cotton, maternity clothes, hand pieced and quilted.

For years and years my artwork and my life were wrapped up with my own motherhood. My husband and I have four children, and this piece was made the year the third one was born.

It is not my first quilt.

Notice that the fourth side has no border, just a binding. I see it as a premonition of the fourth baby yet to come. I cut up the maternity clothing I wore and re-arranged it. Why I used white quilting thread remains unexplained. That the mother is nursing her babe and drawing at the same time is how I was. How I still am. An artist and as good a mother as I can be...at the same time.


This post is the second in a proposed series in which I will share the quilts I took to Toronto on September 21 for my talk to the Pomegranate Quilt Guild.

lucky colour

What's your lucky colour? Everett's lucky colour is yellow.

painted silk on the dock

Over the weekend, April joined us at the cottage. She brought her own silk fabric and setacolour paint and her wonderful energy. She wanted to paint a backing for the quilt she made in May. I brought foam brushes and my Mickey Lawler book and just watched her. She told me that she read a blog post of mine 6 or so times. She painted into the long evening and then left it to dry overnight. It's important to make soft pleats in the cloth when it is wet, and allow it to dry slowly. The technique responds to nature, air, light, the moisture in the cloth, and how the colours mix or don't. It's magical how the fabric wicks and everything changes. April got up early the next morning to see what happened. There were some areas that she was thrilled with, and others not so much. She fiddled with the latter for a while. She made two lengths of fabric, and late the next day pieced them together to make a quilt back approximately 70" x 80".

soft and gentle colour

A basket of plant dyes on top of seta painted silk. In the basket: dandelion, daffodil, bracken, false indigo, tulip, forget me not, and day lily dyed velvet. I've been making myself paint on Mondays, more as a way to open myself up than to achieve perfection. Last week, I painted on china silk with transparent seta colour. I would have used blue, but I am out of blue. Using up art supplies is another thing I'm doing on Mondays. Wet fabric was spread across a table and the diluted seta colour was loosely applied. More important was how the materials dried. One piece was folded and wrapped in plastic to blend the colours, then taken out and sprinkled with salt before leaving in 'lumps' for 48 hours. The other was gathered up into loose pleats while wet and left to dry in that position. The colour wicked and arranged itself into waves. I heat set with an iron and also in a hot dryer for one hour. Then washed with mild detergent and dried in the dryer again. Now what?

line work

The kids gave me a sweet little red canon digital camera for my last birthday. Now I've lost the thingey that recharges the battery.
Unable to post any new photos, these are old ones of dyed and painted fabrics in the wind. They're relevant because they are in the talk I've been preparing to give in Kingston on Friday as a prelude to the 'slow art' workshop.

It will turn up.

My Manitoulin

My Manitoulin, fabric, photo, cotton thread, stitching, still in progress

What is your greatest fear?

"Not being able to perform my daily work routine around the house and studio."

What is your greatest joy?

"To do the above."

Anna Torma, Canadian textile artist being interviewed.

My Manitoulin, cotton, photo, hand embroidered with back stitch and detached chain stitch, painted with coloured inks, 13" x 13", 2009

Leaving

There's still a little more stitching to do on this piece but I am taking a break. We're leaving for Europe! Blog writing will be sporadic over the next couple of weeks as I plan to depend on internet cafes. Thanks to all who have made encouraging comments on this piece. Stitching is a domestic technique, under valued and slow. Stitching has a long history of offering women quiet intellectual space to consider.