magic safety net

 When I need to feel better, I make patchwork.

Attaching nine-patches to each other creates a kind of safety net.

When people ask me what I'm doing, I tell them I am sewing magic squares.

This quilt top has been in the works since 2014.  Now it's done.

It was with me during the broken leg.

It helped me get me through 10 days of this still rampant global pandemic.

The ice has started to go out on the bay in front of our house.

I sat for a while yesterday and listened to the ice cracking

and found a heart-shaped rock.

an infinite changeless reality beneath the world of change

It's raining outside.
Our driveway has a slight up hill onto the road and it is ice.
Slippery wet ice.

I began a new journal today.
I fill one book a month.
When I die, they will be able to build a small house wtih the journals I've kept over the years.

Yesterday I walked on the road.
I used to love my walk but now it's such hard work.
I want to get back to loving it again.

I want to look forward to the moving meditation that was part of my daily routine.
Now with the leg, I look for reasons not to walk.

I long for the talking-to-myself-out-loud kind of walk,
not the counting-my-steps kind of walk that I do now.

Also, about the journals, if I didn't have them and the inner life they contain,
the poetry would be gone from my work.

This week I'm finishing up the three pieces I took with me to Mexico.
It feels good to be able to stitch again as much as I need to.

I've started to read the Bhagavad Gita, a book that Gandhi used as his personal guide.

Some say that this text is India's most important gift to the world.
It tells us that we are meant to be as much at home in our inner consciousness
as in the world of physical reality.

My copy is translated by Eknath Easwaran.  In the introduction he sums up the perennial philosophy of the Gita.

1. there is an infinite changeless reality beneath the world of change
2  this same reality lies at the core of every human
3  the purpose of life is to discover this reality through life experience

Representative stuff comes from out there.
Abstract design comes from inside.
The combination is what separates a work of art from the every dayness of experience.
It also gives the work an alien feeling that is mercilessly intimate. 
 (Frank Webb, painter)

journal paper stitched to an old table cloth
the deer in my driveway
my fragile life

life's a beach

Living near the water and sky keeps me in awe of the power and beauty of nature.  Watching the weather seems to put me into a reverie and I find myself pondering life and how fast time goes by.  Manitoulin's famous wildflowers are another source of wonder, and I am learning so much about them as I try to find original ways to paint them. However, my very favourite topic for paintings is my own children.  They are growing up so fast and I love to paint them near the water.  Like all parents I am concerned for their future in a world that is not always so safe or beautiful.

Judith Martin 2002

This winter I have been having more difficulty than usual with blogging.  Three reasons:

1.  I have been making a lot of new work - all in the rough design stage and my mind and heart have been with these new pieces.  Matisse famously said "cut off your tongue" when in the act of making art.,  Perhaps that's why I am at a loss for what to say here.

2.  Every day I've been I doing a little gentle art of swedish death cleaning.  As I go through my stuffed drawers and shelves and toss or give away something every single day, I am finding my past life and am flooded with memories. This explains why some posts are aboout my early work and the importance of motherhood within that work. (For example, the image and statementat the top of this post are from an exhibition I had 15 years ago in the local museum.)

3. I've been working on my left leg.  A yoga class, a swimming class, my phsyio-daily exercises. These things take me away from my work and blog. 

Thank you for continuing to read what I do put up here.  I appreciate your support.

the left leg moving forward

I make quilts as a way to understand myself.
I start with my own experience and my own dream world.
If you find connections with your experience or your dream world through my work, then I have succeeded in something very special.

My life, my dreams,those moments hidden in every day life, all rise up as I stitch.

I consider things from the point of view of a mother.

Beauty makes us human.
Beauty makes us more aware of what we could do and be.
We are bound together by beauty  (this is an abigail doan idea)
Images in this post are of a new piece that I personally find beautiful.

I stitched it throughout most of 2017, and the handling of it, the looking at it, the touching it repeatedly, made me very happy.  It put me into my dream world then, and it still does when I run my hands and eyes over it.

The Cloud In Me.  New organic cotton with old and new velvet reverse applique.  Washed and dried seven times.  The dark velvet cloth that fills the random holes was a gift, fifty years old at least and some of it dis-integrated in the laundry and was replaced with younger stuff.  The areas of bleeding from the nine dots of pink silk have left a rosy stain in the centre of the piece.  The scribbled loopy lines that catch and distract my eye and fingers just the right amount are embroidered, yes, but they are also quilting stitches and work just as hard to hold the piece together as does the close hand stitched grid. 

(The Cloud In Me here)

On my walk today I noticed that I still need to chant my steps.

I used to be able to think about other things during this daily walk,
but I am lame since this happened.  I use a cane.  I still have pain.

The left leg moves forward and I count until I get to 100.
Then I stop and stand.  I breathe deeply, and then step to 100 again.
Yesterday I did 400 steps forward, and then came home, 400 more,

Does the huge amount of stitching I do disassociate me from my body?
So that instead of healing me, (as I have claimed) it allows me to ignore my leg
.
I stitch by my window where it is comfortable, legs up, and watch the birds.
I go into my day dream mind.
My repetitive yet very intelligent hand comforts me as it caresses the cloth
I feel at such peace.
yes, I ignore my body for a while.

The birds come to the feeder.
The snow melts.

The repeated touching of hand stitch connects to a dream world of emotions.

We each have an immensity within and quilts help us dream.

news

the yellow wall paper, 1988  hand made paper, cotton, fuzing and stitch,
typed text from Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story 

I have a lot of news.
I am putting it into this single post.
All illustrations are stitched paper pieces I made when I was 32 or so. (sorry,they are scanned from slides and some are fuzzy}

"I kept still and watched the moonlight on that undulating wall paper until I felt creepy"

I am still experiencing a lot of pain and lameness in my left leg.  (bad news )

section of diptych Woman is Nurture  watercolour on paper, stitched to velvet, found text 1987

I am preparing a solo show for a commercial gallery in Toronto for this coming October.  The gallery is the David Kaye Gallery.  (good news)
I am making new work for it.  (more good news)

Grandmother's Paper Garden 1987, women's magazine papers stitched to cotton

I am included in a new book about the history of the art quilt.  The quilt that will represent me is from the 80's  here and here  I'm very thrilled to be included among such important quilt artists as Nancy Crow, Dorothy Caldwell, Yvonne Porcella, Chungie Lee, Michaael James, Yoshiko Jinzenji...on and on.  here is the entire list.  (good news)

The Mother The Child 1988 cut up watercolour painting and family photographs stitched to damask,
overlayed with ink drawing on sheer organza 

That reminds me that Martha Sileman's International Art Quilts: Abstract and Geometric came out last month.  (here)

the mother the child detail ( nine-patches made from photos of my childhood and paintings of tree branches)

 I saved the best news for last.

the mother the child 1988 stitched paper on damask , a self portrait

We have a new baby in our family.  Maia was born Thursday January 19, a little sister for Aili.

I chant my steps

I've been able to resume a daily walk.
I use a cane, I count each step, chanting in my mind
...twenty two, twenty three, twenty four.........
I don't know why I do that.
Each day I can get a little further without stopping to rest.
The act of walking has become a brave repetition of small movements
that strengthen me, ground me, and give me ritual.

I am sewing a line to celebrate my daily walk.
I've have been considering doing this for years.
Last winter, each time that I completed the walk, I moved a square of white linen into a basket, although I didn't know how or what I was going to do with them.  Some kind of path perhaps.

The repetition of day after day of stepping reminded me of stitching.  It was as if I was sewing myself to my local landscape.  I wanted to make something that referenced the running stitch I guess.
A walking step/stitch.

Then I broke my leg.
No more walk.
Instead, I looked at the horizon.  I sat on my deck.
I began wrapping those squares of white around around sweet clover.  Wrap wrap wrap.
The clover stalks grow as tall as me.  In the summer they smelled sweet.
I bent the branches, cut the stalk, and bandaged them with cloth and thread.
I thought that somehow, these could still represent me and my walk. The walk un-walked.

My daughter told me that they looked like bones.

go over, go through, go into what we already know
material objects open a door to inner ness

I spaced the white steps into a relaxed gait, using cloth that I have saved, full of memories.
My life path, a patchwork of time.

My path will measures the distance of the walk I can do now and I'll speak more about it when it is installed during the elemental festival in 2 weeks.

Gravity is measured by the bottom of the foot.                  Juhani Pallasmaa said that

I said thank you

On Sunday I visited Dad and he was in the middle of something.  He was going to see a woman about a movie and was by the door so I opened it for him and we went out.  He told me just to wait a few minutes, he'd be back.  I said OK and found some shade and took out my stitching and he rolled his wheels away from me with his hands very slowly, getting stuck now and then.

He has dementia and I haven't had a real conversation with him for months and months.  Granted, I didn't see him during the ealry part of the summer when I had that broken leg, but now I try to go in every other day.  He knows me, but exactly who he thinks I am varies.

During today's visit I told him that I had just come from paying the rent for my studio and was planning to start working there again.  He asked me how much was the rent, and then told me that he had a space he'd like me to have for free.  Does it have high ceilings? I asked and it did.  He said it would please him very much if he could give it to me, so I said thank you.

enfolded

a gift of time - linen wrapped clover
yesterday, today, and tomorrow

the small white cloths represent my daily walk
(before I lost the ability to do that walk)

last winter and spring I was making a piece about the importance for me of my daily walk on our country road
every day that I did that walk, I placed a square of white cloth into a basket

the white sweet clover is from our property
it grows along the beach and we consider it a weed
it smells so beautiful
it is as tall as me
the smell increases as the plant dries

art is a connecting force in our lives
it connects high-low, human-earth
it connects what we understand and what we don't
for ourselves and for others

my broken leg was a gift.
it gave me time and solitude
I didn't go anywhere for two months except to hospital or dr. appointment
I stayed on one level
I started going up and down (just 5) stairs on July 20, seven weeks after I broke that left leg

I stepped backwards into more space and less worry

what is it to become aware of the body?
it is to acknowledge that presence of death in life.
not a binary opposite but
enfolded at its very centre.  penina barnett

daily life and the news
they close us down
art opens us up again
we need art as much as we need food and shelter

these little bundles
about loss
about my body
about healing

bundled, wrapped, bandaged
step step step

Irene F Whittome

Irene F Whittome  First Words  1982  encaustic, plaster cloth on wood, collection of the National gallery of Canada

I started this post because I wanted to write about the stunning painting I saw by Irene F Whittome five years ago in the National gallery of Canada. (above)

sarah nishiura  big quilt

I wanted to write about the impact of that painting on me.  I saw it just as the gallery was closing and the guards hurried me past it, so I made a quick sketch from memory.  I came across the sketch yesterday and searched out the painting online, and found it on the National Gallery site.

root connection

Thank you Arlee for helping me to get Irene's painting from the National Gallery site.

It's really large (nearly 100 inches or 248 cm square) and in two parts.
It has high contrast - red and white encaustic, and it uses the archetype of the cross.
Why do some paintings hit you in the heart?

When I see a painting or a quilt on the internet that has that kind of impact, I save it.  I don't have a pinterest board, but like to visit the site every now and then and poke around.  How else do we learn what we like?

I am showing a few here that remind me (as Irene's does) to work with simple shapes and to consider high contrast.  Click on their names to see more of each artist's work.

ingrid press

Irene F Whittome is a Canadian artist who has been given one of the highest honours our country can give to an artist.  The Order of Canada.  Here is her web site but I could not find the painting from the National Gallery on it.  I did find many other really thought provoking works.

Irene's painting First Words uses the archetype of the cross.
The cross is just implied in the painting.  It is erased.
My sketch done from memory didn't erase the crosses!  In fact, my sketch was covered with crosses.
I was surprised to see the painting on the web site (see it with a quick link to here.)

ingrid press

This post is a bit of a ramble.
I thought I would also give an update on my left LEG.

I am now feeling much better, although I am still using a walker.
I had to have a second surgery on July 4 to drain what looked to be an infection.
As I heal from the inside out, I am being protected with strong anti-biotics.
Being mended.

sophie truong

Thank you for all your good wishes.