praise the wordless speaker I am

Colourless, nameless, free - 

That's what I am.  

When will I see myself as I am?

Put mystery in the middle.

Where is the middle

in the middle I am?

And this silver-tongued stream in me  - 

when will it grow still enough to know

the streaming stillness I am?

The ocean

I am drowned in the ocean I am - 

shoreless, boundless, wonderful.

Don't look for me in this world or that world.

Both worlds are lost in the world I am - 

My soul, you are my true eyes.

What are eyes in the invisible visible I am?

Then what do I call you?

SILENCE.

words can't name what I am.

Settle in the nowhere everywhere I am.

Gold mine I am.

Rumi

Sati Zech

 When I started to use the internet as a research tool, I came across the work of Sati Zech.

A 2006 exhibition of her red and white bollenarbeit series excited many art lovers.

The rounded shapes refer to the rounded hills of her childhood landscape in southern Germany. Currently, the artist resides and works in Berlin.

 This beautiful white space is the Heidelberg gallery that held that important 2006 exhibition.

Sati Zech also works with black vinyl. The wall piece above is large, nearly 160 inches wide.

New work is in rawhide and uses the motife of repeated circles.  (2014)

In 2010, Zeck participated in a resdency in California.  James Chute interviewed her and the following quotes are from his article in the June 27 San Diego Union Tribune.

“I don’t want to have any contact with quilts,” exclaimed Zeck, whose English is salted with a pronounced German accent. “I never thought about quilts. I don’t want to make quilts. I have nothing to do with it.”  The only parallels between Zech’s work and most quilts is they both involve fabric.  Both also have the function of providing warmth. Of course, you have to pull a quilt over you for that to happen. With Zech’s larger pieces, you stand in front of her strange, hypnotic red shapes and layered canvasses and your temperature starts to rise.

“You can see, I’m not a drawer; I’m not really a painter. I’m a sculptor. I’m not really interested in color. I use color to show energy, that’s why my work is warm.”   Most of all, she’s intrigued by the “language beyond normal language,” how people reach out, cope and connect beyond mere speech.  “What happens when the normal language stops and you are in a crisis in your life?” she asked. “You are in really deep trouble, then you use other languages.

“I traveled and worked for 10 years in Africa, and for me this was very important because I found the same experience, that people don’t trust what you are telling. They don’t trust your words but they trust your body, they trust how you move, the way you look into my eyes, much more than the words.”   “The color red, I don’t use it as a color, it’s more like a statement, more like reminiscent to Africa. I never thought about it, but I’ve always lived in cities, and I think it’s reminiscent of the warmth, the heat and the energy of Africa, and the empathy between the people."

click here to read the complete article

More about this artist over on modernist aesthetic. 

the gift of an extra day

 Leap Year 2016.

 An extra day's worth of time.  What a lovely gift.

Time is the main material in objects made by hand.
Most of my work is about making time visible.

Happy Leap Day!

500 Traditional Quilts

You know, when I made this quilt eleven years ago, I didn't think of it as traditional.  I thought it was art.   Art that came directly from my insides and I was thankful that I could use the firm ground of pattern handed down to me by women artists of an earlier time.  By making this red quilt and appliqueing my own hand not holding those four flying shapes I was able to express how I felt during the time my nest was emptying and my parents were aging.  It was a poem.

There is a new book coming out this September from Lark - 500 Traditional Quilts  by Karey  Patterson Breshenhan, director emeritus of the International Quilt Festival in Houston Texas. 

Two of my quilts have been selected to be in the book.
The first is Flesh and Blood (shown above).  Made in 2003 from cotton, wool and sheer polyester,   pieced with a sewing machine and then appliqued, embroidered and quilted by hand, 90" square.  The traditional pattern's name? Ocean Waves.  Click here to see Flesh and Blood on my website.

The second quilt that will be in the book is entitled Something More Magical Than It Ever Was.  It was made over twenty years ago in 1991 from recycled family clothing and new silk fabrics in a traditional Log Cabin pattern with some variation.  It's not included in this post but you can see it on the website as well, here.  That quilt was about memory and how we adjust our memories as time goes on.  I thought it was art too when I made it.  I felt that I was using a woman's art medium.

An exhibition of the 500 quilts will be in Houston this fall to celebrate the ruby anniversary of the quilt festival.  This exhibition will tour to Chicago in May 2015.  Both quilts have been invited to participate.

t

Flesh and Blood is in private collection but the owners loaned it back to me so it could go on exhibition. 

I do want my work to be seen.  I offered them the quilt shown above as a replacement while Flesh and Blood is on tour.

Protection Blanket, 2005, hand dyed rayon, machine pieced then hand quilted and embellished with couched rayon ribbon and sequins, 80" square.  The traditional pattern here is an Amish one, usually made with somber or deep toned fabrics.   Diamond in a Square.   (to view on website click here)
I had recently learned that in order to keep their children safe, many mothers in eastern cultures sewed shiny things onto their children's clothing to reflect the bad energy.  I sewed sequins onto the central diamond - making it into a shield that would protect the sleeper.

I drew on this quilt,  pleased to have the spaces and symbolism of traditional pattern under my intuitive gestures.    I made this piece nearly ten years ago and it is nice for me to examine the couching again.

It's fascinating.

grounded by tradition

Canadian Pioneer

I started this quilt in 2008. 
First, I cut vertical strips from old blankets and then sewed them together. 
Then slashed a curve right through them.
Then mended that.
Then felted the whole in the washing machine.
It survived all these things.

Risk after risk.
"I do, I undo, I re do"  (Louise Bourgeois)

Made completely from wool.
Wool blankets, a woolen skirt,  wool fabrics, wool yarns

backed with wool, couched with wool

Finished in August 2012,
and named Canadian  Pioneer.

flying to Alaska

W flew to Alaska yesterday. Ned had the window seat for the first five hours of the six hour flight. He followed our trip across the states. I was able to stitch. On airplanes I use a round thread cutter, not scissors. We got here in time for the nature walk/Easter Egg hunt.

new directions

Contemplating new work. Easing back into my art.

backwoods poet

The backwoods poet who is to make anything worth while out of his restricted material does so by facing it squarely and looking at it not with the sentimental glance of the local colourist but with the strict and penetrating vision of the realist.


from my 1996 journal
advice I found in a book about Canadian poetry.