RED

Spring still feels far away. A few blooms have poked up, but the days are cold and cloudy. I hope to be able to take some photos outside of recent work, just need the right conditions (bright but overcast, no wind, above fifty degrees). I am restless, between projects, looking for some kind of “transition” handwork to help me move to the next thing. I may just start stitching scraps together and see where it leads--or maybe continue my handkerchief stories.

Wisdom Cloak: The Grandmothers. 54 x 57”, wool, cotton, small objects.

Wisdom Cloak: The Grandmothers, was selected for the SAQA Global exhibit Color in Context: Red, juried by Judy Kirpich. The exhibit will premier at the International Quilt Festival in Houston this fall. I was inspired by some research I accidentally stumbled into about ancient, neolithic standing stones called menhirs or “grandmother stones” that are found still standing throughout Europe. Here is my artist statement:

The ancient ones, our grandmothers going far back in time, preserved a legacy of wisdom that lives on in women today. All of womankind is a sisterhood of time and place—our own stitches and threads connecting us to the past and into the future.

Reading List:

Long winter, lots of books…A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny; Now is Not the Time to Panic, by Kevin Wilson; A Dangerous Business, by Jane Smiley; The Book of Form and Emptiness, by Ruth Ozeki; and One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow, by Olivia Hawker.

Cranes Overhead

Over the last several days I have heard the calls of the Sandhill cranes as they move north. These huge birds fly in flocks, high up in the sky, but their sounds are loud and unmistakable. The daylight is longer and the snowdrops are in bloom.

I have been thinking about ordinary women—our friends, neighbors and colleagues—our fellow needlewomen. My ongoing series, Ordinary Oracle, is meant to speak to the wisdom and goodness in the people around us. Everyday we find evidence of women who have a vision for repairing the mess we have made of our world. We need to listen up.

Ordinary Oracle: Talsimanic Cloth, 46 x 32”

What I am Reading:

This Time Tomorrow, by Emma Straub; Nightbitch, by Rachel Yoder; The Cartographers, by Peng Sheppard; (all on audio) and as print books, Shotgun Lovesongs, by Nicholas Butler; The Rabbit Hutch, by Tess Gunty and Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver. I loved the Kingsolver book—I didn’t want it to end.

Apron Strings: Moments of Passage, was selected for Fantastic Fibers, Yeiser Art Center, Paducah, KY. More on that later.

Winter Stitching

Winter is the perfect season to hunker down and stitch. I find the process of moving needle through cloth to be very restorative. I have been working on a small series of works called Ordinary Oracle, about women who live among us, speaking truth and seeing visions of a better future. These are smallish pieces, with dense stitching.

Ordinary Oracle: Vision of Repair (detail) Linen, cotton and silk noil, hand embroidered and stitched.

I have been voraciously reading. Here are a few I have enjoyed lately:

The Marriage Portrait, by Maggie O’Farrell; Lucy by the Sea, by Elizabeth Strout (on audio); Less is Lost, by Andrew Sean Greer (on audio); Our Missing Hearts, by Celeste Ng (on audio); How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water, by Angie Cruz, and The World Made Straight, by Ron Rash.

I am able to read so much because I listen to audio books on Libby when I am stitching—it keeps me out of my own head too much. I still love to hold a book and always have a library book on the nightstand.

Holiday Snow Storm

Winter blizzard warning here, temperatures have dipped to seven below, a good time to stay indoors and think and sew. My solo exhibit Cloaked in Wisdom ends December 31 at the Visions Museum of Textile Art. So, today I am showing some collected details of these pieces, all in wool, hand embroidered and stitched. Each cloak includes a small primitive needle to remind us of our textile legacy, and the women who have stitched before us.

Suggestions for winter reading:

Lark Ascending, by Silas House; A Secret About a Secret, by Peter Spiegelman; Northernmost, by Peter Geye; The It Girl, by Ruth Ware; We Spread, by Iain Reid; Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro; The Night Ship by Jess Kidd and Dinosaurs, by Lydia Millet.

Warmest wishes for a joyful new year, and a shared hope for peace and justice in 2023.

Helen

Moments of Passage

Monday I will be shipping Apron Strings: Moments of Passage, to the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn NY. It will join many other art quilts for Quilts=Art=Quilts 2022. In the artist list, my name is linked to an interview with Davana Robedee from Q=A=Q 2021. I was beginning the Apron String series when we talked. The exhibit will run from October 29, 2022 - January 8, 2023.

Apron Strings: Moments of Passage 43 x 57”, cotton, linen found quilt, buttons

Moments of Passage was built on the foundation of a rescued antique quilt. The quilt top was too damaged to be salvaged, but the back was in excellent shape and an interesting pink color. I backed the poncho shape with a medium weight linen. The “apron strings” are long, improvisationally embroidered strips that were appliqued to the quilt (you can see me working on a few in the sidebar photo), and I added a contrasting dark section of cotton gauze to temper the pink. Then I stitched the whole thing together and added those quirky little tassles. That is the technical description. There is more.

Motherhood is a theme that many women artists avoid. There are many reasons for that, but I realized that I had spent thirty years raising children and though that was not my sole purpose on the planet, it was a sizable chunk of my life and of my energy during those years. So I embarked on a journey to explore the complexities of our relationships with our children. The metaphors of “tied to her apron strings” and then “cutting the apron strings” seemed an interesting place to start and I began stitching long strips of improvisational mark-making—lots of strips. I made two rectangular quilts (recently shown together in New Legacies at the Lincoln Center in Fort Collins, CO), and then experimented with actual apron forms (one of these was in Form Not Function 2022 at the Carnegie Center in New Albany, IN) but I didn’t feel these were the best expressions for what I wanted to say. Eventually I decided to create robe-like pieces, and I think these (there are three) are the most successful.

I was thinking about the time we spend with our kids, the important milestones, and all the other moments in between. We keep our sons and daughters close, hoping to protect them from dangers and disappointments, knowing we can never fully do that. And then, gradually we untie the strings and set our offspring loose into the world as independent adults. That is a huge oversimplification of parenthood, so maybe the complexity is conveyed by the rudimentary symbols and rambling stitches of the strings themselves—and all those remembered and forgotten moments of passage.

Recent Reading List

Lessons in Chemistry, by Bonnie Garmus; Dark Earth, by Rebecca Stott; The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, by NK Jemisin; The Crocodile Bride, by Asleigh Bell Pedersen; In the Distance, by Hernan Diaz; The House of Fortune, by Jessie Burton. *

* This is a sequel-like novel based on her earlier novel, The Miniaturist. I loved The Miniaturist and recommended it widely. I enjoyed this latest book as well. Read both!

The Last Wisdom Cloak

Earlier this summer, I finished the last Wisdom Cloak. I usually don’t work with wool in the summer, but I wanted to have all the pieces and photos ready for my scheduled exhibit, Cloaked in Wisdom, at the Visions Museum of Textile Art in San Diego, CA. That exhibit will be from November 12- December 31, 2022.

Wisdom Cloak: Above Rubies, 60 x 60”, Wool with small objects and cotton gauze backing

Above Rubies is the last Wisdom Cloak that I made. The title refers to a Bible passage from the book of Proverbs, telling us that the worth of a good woman is far above rubies. “She opens her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the teaching of kindness.” This last cloak is in loving memory of my mother, a woman who was wise and good throughout her days.

The red ground is a Northwest Orient all-wool blanket from way back that I got on ebay for a reasonable price. I did not know that the airline name was stamped on the back, but no problem—I used the other side. I felted it down in hot water in my home washer and pieced it into a triangular shape. Red is so hard to photograph well, but I took this out into daylight on an overcast day. Using my I-Phone, I think I got an almost perfect color match. The red just glows. The gold and teal blue are needle felted onto the surface, and the entire body of the cloak is covered in dense hand stitching. It was a labor of love.

 Here is a bit of what I have been reading:

Remarkable Creatures, by Tracy Chevalier; The Catch, by Alison Fairbrother; The Girl with the Louding Voice, by Abi Dare; French Braid, by Anne Tyler and The Mutual Friend, by Carter Bays.

 We are enjoying the pleasures of fresh tomatoes and basil from the garden as well as Italian pole beans, zucchini and loads of flowers for spirit lifting.

Communities of Stitch

A few bits of images from Experimental Hand Stitching.

I wish I was a reliable picture taker, but I find that I am immersed in the moment, and when it passes, I wish I had taken more photos. This happened last week during an amazing workshop at Quilting By the Lake. My photos are meager, but the experience was rich and full of discovery. Eighteen artists, embroidering and stitching together, making meaning with needle and thread. Thanks to the Schweinfurth Art Center staff, the other teaching artists and the talented participants for a wonderful week in Syracuse NY. Some amazing exploration of stitch happened, but more importantly, we so easily formed a community of artists, sharing a common interest—and a common thread. I left with renewed inspiration and a lot of new art friends.

Here is a new set of Amulet Bundles, these are for cutting strings.

My Reading List for July: The Chalk Artist, by Allegra Goodman; Blood Child, by Octavia Butler; and Lucky Turtle, by Bill Roorbach.

Haven: A Place of Safety or Refuge

TEXTILE TALK

Date – July 6, 2022, at 2 PM EDT (GMT-4)

Title – Conversations with the Artists: Haven

Link — www.saqa.com/textiletalks

Description – Join three exhibiting artists from SAQA Global Exhibition Haven for our next Textile Talk! Words and communication continue to be Jette Clover’s primary source of inspiration. Instead of writing with a pen or printing text segments, she is ‘writing’  with a needle on fabric. This process has created an even closer relationship between writing and textile. Helen Geglio will focus on her recent work exploring ideas about protection and how she has discovered the protective nature of slowly making stitches by hand. Anne Bellas’ art is mostly abstract, focusing on nonfigurative designs, surface design techniques, and bold colors. In these times of pandemic and economic and political instability, Anne’s goal is to lead her viewers through open windows, hoping they can experience a feeling of well-being, serenity, and inner peace.

I am so honored to be asked to be one of three artists speaking about works in the SAQA Global Exhibition, Haven, juried by Eszter Bornemisza.

Premiere Exhibition Location
International Quilt Festival, Houston, Texas, October 2022

Use the link www.saqa.com/textiletalks to take you to the registration page for this free Zoom event. Recordings will also be available on the SAQA Textile Talk video channel.

My talk will focus on the protective objects I have been making these past few years. After the recent few weeks of upheaval, hearings, and court decisions, I am even more mindful of the need to protect ourselves and protect the ideas and principles we value. Important things can be easily lost.

One More Spot!

There was a cancellation for Experimental Hand Stitching at Quilting by the Lake (see sidebar for details and links), so if you have been wanting to do some interesting hand stitching and find your own vocabulary of stitches, consider joining us!

Some Summer Reads:

Metropolis, by B A Schapiro; The Paris Apartment, by Lucy Foley; Let’s Not Do That Again, by Grant Ginder; Portrait of an Unknown Lady, by Maria Gainza; Book of Night, by Holly Black; and Perfect Little World, by Kevin Wilson.

An Old Pink Quilt

My friend Carol gave me a very worn, but beautifully stitched antique quilt years ago. The quilt top, in a deep pink calico print and a matching calico in brown, was shattered from exposure to sunlight— but the backside was in great shape and clearly showcased the tiny stitches of an unknown maker.

Almost the entire quilt was used to make three large, garment-like pieces that are part of my Apron Strings series. Because the top side (in the Orange Peel pattern) was in such bad shape, I lined each piece with a linen backing, and appliqued the “apron strings” onto the whole thing. Then I added lots more improvisational stitching, and a few lovely little tassels. Pink is not my go-to color, but it seemed to work for a series focused on mothering and looked great against some black and navy areas. The garment shapes worked better for me than a couple of earlier rectangular quilts.

The idea of some unknown woman’s tiny regular stitches, so carefully and expertly sewn, juxtaposed with my own larger, more irregular stitches, appealed to my sense of connection to our textile past. Meditative layers of slow stitch.

Today I am thinking with anguish about the mothers and families who lost children to a school shooting yesterday. It is hard to take in that kind of overwhelming grief and despair. And yet it happens again and again. How can we not despair about that.

Reading List:

Leave the World Behind, by Rumaan Alam; Gods of Howl Mountain, by Taylor Brown; The Secret Place, by Tana French and Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. Johns Mandel.