Toronto

She was in a skirt and black tights - my way of dressing when I was her piano teacher.
I wore black jeans and Doc Martins.
We talked all the time.
I stayed with her until 7 pm.
We saw Douglas Coupland at MOCCA
the Edward Day - abstract paintings I didn't understand
Ontario Craft - sensorial objects I did
David Kaye - my 2 paradise pieces still up
a glass of wine in the Gladstone
another in a pub called Tennessee next door to General hardware gallery
It felt as if I was with one of my daughters.
She told me at the end
I don't know what you said but I feel so much better

50 years

 

I've been learning for 50 years.
I learned the couching stitch.
I learned the bokhara stitch
I learned the padded satin stitch.
They are stitches.
you have to decide
Do I want to learn and practice design?
or
Do I want to learn and practice stitch?
or
Do I want to do both?

Have you got 50 years?
Do both.

four layers

 

 

I just purchased an airplane ticket non stop - Toronto to Amsterdam.

Stories are always part of an object's life.
They are a natural by-product.

on the wing

aili's quilt back...
a square within a square

somewhere there are daydreams
eventually there are heirlooms

the world

"When I was an abstract painter I thought I was the well
and I thought the well was bottomless
but after 7 years I hit rock.

The form I was expressing were the same form, my form.
I realized that there is only one thing that is not reachable, truly infinite
and that is the world around us."

Avigdor Arikha
holocaust survivor, friend and illustrator of samuel beckett

starting over

 

in medieval northern europe
at beltane - (april 30-May eve)
the fairies are out

to protect their babies from being carried off
mothers hung rue, garlic, lavender and dill above the cradle

believing

 

how do you remember?
does time change the picture?
do you believe in what you see?
which fairy tales do you re-read?
do you make rituals?
do you use maps?
do you kill time?
do you have dreams that you hide?
do you live happily ever after?

douglas clark

the audition

 red wool inside

 auditioning indigo wool gauze for back

 or indian sari silk?

or procion dyed wool in loden green

I would not be able to do my work without a design wall and a journal.
Also the attitude of boundless time, as if I have all the time in the world.
Also my kitchen buzzer.
Also my digital camera.

a larger shelter

the craft of quilt making demands time and patience

a willingness to suspend results while pursuing process

Robert Shaw

drawing

imagination
daydream
small marks
empty spaces

a young moon

tender and shy
barely there in the sky

un-doing

There has to be un-doing in art now because there is so much culture weighing us down.
We need to undo, and then re-do,

bracelets

dad in hospital

gift

 

 

even when a gift is not alive it is treated as if it were
whatever we treat as living begins to take on life

gifts that have taken on a life can bestow it in return
a work of art is a gift

and circulates among us as reservoirs of available life

lewis hyde

my heart

I am so grateful that you have come
I will pour out everything inside me
Blessings on your eyes
Blessings on your children
Blessings on the ground beneath you
My heart is a ladle of sweet water
Brimming over

Celtic

the interior landscape of self

I find it valuable to think about the psyche as a landscape.
It's not that you get over trauma, it's somewhere in your landscape - maybe a swamp or a crater.
You can choose to hang out there, or pretend it's not there and fall in, or be poisoned by what seeps out of it, or be fully aware of its location but dwell elsewhere.
Rebecca Solnit

feel better

feel better

chance

 

 

 

Chance touches the very idea of freedom.  To give yourself over to chance is to embrace freedom, the unknown, total openness.  Exactly where contemporary art is going.  Claude Gosselin, curator.

little gatherings

Moths drink the tears of sleeping birds.
rebecca solnit

Aili's quilt

 

 

 

There is a marvelously obsessive nature to craft that allows a person to dive down through the ocean of everyday life to a seafloor of meditative making.

It is an antidote to what ails you.

Molly Peacock
page 288 The Paper Garden