aesthetic pleasure

 

I have been procrastinating about writing anything this month.    

I will share some photos 

of the layers of linen and wool and sheer that I have been stitching with black and red thread.

It seemed so urgent that I stitch every day.

I thought I might get this one finished.   I told myself that finishing it was why I was stitching so much.

But that was not true.  

I was stitching so much because I was letting my own hands do what they do so well. 

My hands take care of me.

These past weeks, I read essays by women in old magazines and attended panel discussions on Zoom.

I went into my town studio a lot, and came home by the back roads, 

because the trees and ditches take care of me too.

In the essays,  I kept coming across words like care and nurture and support and retreat. 

The water in the lake is beginning to freeze.  

Can you can see the misty fairy hair?.

Aesthetic pleasure is important now, not just for its own sake, but to revive us, to give us the wherewithal to fight another day.      Aruna d'Souza             Canadian Art winter 2019

This piece is called Inner World. 

I'm finishing it up for an exhibition next spring.  All the work in the exhibition is two-sided.  

Most of the pieces are made by stitching first on one side and then another, 

and when they are displayed,  the 'other' or the inner side faces outwards.   

Inner World

Art has begun to feel not like a respite or an escape, but a formidable tool for gaining perspective on troubled times.                       Olivia Laing         The Guardian     April 2020

Stitching helps me because, for the several hours each day that I spend stitching, 

real time is stopped.  

The whirl of it.  The fear of it.

Making my art is like being in a zone of enchantment.

  

Whatever brings the consciousness into a state of pure attention, in a time of perplexity, will also give back an answer to the perplexity.          D.H. Lawrence  1928

The stars.

The sky and the stars.

In current climates, the act of taking time out of our day to make, time to look after yourself, time to be with loved ones, is important.  Modern quilting is all about time.  The moments we share with one another and the processes we choose to adopt to take care of ourselves.                                                    Julius Arthur           Embroidery Magazine      July/August 2021

There's a lot going on with my kids these days.  

Inner World

The title of the exhibition is Inside Out.  

Mark making is a way to make an effect on our own world.                                                          Margaux Williamson             Canadian Art     Winter 2019 

Art is an articulation of resilience.                                                                                                      People create art through war and pandemics and hardship and the work lives on for hundreds of years.                                                                    Tatum Dooley  The Guardian     April 2020                 

circles repeated and repeated

what endures?

old cloth

a spiritual place covered with marks

the directness of paint with the substance of thread

communication with the environment

large scale

immensity of space, minutiae of surface

the time we need to cope with life and death

work in progress

soul is the essence
essence  from within
it is where everything begins

Van Morrison

I look for the poetic in my world of experience and under my own skin.
In my heart.
A recovery of the world through poetics.
A reclaiming of sensory experience, seeing tasting hearing touching
A reclamation of the body.

Adrienne Rich

Above are four vintage ironing pads lined up left to right as they were layerd on the board, bottom to top.

The dark one on the left is natural wool and probably about 90 years old
I think the singed one next to it is also a wool felt.
The third one, also felt, but it might have acrylic mixed with the wool.  It is nearly new.
The last one is a scorch resistent metallic fabric that covers them all.

I've had these since 2006, the year Ned's mother passed.
I could not throw them away
They held something.  They looked like figures.

Maternal stories are forgotten and lost and our culture encourages this amnesia.

What is the poetic meaning held by these old cloths?

time
and heat
and labour and protection
and presenting ourselves neatly to society
and women standing up and bearing down
and daily repetition
and the smell of damp hot wool
and singe marks
and body-size and shape

why would I add red thread?
red thread is often added to domestic cloth as a marker, usually intials
red thread is also a protection element found in traditional world garments

The work of art is like an act of mourning.
Mourning is a way to work through feelings of loss.
All creation is a re-creation of a loved and lost object.

Melanie Klein

the body and the spirit
the self in the center
the layers of time and of labour

Cloth is like the body.
It gets old, it survives, it holds memories and dreams - all at the same time.

 sculpture

 not just pretty little stitching marks

reparation

Soul is what you've been through
What's true for you
Where you going to
What you're gonna do

Van Morrison

finished pieces can be seen here

moon cloth

 

I worked from the back of the cloth, cutting strips off the bottom and couching them in angles and circles.

The fabric became so energized with hand work and marks I could hardly hold it.

 

I was inspired by the rotation of the moon, female figurines from pre-history and the immensity of our raw and vulnerable inner selves.

  new work

pattern of patterns

 A spiral is a figure that retains its shape as it grows.  The new is added to the open end.

It is a pattern for how we are all connected.  The new are added, yet the family retains its shape.

kid update:

Oona, Matt, Everett, Jacko are here from Alaska

Jay, Erika are here from Toronto

Grace, Asan are not here.  They are visiting Turkey this New Year.

April, Andrew are not here.  Andy is visiting April in Finland.

About the photos:  Oona needle felted the spiral, Jay gave the boys skates for Christmas..

Happy New Year to you all.

Newgrange

 
 Ned and I are in Ireland this week.  Yesterday we visited Newgrange, designated as a world heritage site by Unesco.   This is the entrance stone and the magical solar worship roof box .

It was the carvings of spirals and other archetypal symbols that moved me the most.  The fact that this huge monument was built 500 years before the pyramids of Egypt was  awe inspiring.

 The walls were covered with white quartz and a dot pattern made from water washed granite, both of which had to be brought many miles.

 Around the base of the mound are 97 curb stones - many of them carved with spirals.

It's beautiful and it's large and it's ancient and it's spiritual.  You can judge the scale by Ned's figure above.  

A link to more information about this spiritual place click here.  

The spiral carvings are what will last with me.

My writing will be spotty over the next few weeks.