spiritual power

 I love this idea:

That we who make art from cloth are making prayers.

That the objects we make give comfort and strength.

That our objects are imbued with ancient spiritual power. 

That we want to give people a sense of hope.  

Lottie Johnson and Amanda Pinath, curators of Unravel: the power and politics of textile art

I do not know and should not be expected to know

I make very simple, large constructed textiles.  All my work is hand stitched, a slow method that gives me solace as well as a place where I can gain perspective in these worrisome times.  

I will make an installation that pays homage to the beauty of damask.  I will highlight the special quality of this type of heirloom linen fabric that becomes more beautiful as it ages.  

Re-reading this proposal is making me have second thoughts about covering the old fabric.  I read Celia Pym’s book on mending yesterday and she said that she wants to show the story of the textile when she mends it and doesn’t cover everything old with new.  

I don’t know and I should not be expected to know at this early stage.  

Conversation with my daughter

You can only talk about your own experience and your own family heritage.  

Mending this bed quilt is more than re-claiming the linen damask backing cloth and more than extending its life.  Mending it in a beautiful, artful manner will honour the life-cycle of the flax and the labour that went into processing the fibres and the weaving of them.  

You are moving this linen from domestic work and allowing it to rest.  

  

Softer and Dreamier

 

Each day seems like a little boat and all the days are swept and tilted back and forth across an immense and distant bay of blue, grey, green.  

Lyn Hejinian

Neutral

 Choosing a binding fabric. Colour or neutral?  

An erotic space

The space between the lover and the beloved. 

Between I love you and I love you too. 

Approach and resistance. 
 

Beautiful Soul

 If we say anything original, we so often say it wrong and we will offend and hurt others.  On the internet this can be exhausting.  I must still get the work out, get the words out, get the stitches into the cloth.  

Remember the Beautiful Soul.  The dream of the beautiful soul brought into the real world that can carry us forward.  

All we have is our best idea.  

Sarah Gagnon. Pelican Quilts 

Suns and moons and a single star

 Starting from one’s knowledge of the beautiful effects of colours isn’t the same as copying nature mechanically and slavishly. 

Van Gogh letter #537 to Theo. Wednesday October 28, 1885

happy new year

winter is the  season for tending our inner garden
Rilke

old things

By following the materials and the process
for what I don't really understand
the meaning becomes revealed.
In this way the work is poetic.
journal entry today