My quilts help me to be brave.

Last Tuesday Rachel from Breaking the Blocks / Crafty Monkees interviewed me.  She asks artists to talk about their lives and how their artwork helps them cope. I woke up that morning wondering what I might say. 

What are my "blocks"?  

How do I "break" them?  

One block would be isolation but the internet broke that one for me. 

Another could be the mothering of four kids.   Many people would say this.

Except that I truly believe that motherhood gave me a subject and a reason to create so it was not a block for me.  It was a door.

Maybe I could talk about the breakthrough that happened when I became aware of my inner world and how huge it is and how stitching gives that world to me.  

It's interesting that this interview comes along at the same time as I've been working on my memoir.

My recent self study gave me more confidence when I spoke with Rachel.   

1.  I grew up in an isolated rural place with lots of books and art supplies and plenty of solitude.

2.  I met and married Ned early and had the four kids.  We determined to raise them with natural beauty outside their door.  Around age 30 I discovered how I could use traditional quilt pattern as a code to tell the intimate stories that were happening in my life.  I did a lot of teaching of watercolour painting, art quilting and classical piano for about 20 years along with full time parenting.  It was a busy time. 

3  In 2005, we had an empty nest and this began a new period.  Digital photography.  The internet.  

In 2006, I started writing this blog.   I took a degree in embroidery from the UK.  I retired from in-person teaching.  Over the next twenty years I stepped back into solitude and into the inner world.  

4  I guess that I am now in the period of my 'late work'.  

The unavoidable fact of life is death, but handmade quilts challenge that.  My quilts will outlive me.

Human mortality is a major 'block' for everyone but those of us who create hand-made objects break that block.   

All the images in this post are of a piece that I thought was finished.  See it here on my website.   I cut it in half up the middle and put a lovely wool batt in between the two pieces.  I've really been enjoying stitching it during this beautiful month of May.  

The title will stay the same:  Sky With Many Moons.

The podcast is available where ever you get your podcasts. Rachel called our podcast The Art of Imperfection.  Here is a link.   

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.

the world

I couldn't tell one song from another

which bird said what or to whom or for what reason. 

The oak tree seemed to be writing something using very few words. 

I couldn't decide which door to open

they looked the same.

or what would happen when I did reach out

and turn a knob

I thought I was safe, standing there

but my death remembered its date.

Only so many summer nights still stood before me,

full moon, waning moon,

October mornings: what to make of them?  Which door?

I couldn't tell which stars were which or how far away any one of them was,

or which were still burning or not - 

their light moving through space like a long, late train - 

And I've lived  on this earth so long.  70 winters.

70 springs and summers, 

and all this time stars in the sky - in day light

when I couldn't see them

and at night when, most nights, I didn't look.

The text in this post is The World, a poem by Marie Howe (slightly edited : 70 instead of 50)

The images are of my stitching these past few weeks.

august sky whirl

Night sky whirl is the only piece I had with me while at the cottage for the month of August.  It was quite a big family time:  all four kids, their kids, their spouses, also Ned's brother and sister and also the brother's kids.

Also the 100th birthday of the building.

I returned to night sky whirl whenever I had a moment of quiet.  

There were 18 of us around the table for a few days if you include the twins who were usually on laps.

It is possible to find stillness.  Reading Calvin and Hobbs when you are 9 years old is one way.  

The Doubtful Guest when you are 6 years old is another way.  

This textile is made from soft, old, fabrics, mostly damask linens that have been dyed.  The back of the piece is in three pieces the colours of sky and water at sunset.

We made a pie.

We made another pie for the 100th birthday.

Also a cake for the 17th birthday.

We painted.

This is the most painterly piece I've made for a long while. 

Autumn Song

We closed our cottage on Thanksgiving weekend, just Ned and myself.

We got there around 2 pm on the Saturday.  It was very blustery. 

I started a fire in the kitchen stove and he started one in the fireplace.

We had an early simple dinner.

I had my holy Rothko piece with me.  

I am thankful for the angle of the sun that makes the water sparkly at 5 pm

and for all the pillows, blankets and quilts that I prepare for winter storage

and for my teacup of gin and for Eleonor Wachtel on CBC radio. 

Ned wore his red toque all day and night and I wore my undershirt.    

We have started into our 50th year or marriage. 

On my mind is the spring 2023 exhibition.  

To help me plan, I have been writing out the measurements of the walls   

and pinning different pieces up to see how they look together.

I want to choose a collection of work that is beautiful but also a bit raw.

I want my exhibition to be like a poem that reveals an inner self full of love and emotion and worry. 

I stitched my red Rothko piece by the fire both nights. 

Meaning in art often comes from the materials it is made from.

Repetition is a material.

The over and over gestures made by the body calms the maker.

The sight and feel of the repeated marks soothes the viewer.

On Monday we finished up and drove into the setting sun with the boat on its trailer.   

We were home in time to see the  moon rise.

and the next day's sunrise 

Why do you stand at the window abandoned to beauty and pride

the thorn of the night in your bosom, the spear of the age in your side?     

Leonard Cohen.

Circles, red thread, domestic textiles, ancient marks, 

whirling spirals, grids, time, dream and the vulnerability of sleep.

All of these are in this work of mine.  What do they mean?

And what does it mean that there are two-sides 

and that I work the marks from the back? 

The first thing I did in this piece was to dye it red.  

It is a full size linen damask table cloth.  I made holes in it with a kind of acid.  

This was in 2011.  See here. 

then in 2020 I planted velvet in each hole with reverse applique.  

A garden of dots arranged in a grid, like Agnes Martin's idea of perfection. 

"it is not in the eye, it is in the mind. In our minds there is an awareness of perfection."  

Now there is a layer of dark sheer fabric covering the reverse side. 

And I am stitching circles around the reverse dots using a running stitch.

The stitches get smaller and smaller as you go around.   

It takes time.

When I finish, I clip the sheer cloth away and the velvet is set free.  

The raw edges flame into petals that stand up from the base cloth.  

This work is about finding a way to meditate. 

These repeated circles help me to feel my own spirit.

This work doesn't address the outer world.

(There is a war going on that we fear any day will turn nuclear.

There are school shootings, children are being killed for no reason.

There are floods and hurricanes and fires that ruin people's lives for years.)

My circles do not fix these things.

My circles do not comment on these things. 

They do not try to convince people.

These circles are a way to find emptiness and calmness.

I was sad because I was alive.  I did not even know all the things I wanted, and that is what made me saddest.  If I were more religious than I am, I might say that the feeling was yearning for the place we came from before we were born. 

Perhaps instead, it is about the human search for perfection, the perfection we find only in great works of art and out in the landscape.  Sharon Butala

I think that we yearn for perfect peace, which doesn't mean being in perfect solitude, but for peace in the heart.  A peaceful heart in the midst of the multitudes, tumult, chaos, violence, sorrow, and beauty of everyday life.  We can never have that peace.  (Except in a work of art or in the sunset we have intimations of it.)  That is why we feel sadness.  Sharon Butala

 I will continue stitching these flowery circle stars.    

Carry on bravely my friends. xo