journal entries from the middle of March

Sunday:  

Idea:  to work from the back, to use more colour, to cut silk in narrow strips, to couch it to the back.

I write this idea down before bed.    

Monday: 

Or, to cut holes into the circles on the back and reveal the inner black batt, and then stitch around them with black thread that would show on the front side.

To use coloured silk and chance and also holes and to work from the back with out knowing how the front will be affected.

Tuesday;

We made a trip to Lively for an 11:30 appointment for new computer glasses for me. 

I let the lady there pick them out.

The metaphysics of the ordinary.  The pared down aesthetic. Nothing strident.  Well made.  

Intensely worked surface. Not hard work, but careful work. Do not know how it will turn out.

Trust that it is going to work.

My work is about comfort and about the inner world and about the cosmic mystery.

It is not a call to action.  It is a call to reflection.

sun and moon of mine, you've come.

my sight, my hearing, you've come

ecstasy, you've come

eyes filled with sun, harvest of all my longing,

you've come.

desert bandit, penance breaker, silver moon beloved

you've come

Rumi

Wednesday: 

Went to book club today.   It was well attended.  Seven people.  We all liked the book.   Girl With a Pearl Earring.  Afterwards, I went to my studio in town.

Thursday: 

Poetry is an element in all my work.  Poems not to be read, but to be seen and touched without the need to understand them.  

Poetry arises from the desire to get beyond the finite and historical (the human world of violence and difference) in order to reach something transcendent.  (Ben Lerner )

Friday:  

Poetry comes from wanting to recognize a world where everything is connected.  Poems give a sense of prayer.  (Cecilia Vicuna)

Saturday:

We went to Sudbury yesterday.  It was a busy day.  A medical appointment for Ned.  A visit to see the gallery I'll be exhibiting in this summer.  

In my new quilt, I am couching long strips of silk around large unstitched circles.  I am loving the simplicity and the feeling that working this way gives me.  It's really slow.    I am enjoying my time spent with this piece.

I feel as if I'm painting or drawing - allowing my hands to do the thinking, not my mind.

Textiles are records of the every-day.  Textiles are records of endurance.  Textiles record the care and attention given to simple things that surround us. (Dorothy Caldwell)

Some souls have blue stars.  

Some souls have echoes of a burnt voice.

Crumbs of kisses.

Sobs from trees.

Tranquil whiteness.

Flocks of Songs.  

(selected words from several of Lorca's poems that he wrote in 1920)  

Vincent

Wheat Fields After Rain 1890  Vincent Van Gogh

A blog post about reading the Letters of Vincent Van Gogh and the anxiety I felt through most of the beautifully written book.    

The letters are full of emotions and excellent descriptive passages of the natural world.  He wrote every few days to his brother Theo, who supported him financially.

Plain near Auvers 1890 Vincent Van Gogh

Two thirds or more of the book takes place before 1888.  There was a big sidetrack in 1885, where he gave away all his belongings and devoted himself to the poor in North Holland.  It was already page 183 and there are only 313 pages in the book.  

I was anxious because I knew he was going to die, and I read his compelling letters and kept reading them as he kept moving around in Holland and England,  becoming a minister, falling in love several times, continuing and continuing to write so beautifully, but not painting.  All through this time, the book was full of descriptions of the country side he saw and how it made him feel.  

I wanted him to start painting.  I wanted him to get on with it.  He did sketches however.  

To learn to look at the landscape at large, in its simple lines and contrasts of light and brown.  Here is a sketch of what I saw today.  That earth was superb in reality, I don't think my study ripe enough yet, but I was struck by the effect, and as to light and shade, it was, indeed, as I draw it for you here.  Drenthe, Holland, 1883.  Vincent.

  

He admired the artist Millet.  He loved Japanese paintings.  He read Shakespeare.  How would he get all those paintings done?  I skipped ahead.  I looked in the book of his paintings that I owned and began reading it at the same time.  A few of those paintings illustrate this post.  

Poppy Field 1890  Vincent Van Gogh

In 1886, he moved from Holland to Paris to live with Theo for a year.  He started to paint flowers in vases and went outside to paint close ups of grasses and undergrowth.  The paintings with the date of 1887 are from his Paris time and of course there are hardly any letters.  

He didn't move to Arles until February 1888, (page 191).  Immediately very inspired, he started to paint on canvases that he would roll up and send back to Theo to hopefully sell in his gallery.  Vincent described his paintings brilliantly in the letters, along with describing the southern clear light and the simple rural landscapes near Arles. 

Now started his golden three years:  1888, 1889, 1890.  Three years to make all those beautiful paintings when he was 35, 36, 37 years old. 

The Plain at Auvers, 1890 Vincent Van Gogh

He wrote to Theo about the French authors he loved, de Maupassant, Zola.  He wrote about the Impressionists and their work and how he knew that he was a bit different from them.  He wrote about the clarity and simplicity in how the Japanese painted, and how he wanted to make work like they did, as if the artist is part of the landscape.  He read and spoke Dutch, French, and English easily.  He was an intelligent and sensitive correspondent and wrote beautiful letters.

Most of his letters in 1888 to Theo are about how he had invited Paul Gauguin to come to Arles and live with him and how he was waiting for Gauguin's arrival.  All through 1888, he prepared for Gaugin's visit.  He asked Theo for money to get two beds, one for Gauguin, and he set up his little house in preparation for this more famous painter to come and live with him.  He painted a set of sunflower paintings to hang in one of the bedrooms and a set of portraits of local people to hang in the other. He painted the floor and the walls.  He longed for Gauguin to come.  He admired Gauguin.  He wanted to help him out financially by giving him a place to live and artistically by introducing Gauguin to the beautiful climate and light and landscapes of southern France.   

Park of the Asylum at Saint-Remy 1889  Vincent Van Gogh

Gauguin finally arrived in Arles in late October of 1888 and moved in with Vincent and they painted together and talked about their theories of painting.  Then, and this is not fully explained, in late December 1888, after only 8 weeks of having Gauguin in the house with him, Vincent cut off part of his ear. 

The cut was quite dangerous because he had cut through an artery, and had to spend time in hospital, returning several times to hospital because of fainting and anxiety.  Gauguin left Arles immediately and Vincent was on his own again by January of 1889.  He still painted a lot, but he had to keep going back to the hospital in Arles.  

Tree Trunks in the Grass, 1890, Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent tried to maintain his little house but because of his need for medical care the people of Arles were afraid for him and of him.  He was encouraged to check himself into the asylum in St. Remy where there would be doctors easily available.  He did this in May 1889 and entered into a calm period of his life.  He lived in the asylum for a year, until May 1890.  It was an asylum for people with mental illnesses.

He painted his best work in 1889 and 1890 when he was being taken care of in that Asylum.  He continued to write beautiful letters to Theo.   

Iris 1889  Vincent Van Gogh

The asylum was confining and a bit depressing and after a year in that place, Vincent was encouraged by a doctor friend to move to an inn in Auvers, north of Paris where the doctor lived and practiced.   Dr. Gachet wanted to look after Vincent and visited him regularly.  Dr. Gachet was a good friend and gave Vincent care and support.    

  

But on July 27 1890, Vincent Van Gogh shot himself during one of his painting trips to a field near Auvers, and died two days later, age 37.   

In touch

A post about the cloth I've been working on these past two weeks.     

 

I'm adding complete skeins of cotton floss in horizontal rows to a wool patchwork, couching the thick threads firmly through several layers with red sewing thread.  I want to make a texture that you will yearn to touch.

I took it with me to stitch while Ned drove us to visit family in Eastern Ontario and Quebec.  We took the rural roads whenever possible, and there was no snow.

Look.  This happens so often and is not planned.  Suddenly I notice the similarity in what my eyes see and the marks my hands make.   

We visited our twin grand daughters.

They've started to walk!  They eat solid foods with gusto!  They play together.  They love music.

We had a wonderful time with them.  

I want to get in touch with something more mindless, more intuitive.  I'm not clear about the meaning.  Maybe its the spectator who puts the meaning in.  

I don't work from experiences that are fresh.  I tend to repeat things.  I've carried thoughts around in my head for months.  I have a feeling about a form that I want and I want the feeling to develop as far as it can go, and I want my work to be able to stand a lot of inspection.  Vija Celmins

I'm back at home now and continue with this mindless stitching.   I read an old Border Crossings magazine the other day and Vija Celmins was interviewed in it by Robert Enright.  What she said resonated with me so much I had to note her responses into my journal.  In fact, her words inspired me to make this post.  

See Vija Celmins’ art work in the most recent Modernist Aesthetic post.  Click  here.  

My feeling is that when you are not using your brain, you are not necessarily being stupid.  It's just that you're in touch with some other things in yourself.  Then they become brainy. . Because look how we talk about the art afterwards.  We can talk about these pieces in an intelligent way even though the work itself is ..... what is the work like?  I don't know..  I don't know what the work is like.   Vija Celmins

and this quilt it is so safe

Kindness is our only hope.

We were with our family in a Mexican resort during that unreal time between Christmas and New Year's.  We had a very beautiful escape.  

I took my handwork with me and there were moments of quiet when I turned to it, mostly in the early evenings in our very clean and white room when it was a relief to be away from the sun.

I am pleased to finally be able to share on this blog that I have been invited to mount a solo show at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham England this coming August.  For the exhibition, I plan to finish up the quilt tops I put together during the pandemic so that I can display mostly all new work.  And this is one of them.

Quilting it surprised me.  When I hand piece a quilt, I usually need to strengthen the seams by quilting them 'in the ditch' and that is the case here.  However, this is the first time that I have added a secondary grid and that simple stitching made the old damasks express a softness that I had not expected.  

It became a quiet safety net full of PEACE.

A traditional one patch quilt has a timeless quality, not innovative or risky.  Quilts like this make me think about my 50 year marriage to Ned.  We celebrated it in Mexico with our children and there were many speeches and teasing about our long marriage and one of the kids asked me what my favourite thing about being married to Ned over the years and my answer  was that I felt safe with him.  

I'm a timid person. It's a scary world and I am afraid of it.  

And this quilt.  It is so safe.  

and my love is poured.

Our world goes to pieces. We have to rebuild our world.  We investigate and worry and analyze and forget that the new comes about through exuberance, not through a defined deficiency. We have to find our strength rather than our weakness.  Out of the chaos of collapse we can save the lasting: we still have our right or wrong; the absolute of our inner voice.  We still know beauty.  We still know freedom and happiness, unexplained and unquestioned.  Intuition saves us examination.  We have to gather our constructive energies and concentrate on the little we know, the few remaining constants.  But how?  We neglect a training in experimenting and doing.  We feel safer as spectators.  We collect rather than construct.  We are proud of knowledge but forget that facts only give reflected light.  If we want to learn to do, we have to turn to artwork, more specifically to craft work.  We learn that no picture exists before it is done.  The conception of a work gives only its temper, not its consistency.  Things take shape in material and in the process of working it.  Anni Albers

Do you think the world has enough quilts yet?

the rescued Dresden plates from my earliest quilt,
re-appliqued onto new plant dyed linen, silk, rayon, wool

The title of this post is from my journal.

I wrote it a few days ago at 2:30 am when I was in the middle of un-stoppable creativity. 

 

You Are a Single Star

the round and round one-patch quilt that uses up my remnants of dyed damask 

I've been allowing myself to make and make without a plan or purpose, just a deep need to create.

What I make with my hands is related to the rhythm and finality of a human time span.

Your Fragile Life

I usually finish the quilts I make, but sometimes I don't.

Sometimes I come across false starts and don't understand them.

Other times I come across things I've started and become excited and need to work on them again.

 

on the wall left to right:  Suvi's baby quilt, White Cross, A Sky Full, and untitled, 
the folded green quilt was made by April, on the railing is Canadian Pioneer,   
left side of sofa is a wool grid backed with red silk,
right side of sofa is New Beginning, my pandemic patchwork

Creativity is a human activity. 

hand stitched cotton

I live my life.

I make quilts.

inspired by cloth and play and by that pink doily quilt I made a few years ago 

I know myself by making my quilts. 

Labour Day weekend

My quilts make my personal daily experiences meaningful.  

Marimekko cloth I have been hoarding

American sculptor, Anne Truitt, said that her work helped her to see her own life as something between natural and abstract.  

A Sky Full

"As I live, certain aspects of what is happening adhere to me as if magnetized by psychic gravity.  I have learned to trust this center"  Anne Truitt

The Countdown Quilt

"The process of art contains my intensities but also exorcizes those beyond my endurance"  A.T.

The Countdown Quilt with one layer of gauze upon which I've gone over with ink the weekly journal notes that I wrote on the back of the foundation blocks. 
One log cabin block each week, this quilt contains 49 weeks.  
I started it on our 46th wedding anniversary.  I appreciated every week that we both kept our health. 
 I was counting down towards the 50th, which happened this year.

"I depend on objectification for defense." Anne Truitt  

The weather this month was unreal.  

It poured light and imagination every day.