one patch quilts

My hands ache from stitching.

My feet ache from ageing.

My heart aches from continuing on, 

through all the sadness and uncertainty.

I make textiles using just one patch.

(the technique is explained here)

I select one square of cloth and sew it to another one. 

Once I have a field of one patches, I make them stronger by quilting the seams.

The squares are all the same.

The squares are each unique.

Some are organized into rows.

Others appear random, but don't believe it.

They are also organized.

I feel powerless, unable to start the new textile pieces that flood into my brain.

I feel that if I can just finish these two simple cover ups, I can move forward.

I am calling this one Sunshine and more Sunshine

I wonder what is the urgency?

These quilts are not going to fix the war.

I am calling this one Lamentation

They do not protect against the illness.

They do not save beloved children who die.

But they are not a waste of time.

Rather, they are evidence of a time.

A time that we are living through.  

A time that we are grieving through.

All of us.   

Each unique.

Lamentation:  an expression of sorrow, mourning, or regret

quilts as women's art: a quilt poetics

The body of the quilt is the work of coming to like in yourself what was only adored or ignored by your mother, or other objects of your love or your lovers;

The body of the quilt is the work of coming to like the work of another woman, and the passing through of all rejection and neglect by another woman or man;

The body of the quilt is the work of coming to like yourself as a little old lady and an old little girl and a new little sister;

The body of the quilt is the work of going over all your mistakes and lost dreams liking yourself all the way all over inside and out and all around the whole border not knowing where to start and not knowing where to stop;

The body of the quilt is the work repeating all your moves and liking the fact that you did it all, did all the moving;

The body of the quilt is the endless search, your endless search, but as your companion as you go through the motions of work, as you work your way: by focusing, waiting, turning, twisting, aligning, matching, fitting, pulling in the faraway, visiting with the absent, drawing out the ineffable, amplifying the vestigial, leaving well-enough alone, enduring the unendurable, practicing readiness for the other, learning the lesson late and liking yourself for forgetting it again, and you’re finally looking up and seeing the body of your quilt behind your cat, behind your potted plants, up to your neck, coming out of your ears, and before the body of your quilt you see the people you want to see the body of your quilt and they like it, more than anyone every liked your body, and said so, and you know now it does not matter whether you did because you’ve come to like yourself even more than the body of the quilt, and you can look at it and like it by yourself.

Radka Donnell

The Quilt's Body by Radka Donnell is on page 113 of Quilts As Women's Art:  A Quilt Poetics.  

I read this book at age 40.  It gave me the foundation of my career as an artist/quiltmaker.  I copied many things into my journal at the time, including this entire poem.  

New Beginning, the other side.  I speak about making it in the lecture my pandemic summer.

"Quilts are to mainstream art what poetry is to prose".  Radka Donnell

here we are

here we are

separated from what we knew

this is where we are

this is our time

 

I have another black cross quilt top in the works

I like black crosses

A black cross attracts the eye and holds on 

don't hate anything says Rilke

it seems as if something is disappearing

something fragile

stitching helps me to hold on

folded in the uterus

creased in death

we are like cloth

more somatic than cerebral

more felt than remembered

Pennina Barnett 

I piece together little squares with needle and thread and do not look for a short cut

I appreciate the slow way

I understand the connection to the body

I pay attention sometimes, other times I daydream

very simple

very quiet

simply to wake up 

to the very life we're living

which is so excellent

John Cage

honest                 true                    meaningful

open to wonder             hope-filled         calm 

love relationships        memory        

inner world                    passage of time

dream

over all, like a halo, the love of the artist for her work 

aunt jane

Regardless of how abstract a soft sculpture is, it will unavoidably evoke the human.  Organic is another word.  When it becomes a factor of the material itself, softness takes on an alarming correspondence to our own transitory journey, our mortality.  Max Kozloff  1967  the poetics of softness

the simplicity

the variability of nature

the daydream

we don't know anything

we're going to do it anyway

I'm just trying to figure it out

the days are bound together

by my hands.

Fare Well

Today is the last day of 2020 and I am thinking about endings.                                                         About things feeling finished.     About turning the page.

Above is  Underfoot The Earth Divine, one of the few pieces I finished during the pandemic.

The first image in this post is the reverse side of the piece, and it high lights the lovely wool thread drawing that happened spontaneously.   

The second image shows the front, pieced from rescued damask table linens.  You can see where I cut holes into the piecework in the lower half, and then repaired them with velvet.  

Good bye 2020.  

We've had many challenges this year.  

We've learned a lot about our selves.  We've learned that we can rely on our own selves.                 We've learned that we are strong and we are beautiful.  We've learned that we will figure it out.

I spoke about these ideas of inner strength and softness in the lecture I gave in Toronto last October.  The lecture shares about where I live and about the creation of my work.  It details the spring and summer of 2020 and shows how my work helps me to carry on through emotional turmoil. I learn to trust myself through the step by step making of each piece.   

The lecture shows how I've learned how to let things rest when I don't know quite what to do next.  

And that mending and correcting errors  are essential because the journey of broken-ness is part of each piece and also part of me as a human.

The lecture seems a little slow at the beginning, but I encourage you to visit it when you have a quiet 45 minutes.  I hope that you can find the time for a visit with me, my dear friends.  Here's the link.

Thank you very much for being with me through 2020.  I felt your support.  Love You!   

overwhelmed by everything

It's the weekend and I am resting.

 my fragile self

During this pandemic summer, I've sunk into Louise Penny's series about Armande Gamache.

While in the midst of serious internal growth, respect your need to rest.  Yung Pueblo

"You can't be three people"  Agnes Martin tells us.

creativity and confusion

This post consists of photos of my work and life during the last few confusing weeks.

Creativity has returned for me and I am grateful for time spent with new work.

I have several new starts, and if they were all pinned up side by side, I think we would see that I am following a new direction.  I don't quite understand it yet, but you know,  that's OK.
I just want to get this work out of me.
Although it makes me calm to do it, I am also in a kind of panic.

Our two youngest daughters are with us.
April has been here since the beginning of April and Grace arrived on June 4.

 I've been going into my town studio since June 1 - every week day.

 

When I'm there I use the large work table to support a piece I'm working on that is based on three old blankets.  It's immense, and each day's stitching is only a tiny mote.

Sometimes I listen to the podcast Sandy and Nora talk politics while stitching. 

 Just as often, I enjoy quiet.

I won't lie.
This pandemic time and this white fragility time  are very confusing and very heavy.

"There is no such thing as good painting about nothing." Mark Rothko

Take care of each other my friends.

April on deck

Our daughter April has been home with us for the last 6 weeks.

 She and her cat left Toronto when things closed up because of the pandemic.

 Most of her time has been spent out on our deck with her quilts.

 At first she sorted through her fabrics and read through most of my quilt books.

 She has more ideas than  she can possibly get to.

 She thinks about both sides of a quilt. 

Above is the reverse side of the quilt in the top photo of this post.

 Five of her pieces - there are two or three more that did not make the photo.

 My favourtie part of this mother-daughter pandemic residency is stitching with her.
We've been listening to The Dutch House by Ann Patchett on audio book.

 All hand pieced and hand quilted.

 She's completed a baby quilt from stripe fabric - both sides made into a web design.

What a kid.