growing is what life is for

  A tree in the forest doesn't keep looking around at the other trees

wondering if its right to be putting down roots so deep
instead of using its energy for making acorns

it just grows

that is its job, to grow
only people drive themselve crazy asking
'what's this for?"

Am I doing all right?
am I doing better than someone else?
Is it all right to be doing this?

I copied this out and taped it inside my kitchen cupbaord ...
the one I keep the salt in, beside the stove

Learning my craft and then practicing it for no other reason than for itself
is one of the first steps I took in my life towards learning that

growing is what life is for

hand made paper by moi
type written text
text about taping the text to my kitchen cupboard where the salt is by moi
all the text about a tree in the forest, growing, is for by Beth Gutcheon  an early influence.

I'm getting ready for the Perivale gallery's 2018 season..
I will be showing stitched pieces mounted on linen-covered board, framed. 

time is the mother

most of November

My work is about time passing.  When I painted my four children I was really painting time.  Their time as youth. My time as a parent.  The daily sunlight. 

My journals record time.  The stitched journal 'Not To Know But To Go On' made time visible.

I am now considering returning to the millennium journal pieces I made fifteen years ago.  In 2007 I put the project away with twenty two panels left to stitch and am now thinking of completing them. Instead of separate wall hangings, I think that I will stitching all those months together.  The work would be an environment more than an installation.  It would be too large for a gallery - unless hung from the ceiling, allowed to drape, or be folded up.  myself.

Personal Language

Each panel also has a single meaningful word from each day couched onto the reverse side. Although this text is from my real life, there is not enough to tell a story and hopefully this mystery would encourage personal memories or stories.

Why complete this project now?     

It demonstrates my sustained interest in our the two sides - the inner interesting side as well as the more obvious outer side.  It also demonstrates my fascination with how fast time passes and my use of time as a material.

Is that enough?                            reflecting.

My mother, my self

This year I am reflecting on my  life and on my body of work.   Finding a voice that reflects who I am has taken several decades yet my starting point remains my response to personal relationships and to the passage of time. Much of my work reflects on my experience of a childhood in rural north western Ontario, Canada.

I made this quilt 30 years ago in 1985 as a way to help me understand my mother and it did help. Now as I reflect, I realize that my mother was only 59 when I made this quilt, (I was 34). I suppose that my daughters don't understand me either, but as I age, I am beginning to understand my mother.

Visit body of work at the top of this blog for more info about this quilt.

welcomed

 Almost the first thing I noticed upon arrival at home was this second blooming of the Christmas amaryllis 

there in the window sill .  then I saw our bed with this quilt I made nearly 10 years ago, upside down on my half

title of quilt: husband and wife
see more of it here

I am not afraid

So far this month, I've been in my studio every day.
I drive the 20 minutes into town, carry my bags up the stairs, open the door, hang up my coat, sit down at my big table and look at the work I did the day before.

Then, before doing anything new, I spend twenty minutes or so centering myself by re-reading an old journal.  Occasionally there are self sketches in them, like the one above when three chicks had flown, and the youngest remained.

And then, I stitch.  I am working on two pieces at the studio that are a break from the repetitive and endless eyelets  that  fill the mornings and nights at home.   Shown here is the piece inspired by Louise Bourgeois' journal entry of 1986.

new directions

Contemplating new work. Easing back into my art.

reminds me

Because I'm preparing for the trunk show on Thursday I rummaged through my piles of recent work. When I unfolded three of the millennium journals I came across "Trees in Winter", the panel that I worked on in early 2007 during the difficult time when my mother was dying. She would ask me "Where's your stitching?" when I came in to sit with her and I'd take it out. I stitched and we breathed together. Reading these snippets of couched text brings back that intense time in my life. It's revealing to me that there are spelling mistakes in many of the words. Several i's are not dotted, t's not crossed.

Thinking Too Much

I've treated my art making very very seriously for decades. I've continually attempted to have it all - a big family, community involvment, closeness to nature every day and ALSO make art. The art making has not allowed me to have a garden, be a good cook, travel, read for pleasure or live in a clean house.

I'm bothered that my chosen art medium of cloth and stitch combines now with my own maturity to trivialize what I do. When I go into a (northern)art gallery to speak I'm no longer the mom artist with a babe on her hip - I'm an older, grayer, gentle voiced, spectacle wearing quilter lady. I speak to quilt guilds consisting of other older women, I teach other older women, I study with other older women. It's a ghetto.

Thunder Bay

I am in Thunder Bay and am writing this post on the little lap top my father gave me last spring. The drive here from Manitoulin along the north shore of Lake Superior is superb. My friend Barbara Sprague and I have been enjoying this artist "date". Today, in between visiting old friends from our mutual past life, we searched for the Gaea Enthroned commission that I did in 1992 for the Provincial government building in Thunder Bay. We found it. The triptych had been moved from the second floor elevator hallway down to a main floor corridor. Much faded after the seventeen years of display it was like seeing one's child grown up with gray hair. I felt tender towards it but so glad to see it again.

Louvre

The Louvre is the largest museum in the world. It's impossible to see all of it in one visit - even if your visit is six hours long (as ours was). These objects from ancient Italy attracted me more than the famous paintings and sculptures. There's something so real and haunting about these objects.

Our world today

I ask myself “what kind of objects are worth bringing into our world today?”

I think about their mothers

The three Canadian soldiers who died September 3 in Afghanistan were 21, 21 and 23 years old.
September 4 Globe and Mail on paper, Storm at Sea quilt, wrapped.

What kind of life experience is being depicted?

order belies chaos

Q: Have there been any changes in your quilting techniques in the past 10 years?
A: Ten years ago I was making bed-sized traditional quilts from dyed and over dyed fabrics. I would mix two or three patterns together and add some painting and text so that everything related to my personal life story. My work relied more on its colour and symbolism than on good technique. I used buttons as embellishment and this habit would initiate teasing from some.
Pictured is a detail of Order Belies Chaos, made in 1990. I can't believe that nearly eighteen years have gone by since then. Number one of onehundred quilts.

a song without asking or giving or meaning

like trees in winter (venting)

I deleted a quote I had in this post for a few hours. It was about unconditional love and trees and winter. I found it in Anne Lemott's book, Bird by Bird. I took it out because I don't feel that it describes how my mood has been all day. I am really frustrated by the health care system and what it can provide for help with cranky old ladies. I feel at such a loss. Although the people who work in health care are each really loving and caring, it seems that the system itself has voids. There always seems to be a different avenue to follow today than the one I was pointed down yesterday. There is also a new person to phone, another person to leave voice mail with. I've been here since February 24 (with about a week off in two parts)and I am just so frustrated. So angry. Sad. Helpless.

husband and wife

Because I am still away from my home computer I am illustrating my journal right now with previously published images. I'm trying to choose those artworks that seem to describe what I'm experiencing at the present time. For example, I have chosen this image because I just had a great phone call with my husband, and I am living a daily life here with my parents, who have an inspiring marriage.