Magdalena Abakanowicz: Soft Strength at the Tate Modern, London, England

Every Tangle of Thread and Rope, Abakans by Magdalena as installed at Tate Modern until May 21 

magdalena's brown abakan 1969,
 ball point pen sketch on opened note book, 6.5 x 8 inches

magdalena's embryology bundles circa 1980,
ball point pen sketch on opened note book, 6.5 x 8 inches

We visited the Tate Modern last week because I wanted to experience the Magdalena Abakanowicz exhibition.  While there, I borrowed one of those folding portable stools so that I could sit among the Abakans and draw them.  I wore my grey knit dress for these visits, because it had great pockets for my phone and little notebook.  My shoes were comfortable and I wore black tights, just like all the other pilgrims.  

embryology  1978 - 1981, burlap, cotton gauze, hemp rope, nylon, sisal, dimensions variable,
by Magdalena Abakanowicz

embryology, there are approximately 800 pieces in this body of work, 1978-81,
burlap, sisal, cotton gauze, hemp, stockings,  etc

When I sat close to the burlap wrapped bundles of the Embryology grouping, I could differentiate the wrapping materials:  brownish cheesecloth, grey and brown cotton stockings, twine, sisal, but I couldn't always tell what was inside them.  

Magdalena did not self-identify as a feminist yet her work is seen by many as emblematic of a powerful female imagery.  One can't help but think about birth and vulnerability while sitting with her work.  And sex.  And decay.  And nests, and wombs, and eggs.   Her work is about LIFE and its connection to fibres. 

mature woman sketching Magdalena Abakanowicz's Embryology
 at the Tate Modern, London, England

sketch of Magdalena's embryology,
 ball point pen on opened out notebook, 6.5 x 8 inches

By drawing them, I touched them slowly with my eyes.  I was touched by them.  They are hand made monuments to human labour and creativity.  The connection to the body and all its functions is so strong that I am finding it hard to express in words.  It's incredible.  The inspiration I felt when I was near them was deep.  I was pulled by heart strings into her spaces and even now, at home, I remember the experience as something holy. 

It was a privilege be so close to them.  I was in awe the whole time.  

Drawing the soft sculptures helped my mind and body absorb them. 

Sitting rather than standing helped my wobbly legs. 

mature woman in front of
Magdalena Abakanowicz's Abakan Orange 1968
at the Tate Modern exhibition, Every Tangle of Thread and Rope.

There's a new post on modernist aesthetic dedicated to Magdalena Abakanowicz's Abakans.   Click here

tuesdays in 2022

This post is about journal writing and journal re-reading, both important to my daily practice.

The wool quilt in the top image has been unfinished for years.  This year I'd like to finish quilting it and write more about it, but not today.  

Today, I've chosen just one photo from the first Tuesday of 2022, and another from the second Tuesday, and another from the 3rd Tuesday etc. for six Tuesdays total.  It astounds me how quickly time goes past and how my projects whirl around.  I abandon ideas as quickly as I start new ones.  Flitting from one thing to another keeps my work exciting but may also be my greatest handicap.  Accompanying each image is text from my written journal of the appropriate Tuesday.  Not the whole text - that would be too much.  I am sharing just an inkling.   One of them is a quoted poem, another is a description of two sketches.  They represent my daily notebooks.  I don't know what else to say.  

January 4, 2022: Water colour on paper

You never know.  You have to tiptoe to the edge and then continue on.  Tiptoe, tiptoe…. hands gesturing in front of you in case there is something cold and dangerous at this edge.

I feel blind.  I have to trust.  I’m timid but I’m brave.  

January 11, 2022:  bundled gunnera leaves, alpaca roving, naturally dyed wool, work in progress

Yesterday, I finally made it back into the town studio after months away.  It is a bit overwhelming.  All the stuff here.  Some abandoned pieces from the In The Middle of the World body of work, some stuff that we moved here as a way to get it out of bedrooms for the  Christmas visitors.  All my blanket wool is here and the dyed sheer cloth and several quilt tops that need backs.   A LOT of stuff. 

My journal from 1991 – 1992 was still open on the main table.  I’ve changed how I read these old journals so I brought it home and am now going through it and typing it into the laptop and wow it is inspiring.  

January 18:  sunshine and more sunshine hand pieced quilt top

I’m packing up Maia’s birthday gift (drawing supplies) and also some for Aili.  An orange for Suvi.   Also fresh chocolate chip cookies for Maia and some photos of their dad, two-year-old Jay, making pizza in Kenora when my mother came to visit and brought a kit.  My mother would have been such a good grandma if she hadn’t gotten sick.  Except her plan had been to live in B.C. alone, if she had not gotten sick. We never know each day ahead.  We need to carry on bravely.

I put my sunshine and more sunshine top into a brilliant yellow green backing cloth in the studio yesterday and today I’ll baste them together.  I'll listen to Possession some more while I do this, after the dentist appointment.

january 25:  elder sculptures in progress, old quilts that I have mended or otherwise altered

 As I read through my old journals this year I am finding so much that seems really important.  A life story full of drama.

Today from 2005, there is a sketch from the Telos book,  Art Textiles Japan volume 2 of the central figure in Scene of White by Noriko Narahira.  This sketch is evidence of how moved I was by the idea of a hanging female empty garment shape and how it influenced me.  I used it in my dissertation six years later.  When I worked towards the in the middle of the world exhibition last fall, I created four cloaks that were so important and new for that exhibition and I can understand now the influence of Narahira's work.  

Now, coming across that sketch again, I’m affirmed to continue with these kinds of sculptures.  I'm making Elders from old quilts.  Textiles that are older than I am.  I learn from them.  

February 1:  the mended butterfly quilt and an unfinished Amish wool quilt on our bed

A full page ball point pen sketch of a new sun quilt I plan to make.  The sun will be made from wedges left over from mending the butterfly quilt arranged in radiating circles and edged with triangle rays.  It is set low on a horizon.  There are some outline circles cut into the sky behind it and below the horizons are rows and rows of more wedge-shaped triangles.  Words are scribbled over the sketch.  

A second smaller ball point pen sketch takes up about 1/3 of the facing page.  This sketch is of another sun quilt but the sun is a bit larger and is centered in a square.  The wedges in this sun are pointier and larger than the first sketch.  A yellow sun in a yellow sky.  Yellow velvet dots, prairie point triangle edge.

I envision myself high up above, hovering in the sky. I drop my arm to softly create a new stitch.   Orchestrating each as one long continuous thread, I am like the moon, pulling and pushing the tides, rhythmic and pliant. Amber Jensen    

February 8:  a messy red thread nest on white handkerchief linen

A poem from the book Inside the Visible edited by Catherine de Zegher

All things

Are too small

To hold me,

I am so vast

In the Infinite

I reach

For the Uncreated

I have

Touched it,

It undoes me

Wider than wide

Everything else

Is too narrow

You know this well,

You who are also there

Hadewijch II 13th century 

Carol Mahtab

Carol Mahtab (1935-2012), artist and environmental activist, lived in Digby Neck, Nova Scotia.
This post shows some images from her sketchbook, part of an exhibition of her work entitled still and moving that showed at the ARTsPLACE gallery in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, Canada in 2015.

Visitors were allowed to handle and photograph the sketchbooks, and these images were taken by my friend, Penny Berens.

"Carol's contemplative abstract works reflect her interest in Japanese Zen Buddhism, poetry, nature, and the foggy seascapes of her home in Sandy Cove"  says Janet Larkman, artist and curator of that exhibition.

"Her works appear simple, as if little is 'happening'. Yet when one gets still enough to be really present with them, there is an almost ominous quality, the content being so big it can never be fully known. "

I've kept these photos of Carol Mahtab's sketches for three years, and post them here so that they are easier for me to find.  (Perhaps you will like to see them as well.)

See more work by Carol Mahtab at this link.

"Because she was modest and never self-promoted, her work is not widely known.  Fortunately, she left behind a vast inventory of paintings created over her 60-year career.   Janet Larkman