The whirl of 2024

January 14  1:50 pm

February 16  7:16 am

March 14   7:22 am

April 9   8:09 am

May 15  6:54 pm

June 12  8:25 am 

July 14  8:48 am

August 16  6:23 am 

September 23  9:34 am

October 7  6:48 pm

November 10  7:12am

December 21 4:34 pm

I thought about using this space to show the interior of my house with all the finished and unfinished quilts piled up or unfolded across beds and chairs and on the floor and on the wall, because then you might understand how much work I do and how I am always busy ....but...

this constant view of the Wikwemikong peninsula across the water of Manitowaning Bay is truer.  

I stare out the window half the time it seems.   That colour full sky gives me an answer, even when I didn't really ask a question.  Here it is.  

Here is the answer.  Our lives are fragile and our timelines are speeding forward.  We must be kind to each other and kind to ourselves.

It often does seem like there is an urgency to get things done, made, out there, but really, there is no rush.  Don't rush. Go slow.   I wish for you, my dear and appreciated blog readers, the very best for the new year.  Be tender.  Be slower.  Allow softness and kindness to rule.  Let's care.

number twenty

On The Lake

Made in 1989 when we lived in Kenora and would take the kids boat camping on Lake of the Woods.  Lake of the Woods is a deep lake, full of islands.  I was always looking between the islands for an open, uninterupted view.

It's a quilt of stitched photographs.
Film photos - digital cameras were not invented yet.

In the boat, motor going, long trips, fresh air, the four kids eating boat candy,  I would take photo after photo of the sky and the water.  I'd take another roll, more sky, more water.  We went camping with them in that open boat that we would pull up on crown land.  I took photos of the kids too of course, and more photos of the sky and the water.

Once settled at home again, I would drop the rolls of film at the drug store to have them processed - or maybe it was the grocery store.  It would take two or three days to have that done.

Once I got the envelopes of photos, I felt as if I was a painter with a new palette.  Or a quilter with dyed fabric.  I cut the photos into one and a half inch squares and arranged them, stitched them to cotton with white thread.

With no islands.
Just horizon.

In 1992 I think, I was invited to bring some actual work to a gallery in Winnipeg - Ace Art I think.  It was an artist run space and the purchasing committee of the Canada Council Art Bank was planning a visit to make selections from our area of the country.  I didn't think I had a chance as my work would be viewed along with many well known Winnipeg artists, but I took this piece and I think three others. It was a two hour drive from my house into the city.

So now this piece is still in the Canada Council Art Bank collection, and they have updated their web site so that it is possible to view online.  This photo is much better than any I have ever been able to present online - since I was having to work from film photos and scan them.  Anyway - it's nice when you come across these kinds of things and I thought I'd share with you.

It's number 20 on one hundred quilts

you will be softer

when you meet that person
a person
one of your soulmates

let the connection
relationship
be what it is

it may be five minutes
five hours
five days
five months

five years
a life time
five lifetimes

let it manifest itself in the way it is meant to
it has an organic destiny

that way if it stays or if it leaves

you will be softer

from having been loved this authentically

souls come into
return
open
and sweep through your life for a myriad of reasons

let them be who
and what
they are meant

the text in this post is a poem by nayyirah waheed

I started this unfinished quilt a lifetime ago,
it's very soft. 

spirit island

Manitoulin Island is called spirit island.

Manitoulin has a long history of settlement by a spiritual people.

Traces of these people go back at least 10,000 years in the area where I live.

I am allowing the spirit of place to come into my work.

I live on Manitoulin Island and I am white.

The culture that is true to the place where I live is not mine and I keep that in mind.  

The spirit in this land is generous and alive.

I use a hoop to help me hold the cloths I stitch.
When I work at a large scale, I feel as if the hoop helps me to hold the land.
Place and the spirit in the land are held in my lap.

Like each of us, I walk my own path of life story.

I have always lived in northern Ontario and my work reflects the isolation, solitude, big sky and water views that I grew up with and continue to live with. 

 My relationship with this land is that of an immigrant and of a settler.  A Canadian pioneer.

I look to history books, novels and poetry about the time periods in Canada when the settlers came.

I am inspired to work with vintage domestic embroideries and linens and wool blankets because so many of them came over from the old country.

I try to help them and me have a dialog with the land here in northern Canada.

I think about what daily life was like for the women pioneers and look at material objects that might hold history of it.

It takes me a long time to figure out how to honour these old textiles and make them relevant within contemporary thought and aesthetics.

I used the house shape in earlier work and now I use the bundle as metaphors for self and for the women pioneers who came to Canada and specifically, came to Manitoulin.  

I use saved domestic cloths.

I use the idea that all of us look out our windows no matter what our culture.

 All of us look at the full moon and the stars.

All of us stare endlessly at the horizon.


The text and pictures are from the talk I presented last Thursday in London Ontario.
More here.

sculpted space within and without by Antony Gormley

I'll tell you why I became a sculptor.  What I care about most is making space.  Space that is within, yet also without.

I grew up in the 50's and when I was about 6 I had to have an enforced rest.  My bed was in a tiny hot space, so I told myself not to move.  I found that the space would get darker and cooler and larger, and after a few months I found that I looked forward to it.

That space is the place of imagination.
There are no things there.
It is limitless, it is endless.
That's the space that sculpture can connect us with.

The horizon.
Is art about trying to imagine what lies beyond the horizon?
Can we use the memory of a body to capture elemental time?
The tides.

100 of them
placed across 3 square miles at the mouth of the Mersey river
just outside of Liverpool.

Another Place by Antony Gormley
I visited last week (on my birthday).  The tide was going out.
The words in italics are bits I wrote down while listening to Antony Gormley speak. (here)

Time Piece

 

 When can we finally tell our stories?

 

And to whom?

 

Or is it better to just remember them?

Here, a stitch resist and indigo memory cloth

the time I've made
which is not a place,
which is only a blur,
the moving edge we live in;
which is fluid
which turns back upon itself
like a wave

Margaret Atwood,
Cat's Eye p 409

this post linked to off the wall friday

sneak peek

cloud of time
installed

 the second floor of the art gallery of sudbury

 I wanted a horizontal float for this piece

Ned helped me to achieve it.
The exhibition opens on Saturday.  Information here