Remembrance

Floating World by Linda Finn   acrylic on canvas 24 x 30 inches

This post is dedicated to the memory of Northern Ontario artist, Linda Finn.   (1945 - 2025)    obituary here

It's also about some other late artists from northern Ontario Canada, a place I have lived for over 30 years.   I feel that each of them worked very hard to support art and artists in our beautiful, spread-out community.  I’m writing this post to  sing out their names with respect.  

Linda Finn's paintings, prints and assemblages were a constant at the Perivale gallery  here on Manitoulin. I sought out her innovative work whenever I visited the gallery.  

The War Letters Project in the Art Gallery of Sudbury  
'April 1917' is on the back wall.  Screen print on bible pages, acrylic on paper , photo etching and lithographs on paper, assembled in 2007 by Linda Finn

In 2017, Linda Finn had a solo show at the  Art Gallery of Sudbury and displayed The War Letters Project. an ongoing body of work that she had begun in 2007.  The project included a wide variety of art pieces; assemblages, paintings, prints and book-works and toured to eleven Ontario galleries over a period of years.  

detail of Linda Finn's assemblage of bible pages printed with repeated images of a soldier 

Each piece in the project started from letters that Linda's grandmother Essie received from soldiers over the two world wars.  The artworks are all shown with better photos on Linda's website (here).  While there, you might be interested in the 20 minute video (The Old Tin Box) that tells the story of this project.  

Essie's letter, monoprint with chine colle on paper, 2008 (detail) by Linda Finn

Now, I want to take a moment to mention three other artists who I personally mourn.  Each of them reached out to me and made me feel part of the art community of northern Ontario when our family moved to Manitoulin from Kenora in 1993.  I looked to them as mentors, although they were only a few years older than me.  They developed their careers before the internet which means that online images of their work are rare.  I’ve provided each artist with two links however, and more information and some images can be found if you click. 

 I apologize if this post seems too personal or dark.  Death is not talked about much.  But you know, I feel that I’m not actually saying enough about these friends of mine when I consider all that they have done for Canadian art.  I’m just naming them.  

Ann Suzuki   (died 2021)   her obituary here

ear hear earth heart by Ann Beam, acrylic on paper, 24 x 30 inches

Ann Beam     (died 2024)   her website here     

Ray Laporte   (died 2022)   his obituary here

My friends.  Remembered here.   I miss them and continue to be inspired by each of them.  

Now, in the spirit of memory and joy,  may I show you the prayer cloth that I finished last night?  

Perhaps it is more of a play cloth.  The transferred painting was done by my middle daughter, Grace, when she was five years old.  She painted the mermaid and the merman on paper which I then transferred with a hot iron to polyester fabric. I was teaching this kind of art in the schools at the time and we used the technique at home for birthday party t-shirt-making and the like.  The heart at the bottom was painted just once, then ironed three times onto the cloth, each time getting a little fainter.  I will be seeing Grace this weekend and will give her the quilt.  I think that the twins can use it for their dolls.  

Mermaid Quilt by Judy Martin,
heat transfer on polyester, dyed velvet, hand stitched, 28 x 33.5 inches  2025,
original painting by Grace Martin when she was five years old

dream, earth, luck, moon, soul

dream

Beginning again.  

Beginning in the middle.

Here is my sewing.

earth

Art is about relationships.

earth (other side)

Art may seem as if it is about nature or beauty, but it is about love.

luck

The more I study art, the more I realize this.    

luck (other side)

Because love is caring.  

moon

Some call it wonder.

patience

 Some use the term 'unselfing'.     (here is a link)

patience (other side) 

In order to do my own unselfing I take risks with materials.

And then I make things from what has become wrecked.     

rose

It helps me make sense of being alive.  

rose (other side) 

I have so many things to say right now, that I am not able to say anything.  

That's why I am beginning in the middle.  Here is some sewing.

Here are some of the small wool and velvet bundles I made during July.     

soul

I've been to Great Britain. Lots to say about that.  some of it here.

I'm going to Nova Scotia.  The reason is an exhibition, mentioned here.

Women sew as a substitute for words. 

Conversation with Susan Sontag in my mind

Me:  When I think about my work, I can't think of any reason to do it. 

         I can't think of any meaning to what I'm doing in it.

Only when I don't think about the meaning of it, or the value of it, or the importance of it, can I enjoy my work.

And I do enjoy my work.

Susan:  When we ask ourselves a question for a long while without getting a satisfactory answer, there is usually something wrong with the question.

Humans didn't ask art to justify itself until the late 19th century.  We didn't ask art to be useful or practical. 

Useful, necessary activities are different from voluntary, playful, dreamy ones.

Let's say that  practicing an art is the second type of activity.  Let's say that is why we are drawn to it.

Then it is a mistake to be demoralized because we can't justify it for not being the first type of activity..  It fails to be a number one type of activity, but it is not supposed to be.

The qualities of being voluntary and being free are what drew us to making art in the first place.  When we try to make art a number one activity we start to doubt our worth.  The worth of the activity and also our own personal worth.  It's demoralizing. 

Vagueness is not only a condition for art and for literature.

Vagueness is a condition for any life of the mind.

Vagueness is necessary for humanity.

As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh:  Journals and Notebooks 1964 - 1980                                                                                                          of Susan Sontag edited by her son David Rieff. 

Not from the Real World

Yesterday,  I woke up and spread my Dresden plate quilt on the table.

Then I made a schedule for the five days I have before the Birmingham festival of quilts show is picked up from my house on Manitoulin  Island, Canada for delivery to England.

Saturday June 22:   Mend these Dresden Plate appliques with velvet. 

Sunday 23 - Wash and block this large quilt.  Finish making all display sleeves.  

Monday 24 - Make a list of the fourteen pieces.  Include measurements, insurance values and updated titles and send it to the organizers.  Finish all remaining sewing.  Begin folding quilts with tissue paper and plastic bags.  Start packing the boxes.  

Tuesday June 25 - Finish boxing up the exhibition with care.  Label everything. 

Wednesday June 26-  The boxes will be picked up between 10 am and 5 pm.

At the moment, the exhibition is stacked on chairs around the house.    

I've worked so hard for this solo show.  I've worked 10 hours a day for over a year.  

I've been able to do it by working on three different pieces each day for one week, and then switching to three new ones the following week.  I've had to abandon a few that I just couldn't finish.

Most of the pieces are large scale. Most are very simple, and have grids of dots or circles.

They are abstract, folk-like.  They are not representational.

Not from the real world.  Not from the news.

The quilts in this exhibition seem to be a throw back to a simpler time.   

The quilts in this exhibition speak the traditional language of quilts.  

They use traditional patterns.  They use fabrics that come to hand such as sewing scraps, repurposed domestic fabrics, and pieces of clothing.

The fabrics in the Dresden Plate quilt have faded.  Some of them are worn out and need replacing.  Why?  They are all at least fifty years old.  The fabrics in the applique's are from my high school and early marriage sewing projects.  I unpicked the circles from the worn white cotton that was the original background of a quilt I made as a bride, and placed them onto new squares of silk, linen, or lightweight wool cloth.  

I remember that sensuous time in my youthful life every time I touch one of those fabrics.

Now, touching the velvet replacement patches will send me off into a different kind of dream world.  

I look forward to sleeping with this quilt once the show is done.  The new title of the Dresden Plate quilt is You are a Single Star.

C.G. Jung called the circle and square combination a metaphor for the inner life.

different perspectives

The view from a moving train is different from that on a platform, although the two viewers may be within meters of each other.  The experience is different in so many more ways than vantage point.

The noise, the speed, the shaking, the momentum, the humidity, the voices of fellow passengers, the smell, the temperature, the path traveled prior to that point, swamp the  experience of the train traveler.  Glancing at the person on the platform, how can we begin to see through their eyes?

Cultural clashes are like that.  but this relativism is a truth for all humans.  Even those who share the same culture, the same house, the same family, have starkly different experiences.  We are each on our own train and our views are peculiar to our own experiences.

But we crave understanding.  We need it for our survival.  As social beings we collaborate to solve problems that confront us all.  Wherever we are born and whatever language we speak there is a field of inherent questions that arises as a natural outcome of life.

What are we?
What should we do?
What of birth and death?
And no matter the diverse social constructs that form our reality, the answers from one lone traveler can always intrigue and be of use to another.

This is the spore that art can carry.  At the same time that we are never able to truly empathize with another human being, we can share at a deep level around the absolute pillars of existence that are not socially determined:  We are born.  We may love.  We will die.

At a time that even gravity is not a constant, our shared biological and neurological truths are common and infinitely unchanging.

The amazing text in this post is by Will Stubbs and is from his essay,  "art of the artless"  about the artist Nyapanyapa Yunupingu in the book Marking The Infinite: Contemporary Women Artists from Aboriginal Australia, catalogue for the exhibition curated by Henry F Skerritt.

The images are of  my new piece, Noble Tenderness, a different perspective of my Awakened Heart.  I packed it up gently and brought it to Toronto last week to deliver to Karen from Guildworks gallery, Prince Edward County Ontario.

There is also an image of a walk in the park near where my grand children live in the city.

Love You

Feel Invincible Sweetheart  2018  gift for Maia Wren Martin, born January 19, 2017

Festive greetings from our house to yours.
If I could give one gift, it would be this.  To each of you.

TIME

the most valuable thing. 
Thank you all who read this blog.
Love you xoxo

I am the boss of me

On New Year's day, I challenged myself to make stitched collages as a form of daily practice throughout 2018.

I began by cutting plant dyed velvet and flannel fabrics into archetypal first shapes such as circle, cross, square or triangle and stitched them to wool felt pieces.   January 1 is in the center with January 2 (the super moon) stitched to its top edge.  Jan 3, 4, and 5 lined up in a row that fit onto the side of those first two 'days'.  I continued spiraling around the center with Jan 6, 7, 8, 9 on the bottom, Jan 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, on the right side and along the top Jan 15, 16, 17, 18, and (not shown in photo below) Jan 19 and 20.  Thus the collage was built like a quilter constructs a log cabin block.

daily practice number one  January 1 - 20 2018 (shown in progress)

In the second piece, started January 27th, I used previous inspirations now abandonded (UFO's) instead of the flannel shapes.  I am still using the dyed velvet, the wool felt base and the log cabin method of arrangement.

In the photo above, you can see a stitched cross.  When i chose it I felt that it would be a perfect central hearth for the new construction, but as you can see in the photo below, that cross is covered up.

I removed the cross because as I went along, it no longer felt right.  I found some beautiful and moody cyanotypes of clouds from twenty years ago and they changed the atmosphere of the piece.  I went back to the drawers of the unfinished and pinned ten or so different false starts over the cross.  Some of those trials are pictured below.

couched circle

This is not knowing as method 

This is self gathered up

This is trust that I know what I'm doing even though I do not know.

embroidered crosses on curved piecework

Because we do not know what each day will bring. 

Life is an adventure.

a densely stitched light house

Penny Berens and I are in an exhibition together this summer.  The premise of our show,  Cloth of Time is our daily practice and the passage of time.  I will be showing not to know but to go on  and cloud of time and if these stitched collages work out, I will include them.  Penny is showing daily scratchings, criss-crosses and her stone pathways.  Penny is a master of observation, and her work is a record of what she sees and touches.  It connects us to the natural world. 

stitch resisted indigo

Mine is a connection to the inner world

paper pieced star appliqued to wool

My daily practice is about the act of making itself.

  

People learn about themselves through the things they make (Richard Sennett idea)

reverse shows construction on felt base

Because I am the boss of me I made my own guidelines.

One:  work relatively small in these collages
Two:  the pieces are separate from each other and can vary in length of time depicted, technique and materials.
Three:  once I start I need to be honest and work every day until I feel it is done. 

daily practice number two  January 27 - February 16 2018

My next wall piece will be slightly different than these two.

I'll begin it in a few days.

Art is an adventure, and I am the boss of me.