thing and spirit both

These past few weeks I have added more stitch and some velvet to this red cloth.

I thought the cloth was finished.  I put it in my show at the Homer Watson last spring. 

But this autumn, I felt that it needed more. 

More weight.  More time.  More definition.  Some darkness.

I began by adding brown silk thread. 

I also added a layer of dark grey velvet to the second side.

This cloth is for our eyes and it is for our hands.  

This cloth has given me a space for my heart to beat in.  

In pre-Columbian South America all liturgical ceremonies involved large quantities of textiles.  

Textiles were the major form of art, the conveyers of religious ideas.

Textiles were considered to be sacred objects.  (William J Conkin, archeologist)

I've started to call this thin, red, linen quilt:  Holy Holy.  

Through this past week, all I've wanted to do is stitch it.

I wanted to stitch by my window and listen to audio books all the time.  

I forced myself to do other things.  

I put the timer on so that I knew when I could stop doing those other things

and get back to my stitching.

I'm ready to break open.  I'd do it with my own hands.  

Maybe tomorrow if we're lucky and strong, 

Tonight I will learn to live in the inches,

As we spin the wind of this terrible age,  a place to sing

My voice, still raw and golden.   

       David Lerner

Hold your hands out over the earth as over a flame.

Touch the earth. 

Love the earth. 

Honour the earth. 

Rest your spirit in her solitary places. 

Henry Beston

It is a power cloth.

It is like a cloth from another world.

It is like a ritual cloth.  

A cloth full of holiness and spirit and touch and me.

My fingers swirling through it, or it through me.

I saw it.  

It was thing and spirit both: 

the real world: evident, invisible.  

Marie Howe

quilts deserve respect

I think we need to believe that we have all the time in the world.

I think our inner sense of time has no boundaries.  While living as normal people in the every day present, our inner sense of time flips around, going back to childhood and leaping ahead to future plan or worry or dream. 

This is a post about the new sleeve that I invented for my large linen damask quilt

 'underfoot the earth divine'.

I consider most of my work as having two interesting sides, an outer front side and also a beautiful second side.  

The problem is how to show both sides with elegance.

The usual way to hang quilts on the wall is to sew a sleeve on the back side, but this method covers up the top 4 inches of the second side.  I reject it.

Colour is important.  The second side of 'underfoot the earth divine' is a buttery coloured linen damask.   Dyed with natural wild golden rod blossoms, I call this second side 'overhead the sun'.

For my sleeve, I found several damask napkins that had previously been dyed with golden rod.

I assembled them into a long strip along with a layer of batting and gauze backing cloth and spent a few days quilting the strip so that it would blend with the main quilt.    

My idea was that I could extend the top edge of the quilt with this sleeve and although the function would be obvious, I hoped that  the eye would not be disturbed.   I really didn't know if it was going to work out, but I felt it was necessary to keep going.

It was necessary to take the time to do my best.

Quilts are valuable.

They deserve respect.

This particular quilt has been shortlisted for a major prize in England.

We tested the sleeve in the outdoor gallery.  

The shortlist exhibition is part of Festival of Quilts Birmingham.  

Before I shipped it from Canada for this exhibition, 

it was necessary to create a new label for the piece and sew it to the back.   

(I'll remove this label after the festival because I prefer a more unobtrusive signature) 

Underfoot The Earth Divine

In rural areas of Canada, you can see for miles across the fields.

Inspired by this vastness, I dyed ancient table linens a variety of earthy greys with natural tannins and iron and then cut the cloth into long strips.  The strips were then joined together into a large square that resembles a plowed field. 

Within the large square, a small taffeta square marked with a velvet cross and red thread sits inside a large circle. 

The holes cut into this sewn surface reveal soft earth-coloured velvet that we yearn to touch.

My work starts and ends with the inner world.  

If you live in England and are thinking of going to The Festival of Quilts to see this exhibition, The Fine Arts Textile Award shortlist, along with many many other amazing quilt shows, there is a code that you can use to get a discount on tickets.  Just type FATA 22 into the form.

Enjoy the summer my friends.  It is here.

and the light poured in

I look around me and
everything seems , what's the word I seek,
ephemeral?
beautiful? 

 spiritual?

I've been alone for a few days, not quite a week. 
The empty spaces became filled with green
and my needle kept going in and out, in and out

I made things in the evenings that I had not even considered when I woke up
My fabrics piled up around me and the light poured into the house

it poured in

it revealed  beauty I hadn't noticed
and also that unnamable something....

I've gone back and forth to my studio in town,
making making making

looking at the water and the sky

writing and unwriting journals

 a kind of transformation is going on inside me

a shifting

When you make something you have proof that something has been accomplished, something is different.  It's proof that there has been a change.  You have made a physical change. You have made a thing.  It's through the physical world that you can have a spiritual life.  It is about transendence.  Something has moved from one state to another.  Art is proof.  Art moves your insides into the physical world.  It doesn't rob you of your insides, it;'s just a representation and it's always different.  It's like a mystery and you're trying to rein it in or something. 

Kiki Smith speaks this way

commonplace holiness

 

we have astonishment
there is life held within materials
and in the art made from them

This is an idea Giuseppe Penone speaks about often.
Astonishment.  Poetry.
That there is life held within materials.

My friend, Connie Wilson,  gave me these handkerchiefs.  (I wrote about them here)
She died on Saturday and I miss her.

 

she was a daughter of the spirit,
a friend for two dozen years,
she taught me how to love

star chart

Star chart  painted with mineral pigments on tanned elk leather
The many tiny stars in the middle represent the milky way
A sacred object of the Skidi Pawnee tribe who lived in what is now Nebraska
Buffalo hunters
village livers
cosmic believers

It entered the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago in 1906
it was already between 100 and 300 years old
the north star is the largest cross

Sources:  here  and here  with thanks.

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.  

circles within squares

I searched through recent Fiberarts, Embroidery and Surface Design Journal magazines to find other artists who are using circle within square imagery and have been richly rewarded. Pamela Fitzsimons Walking Werakata 4 2006 Silk, plant dye, rust print, layered, hand-stitched 26.5" x 25.5"

Pamela Fitzsimons is from Australia. Her colours are obtained from local plants, her stitches are obsessively close but essential. Her work is calming but also engages us cognitively. (Image and this related text are from an article by Kate Lenkowsky in Surface Design Journal spring 2009)
Helen Parrott Red Circle 2000 - 2002 Tied quilting, calico and linen thread 229 by 229 cm

Helen Parrott is from England. Her work is best seen as conceptual. Red Circle took two years to make and may signify a possible resolution of her preoccupation with the powerful dynamics of the circle within the square. The piece suggests a vast celestial sphere as well as a microscope's magnifying of minute life-forms. The viewer's response to the variety and indviuality of the shapes assumed by her tied threads lives on in the mind and in the memory. (Image and this related text from an article by Ian Wilson in Embroidery Volume 53, November 2002)

I also looked some more at the work of Japanese artist Yoshiko Jinzenji and have profiled her recently on my new blog, Modernist Aesthetic.

Liturgical

A grave yard in Normandy.

Liturgical: Pertaining to the established ritual for public worship


Spiritual: Pertaining to sacred things, essence as distinct from matter