learning with tim ely

in toronto

as in any city

weird things can stop you up short

 so on saturday morning i saw this

this was quite a surprise

 why would anyone take off these "shoes"?
leave them on the edge
of walk and ride?

nearby

a black squirrel was 

having a ridiculously delightful time

doing flips

  questioning MY motives

and then:

there's the japanese paper place.
sigh!
77 brock
were the workshop was held.

(tim's exemplar)

 working with master alchemist,

binder,

wonderer,

maker,

timothy ely.

 i love these marks,

 loved how he taught,

his use of language and respect for story,

felt challenged and heard.

the class was filled with very

very talented artists…

 i learned more about a passel of concepts

which seem to be 

knocking at my brain: 

"pay attention, knock knock"!

so then the ride home was

 an adventure

i just love union station

 as messed up as it is

(just try to find your way

after a blue jay's game and a 

city wide parade)

 home, in my kitchen i found this

 rock books

a drain strainer

empty jars

ink

so my sketchbook 

 taken out and examined
a few days later
after i'd gotten over the mistakes,
i had to forgive myself for those,

there are many.
but this little inlay is
a bit of paper decorated by tim
(it has sparkles in it) 

and i played with paste and color 

still unfinished, but i will slice the last
of the pages apart, paste up the corners,
endsheets,
and start using this thing.
the book WORKS so well,
it's a mechanical device for memory.
it opens flat and deliciously.
there are spare 
marks and bits for me to 
connect the day's notes drawings ideas paste-ins.
thank you tim.
amazing diving board for me.
and i like to swim.

plain weave

what has happened, is happening still in japan is horrible.

i watched aghast the b.b.c. footage on my computer (i live without t.v.)

i have checked in with friends, and so far people i know are safe, and so are their loved ones.

but oh my, that is not the case for many. i am attending with all my heart.

i wanted to say something about plain.

plain weave.

an old blanket. two lengths pieced together.

white warp, white weft. weft a bit yellower.

i took this out last night to use.

i won't save it any longer. it needs to be used. 

beauty in use. 

you fiberartists will notice many things about this piece.

i haven't begun to discover them all. the weft is, i think, handspun wool.

i don't know for sure anything; the size i can measure.

i can't tell you what was in the mind of the woman 

who sewed these lengths together. 

and hemmed them.

i can't know 

of the wool shorn, washed, spun, woven 

into a modest blanket.

warm enough for the north country fall,

with a quilt or two, for winter.

plain weave.

beautiful.

my favorite.

shifu and healing

i went to visit wendy in toronto last week. also to attend a talk given by master shifu artist hiroko karuno. i took the train from brockville. i was gone only a few hours. in that time i experienced many amazing things.

the AGO. an amazing collection. reinvented with these wooden ribs that vault to the ceiling of the old structure. i was here in 1975 or thereabouts. then i looked at the henry more sculpture. now i look at the group of seven and some inuit work. and wendy took me to soma. serious chocolate. heaven. i had hot chocolate that was like a meal. 


wendy and i went to the japanese paper place to hear hiroko karuno talk about her work, about a special installation she did last spring, and see her demonstrate spinning (twisting) kozo for her shifu.

 straightening paper prior to cutting

 opening up the sheets after cutting

spun kozo

 spinning (twisting) kozo

 skeins of naturally dyed kozo

a sample of hiroko's shifu

hiroko concentrating, with a smile

we got to know hiroko and her wonderful husband riding home together. the spinning wheel had pride of place in the front passenger seat. so funny because as any spinner knows, the spinning wheel takes as much space as it needs to! people can squish together, wooden spinning wheels do not!

you may remember this tapestry. it now is used by the children that wendy golden-levitt works with. this girl used my tapestry as a part of her sand table healing work.

 do you see her treasure? i am sheltering her. this young girl is anorexic, eight years old, and she almost died. 

she told me she doesn't need to look pretty anymore. "now i try to just look." i love that! wendy transcribes the children's messages to the artists whose textiles wendy uses in her work and places them in a special cairn on a table in the studio. when i read notes from s. or p. i am so moved. and i learn from them, too. 

and the velma book is still being used, it has place keepers in it, a stick, textiles. can't really be transported in it's current enlarged state, but once the children remove them, it will be movable. some work with it has been done by first nations elders and children. then it travels with wendy to the place she works with these wonderful people. i feel often like these pages that i made, these plants that became paper have much strength for people. more than i ever thought possible!

this trip was surprisingly centered around two other things, unexpected things. one was a deepening friendship with wendy, another was healing from an unsettling taxi experience. i came home with new ideas, hopes and dreams, friendship, taxi-induced headache, some books...and a sense of having been through a threshold. or a fibershed.