Paris

Dear blog friends,

I went to Paris last week.  

The weather was really quite mild for middle of February.  I love the avenues of bare winter trees in front of the elegant buildings.  Above is the Hotel des Invalides.

Our daughter Grace came with me.  

We figured Paris out together. 

Even in February, people sit outside to have coffee.  In the above photo, we are at the cafe attached to the famous English bookstore,  Shakespeare and Company.  We could see Notre Dame.

My friend Marjan came from The Netherlands for a day.  We have been friends for over 50 years.

The reason I went to Paris was to view the estrelas of Olga de Amaral (above).  I will soon write about Olga de Amaral's large retrospective at the Cartier foundation in Paris in Modernist Aesthetic.  

On the last day, I walked from our hotel to the Jardin du Luxembourg.  

I found a bench there and watched people walk past, children play football, elders play petanque or chess, and several sets of friends share picnics.

I had my stitching with me.  Stitching always helps me to feel at home no matter where I am, and as a bonus, it holds the time and the memories.  I will always think of Paris when I touch and see this piece.

Wish you were here.

love, Judy

while everything else continues, unexplained and unexplainable

What is there beyond knowing that keeps calling to me?

I can't turn in any direction but its there. 

I don't mean the leaves' grip and shine or even the thrush's

silk song,  but the far off fires,

for example,  or the stars, heaven's slowly turning theater of light,

or the wind playful with its breath;

or time that's always rushing forward,or standing still 

in the same - what shall I say - moment.

What I know I could put into a pack as if it were bread and cheese,

and carry it on one shoulder, important and honourable, but so small!

While everything else continues, unexplained and unexplainable.

How wonderful it is to follow a thought quietly to its logical end.

I have done this a few times.

But mostly, I just stand in the dark field in the middle of the world, breathing in and out.

Life so far doesn't have any other name but breath and light, wind and rain.

If there's a temple, I haven't found it yet.

I simply go on drifting,

In the heaven of the grass and the weeds.

What is there beyond knowing, by Mary Oliver 

from New and Selected Poems volume two published 2005

These images are from the road trip through northern and mid Western Wales that Ned and I did the second week of August.  

All of them were taken from the passenger seat of a moving vehicle by me.  

We enjoyed this trip together very much.

The feeling of being with him in the middle of this fairy world

will stay with me for a long time and I am grateful.

Sheila Hicks retrospective in Wakefield, England

grandes boules by Sheila Hicks

textile fresco 1969 in the background 

framed small studies done over 50 years, a rope piece in the background,
  evolving tapestry 1987 in foreground, all by Sheila Hicks

study

study Phare Rude 1978

study   whaler Malgorn 1978 

study Phare Inverti 1977

Pockets 1982 by Sheila Hicks, she stitched together pockets from a medical center in Jerusalem that had been used by patients who were undergoing treatment,
 they could store their belongings in the pockets 

Badagara White 1966 Sheila Hicks

Entrance to the Forest 1972  prayer rug series

grand portal 1974

Ned and I visited Wakefield last August just so that we could see this exhibition by artist, Sheila Hicks.

Images and several write-ups about this show can be accessed through this link to the gallery.

It was wonderful to see room after room of her experimental approach to textiles.  These kinds of exhibitions do not come to where I live in Northern Ontario.  I have to make pilgrimages to them.

My next pilgrimage is to see Magdalena Abakanowicz's exhibition of Abakans at the Tate Modern.  I'll post a photo once I'm there.  For now, enjoy the courageous approach of Sheila Hicks, an American living in Paris, who keeps working at age 85, and who is not afraid of colour and fun.  

Home from England

It's easy to say - trust in yourself.

It's easy to say - just do one thing that you're sure of and as you do that, you will start to know what to do next.

It's easy to say - plunge in, and then go slowly.

It's easy to say -  not to know but to go on.

Working intuitively.

I think that this kind of approach seems mysterious and a little scary, 

but it really is very much like life itself. 

we went to a family wedding in Newcastle on Tyne in the UK..  There were peeling church bells

We don't know what will happen each day.

It helps to follow routines.  It gives a sense that we do know.  

For example I always sleep on the same side of the bed.

But many things happen over the course of a day that you cannot plan for.

You just have to react.  

A typical example is a conversation.

You cannot predict what the grandson will tell you or what your old friend will ask you, but you will reply.  And it will be a good reply.

The conversation will continue.  Something worthwhile will happen.

You didn't know that this would happen.  You didn't plan for it. 

Same with my stitching. 

When I begin, I have a general idea inspired by the materials.

For the torso piece in this post, I was triggered by the faded indigo silk.  

I took the faded cloth with me to England along with a wool backing cloth and some pinkish toned threads.

I honestly did not know what would happen with it. 

I started at the edges and with couching.    

I liked how they became strong and also lively.

I drew the piece into my journal,

Then I looked at some photos of pre-history Newgrange 

and put some dots and zigzags into my journal drawing. 

The British Rail system is really good.  Ned and I spent quite a bit of time on trains moving back and forth between the north of England and the south west region of Cornwall.

Couching is one of my signature techniques.

As I was doing it, I thought about another favourite technique, the reverse applique dot.

I could reveal the white backing cloth using that technique. 

We visited the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield to see the Sheila Hick's retrospective.  

While in England I stitched when I needed to. 

In the middle of night sometimes and also on trains and planes.  

Doing one thing and then another thing

Liking something and repeating it 

Not liking something and not repeating it.  

This is the way I work.

Our elder daughter and her teen boys and our son and his wife went to the wedding too.

Sometimes 'mistakes' happen, 

and I have to cut things up or in half and start again. 

I keep going.

I don't know but I keep going. 

In England

Sometimes I have no words. 

image description:  mature woman wearing running shoes and a spiral necklace stands beside a monumental piece of textile art by Sheila Hicks.  

The artwork is entitled Moroccan Prayer Rug.

It was created by Sheila Hicks in 1972 and is five and a half metres high.  It is hand knotted wool.  

Part of the retrospective exhibition at the Hepworth gallery in Wakefield, England.  

Sometimes life is amazing. 

It's me

It's me who begins to cry or needs to lie down or put my face into the wind. 

My emotions overwhelm me.  I become weepy or cranky.

Are you alright? the kids ask

I'm fine.  It's just hard for me to put a meal on the table these days, I say to them.  

We need to eat outside because we are still distancing ourselves, but it's not the meal that does it.

Not really.

It's all the other things going on.  The travel to England for one.

The Air Canada lady says that Pearson airport is worse than we can imagine and to get there 4 hours before a flight rather than 3.

I don't want to face that airport;  Ned and I leave on Monday.

He watches me, so wobbly most of the time.  If I ask, he hugs me and says "it'll be fine". 

I played board games with the boys and lost.  There was lots of teasing.  I am a good grand mom.  

(It's not every meal.  Most of them are fine.)

I say to myself "You're fine!"  

But it's me.  It's not them.  

I read Maria Popova's newsletter.  Recently, she wrote about the writer, Iris Murdoch.

Murdoch understood that we act out a 'middle - emotion' because it is too complex, contradictory, and category-defying for us to know what we are really feeling.  Unwilling to fully live into what we are, (anxious, uncertain, tender and terrified creatures), we act ourselves into being, costumed in false certitude. 

I turn to the large soft organic cotton quilt I've nearly finished.  

It's a real thing and it is very fine.