writing rain...

the world is upside down and i'm struggling

there is a meanness that I don't  remember ever being as prevalent as it seems to be now, though I suppose if I sat down and thought about it I would have to say "no, it's always been there"

still, it feels worse

as a child, when my parent's were divorcing I worked through a lot of things by writing

I remember so many times my writing began with "I'm so mad..." and for the first paragraph I would write every hard feeling I had, words pouring quickly on to the paper,  all the frustrations, anger, sadness coming out in a torrent

after that first outburst, my thoughts were freed from that weight and the rest of the page would be filled with quieter ponderings, either philosophical in nature or about nature itself

seemed those were my two favourite subjects to write about

ever since then words are how I have always found my way and writing them is down is how I make sense of what I'm experiencing and how I'm feeling about it

when I set myself the challenge to write 100 Haiku poems about the Yukon for the 100 Day project I thought, among other reasons, it would be a good distraction from the woes of the world

and it has been that

based on nature and inspired by the Yukon, I have written 22 so far

the first subject I chose was rain

we didn't get a lot of rain when I was growing up - summers were rather dry, the Yukon being classified as a "semi-arid" region

because of that rain was special, and it still is a delight to me so it made sense to begin there

this first poem was inspired by a drive to Dawson last summer... passing by a still-burning forest fire, it was raining lightly, the land shrouded with a mist

in some areas of the burn you could see the green already emerging, a stark contrast to the blackened land

its reassuring how quickly nature recovers

this one is a nod to the early spring ritual of my brothers and I scrambling through the forest on a quest to see the first sign of Spring crocuses on "Crocus Hill"

in typical Spring fashion, there was almost always sun and rain and this poem is a remembering of that

and another favourite memory ... in the Yukon I grew up in, scattered showers were the norm and it was rare for the sky to be completely covered in grey rain clouds and to pour rain steadily from morning to night

 (it's a bit different now as the climate there is changing)

instead, there was blue sky, clouds and scattered showers

the beauty of that was often, when the grey rain was falling, a shaft of light would break through the clouds and shine on the rain, changing it from a dull grey to a sparkling rain shower

we used to call them "sun showers", as if thousands of drops of sunlight were falling to the ground

simple, quiet reminders of things I noticed that mattered to me growing up... 

the things I am writing about are not unique and will be common to many, especially those who have lived close to nature

they're simply about my experience and what I noticed

and pleasant reminders of that

a coming together

a few days ago I finished my little book using the pages marked with memory

a few posts back I shared how I did that - you can read it here:

"add water and stir" 

I wanted to paint something for the inside covers using acrylics ink - I tried for a feeling of water and ground, perhaps a patch of snow or two

these first two images are off-cuts of that paper

the covers were made with a piece of linen painted with earth pigments

I used small strips of linen as a resist when painting it so the cloth looks almost like an old wooden sidewalk, the kind Whitehorse was full of when I was a child so another small piece of relevance to the work

coptic binding - I've made several books using this method but this was the first where I felt completely at ease with the process, it went smoothly, and though the stitching may look slightly crooked  in the photo below it isn't, it's just an optic illusion

 

each signature has three folios (folded pages), the centre one is shorter than the other two

there wasn't enough paper for three full-size pages and this seemed like an interesting compromise

now the challenge is to make use of that design detail when I fill the book though I haven't quite decided how, either writing in the centre with some kind of drawing or painting on the background page or vice versa

the centre-most page of the entire book is an abstracted photo of waves on a favourite Yukon lake printed on vellum

 

not sure exactly what I'll use this little book for but I'm happy to sit with it and wait - the right thing always comes along if I give it time and space to arrive on it's own

in the meanwhile, the thing that kept me busy all last week and again the week just past was a project I started in the spirit of the 

"100 Day Project"

where you do a thing every day for 100 days with the potential of having created something (or things) of some consequence, gaining focus skills, and increasing your knowledge/skills of your chosen subject

I've been wanting to write since I was a child, often writing poems and prose for hours but never with any real focus

for the 100 Day Project I chose to write one Haiku poem every day for 100 days

today I completed my 14th poem, and am pleased to say I have worked at this every day, both in the poetry writing itself and also in planing and adjusting the plan... as I do

so, it goes like this:

100 poems, ten subjects, ten poems in each subject

all subjects have to do with memories of life in the Yukon

five small books will be made, two subjects / 20 poems per book

when they are all written and the books made I'll make a special box, in the Japanese style to hold them

I also have a sketchbook where I write out each poem and the memory/inspiration behind it

I'm writing them in the 5 - 7 - 5 syllables over 3 lines format

I won't bore you with all 100 but every so often I'll share a favourite or two

it's a lot of work but the reward is the doing it

as it is with most things

Also, I’ve learned a few subscribers on Substack that did not receive this post by email. On investigating, when I set up my newsletter a list of any newsletters that I personally subscribe populated in as recommendations. I thought that list would only appear on my Homepage, but it turns out that when people clicked on the Subscribe button to receive my posts by email, that list came up with all those newsletters selected. If the “Continue” button was selected it subscribed you to all of them - the “no thanks” for that was well below the list so is often missed and people continue without realizing they are now subscribing to a a raft of other Substack newsletters.

I’ve removed all of those recommendations so going forward that shouldn’t happen to people, “Subscribing” means you will only get mine. For those who unsubscribed from the unwanted emails/newsletters, it also unsubscribed you from mine. The fix for that (if you choose) is to go to Substack, click your name or profile image, wherever it shows on the page (usually upper right) , then settings, subscriptions, notifications and re-select mine. Technology is all well and good when you know what you’re doing! 

My Substack

something different

Saturday evening and a good but busy week is behind me

no time to take any of the painted cloth further as I was settling in to a new, fairly long-term project so I thought I'd post some pictures from my most recent foray into print-making

I did these about ten days ago... using an Akua 5" x 7" printing plate along with Akua black ink

I find the "subtractive" process enjoyable although I didn't get some lines nearly clean enough so there is definitely a bit of a blur to this one

mountains, water and foreshore

I'm very pleased with the ridge-line on the closest mountain as well as it's shoreline, but missed the shore on the mid-ground one - we could say there was a landslide that ran straight into the lake obliterating the shoreline...

a close-up of the foreshore shows a few logs piled up along with other sticks and grasses

also pleased with this area though I admit the wood pile was meant to be a rock pile

I'll take the wood though as it's far more typical of Yukon lakeshores 

this last edit has a shortened sky and I used a "Noir" filter - I think it makes for a slightly cleaner image

I also like the smaller sky area, it seems to reduce the static in the image

print-making is a messy business but a rewarding one and with so many techniques to try I'll be back at it soon, now that this week's busyness has settled down a bit

so what kept me busy all week?

I was writing poems, Haiku to be exact!

more about that next week...

Also, I’ve learned a few subscribers on Substack that did not receive this post by email. On investigating, when I set up my newsletter a list of any newsletters that I personally subscribe populated in as recommendations. I thought that list would only appear on my Homepage, but it turns out that when people clicked on the Subscribe button to receive my posts by email, that list came up with all those newsletters selected. If the “Continue” button was selected it subscribed you to all of them - the “no thanks” for that was well below the list so is often missed and people continue without realizing they are now subscribing to a a raft of other Substack newsletters.

I’ve removed all of those recommendations so going forward that shouldn’t happen to people, “Subscribing” means you will only get mine. For those who unsubscribed from the unwanted emails/newsletters, it also unsubscribed you from mine. The fix for that (if you choose) is to go to Substack, click your name or profile image, wherever it shows on the page (usually upper right) , then settings, subscriptions, notifications and re-select mine. Technology is all well and good when you know what you’re doing! 

making connections

setting aside a piece of the seepage-dyed fabric from last week, I quickly grabbed it back again

something in the way it landed in the basket caught my eye, a soft fold halfway down the cloth and immediately I thought of Martha's dress

for those that don't know about Martha's dress, a quick telling...

Martha Black was a prominent figure in Yukon history, having gone to Dawson during the Gold Rush, newly separated from her husband, pregnant and in search of a million dollars in gold, half of which was left to her by a prospecting friend who had recently died

if she could find it

she never did, but she stayed, remarried and went on to become the second woman elected to Canadian Parliament

among other things

she also loved to fish, hunt and collect wildflowers

the museum in Whitehorse has a dress of hers on display from her time in Ottawa

I had photographed it thinking there were some interesting patterns and lines in the embroidery I could copy into my sketchbook for reference, and I also liked the way the gathers of the skirt portion at the waistband resembled pleats

a printed photo of it happened to be laying on my work table one day when I was working with some grey silk 

one of the pieces I picked up was badly creased so I tossed it to the side where it happened to land on said photo - as I picked it up I noticed how the creases made me think of the neckline of Martha's dress...

and I was off

creasing pages in my sketchbook, adding simple running stitch

from that I cut swatches of linen and silk and began experimenting with different ways of making creases...

how to manage them when they connect?

overcast them or running stitch instead?

fold on the top or underneath?

or both?

endlessly fascinating

I took a larger piece of brown silk, folded a deep crease for a v neck and added chain stitching

the shibori-painted water fabric is a reference for her love of the Yukon river along which her and her husband George went in their boat, fishing, hunting, and searching for the wildflowers she loved so well

and so I come back to the beginning of this post, back to the cloth landing in a particular way

I grabbed this sketchbook, flipped to this page and laid the cloth where you see it

for reasons I don't know the colour of the dress was off in this print but it's a perfect match for my 

ink-painted fabric

and when I pulled up the original photo of the dress to show here, I again noticed the "pleated" effect of the skirt portion

which led me back to the ice

the basis of this work is centred on the overwhelming love Yukoners have for the land

it's a large territory with few residents, a population of just 46,000 for the entirety of it and most of the people who live there travel it widely, spending a lot of their time in nature, fostering a deep, fierce love for all of it

I have always said the people of the Yukon clothe themselves in their love of the land

wearing it like a second skin

essentially, I'm wanting to explore various elements of clothing in a way that references an element of the landscape by noticing these connections 

each to the other 

gosh I hope that makes sense!

today I found another photo of Martha, this time in a wool coat with a deeply notched lapel… I'm thinking mountains, a range of them... and the deep notch?

well, I suppose that could be the Chilkoot Pass, the one she hiked over… first though, there’s work to be done, with  ice, pleats, folds and tucks

On the Edge

It feels like I've been skirting around on the edge of a few things lately

new things, hesitating to jump in

thinking I need to get it all figured out before I begin

this week I gave up and dove in

I'd been painting paper and stitching on cloth but what I really wanted was to paint the cloth

I've painted cloth before though I've found it difficult to control the seepage

lately I learned that capillary action works well on dry cloth, and poorly on wet

any time I had tried it I had wet the cloth to varying degrees first

big mistake

I mixed black and Payne's grey ink, rolled up a piece of dry linen I had started ice stitching trials and set it in the ink, cut edge down

watching the ink seep up the cloth, I could see right away it was going to give me the organic edge to the ice I was hoping for

and the partial line of stitching shows me how effective that will be for the overall piece

the image below is a more accurate representation of the colour - the light these days is wreaking havoc on the colours for the camera

the success of this trial led me to want more

thinking that I'd like to make a Gather Bag of sorts, I cut a long rectangle of white linen

I marked off about 4" from each end and in those spaces I did a shibori-style series of gathers and tucks

next I lightly brushed white gesso across the centre 5" or so of the rectangle and when that dried I painted soft swooshing lines in an very pale grey watercolour

the cloth was then folded across the width, lightly rolled, and the cut ends dipped into the same ink solution as before

this time it took the better part of an hour for the ink to make it's way up the cloth

when the cloth was dried I removed the shibori stitches and gave it a good press with a hot iron

some lovely marks on each end, and again, that beautiful organic edge of the ice

next is to mark off the ice wind-rows and stitch them, adding texture to the in-between here and there

and think about how to add some stitch detail to the water area

the other thing I was on the edge of was moving my blog to a new platform

Blogger is giving me a bit of trouble now; my laptop is an older one and the formatting sometimes has a mind of it's own

as I've had a few people ask about an email delivery option I did some research and finally settled on Substack

I've spent the last two weeks familiarizing myself with the platform, getting myself set up, and doing a few introductory posts about what inspires me and my process

it is not, nor ever will be, a paid subscription

nor a "Buy me a coffee" option

subscribing only means that my weekly posts would be delivered to your email Inbox

if you don't wish to subscribe you can bookmark the URL and visit as you would any web page

I've called it "Thinking With My Hands" because so often that's what making art feels like for me

and for those who want nothing to do with Substack I'll still post here, for as long as I can, every Saturday

which will be the same for the Substack posts, Saturday night around 10:00pm 

if you are interested in checking it out the link is below

https://jillaynewickware.substack.com/

Enjoy!

round and round I go

it was the coldest, stormiest of days

blowing snow, the kind that sticks to your "nose and eyelashes"

a friend and I had planned to meet up at the riverboat and walk the Millennium Trail that winds it's way along the Yukon River, crossing it twice

a beautiful 4.5k trek through the forests that line riverbank at that end of town

when I left the house I hadn't checked the weather and it turned out nor had she and when we arrived at the meeting spot downtown we were somewhat surprised by the snowstorm that had descended on the town

being the hardy Yukoners we both are, we set out anyway

the photos I took that day have a beautiful softness, the thickly falling snow acting like fog for the camera

 the features of the landscape were shrouded, the snow deafened sound and the world seemed incredibly quiet

my favourite image of the day was of the riverboat

a few winters ago, on a warm sunny day, I took other photos of the boat

the one below is of one of the large cargo doors

(you can just make out the three of them in the photo above though it's really just the windows you can see)

I've always loved architecture and the lines of these doors along with the textured glass have a strong appeal for me

not to mention the weathering! 

 

last Spring I did a few drawings, a few ideas of ways to interpret the river, the winter ice and these doors, the things that struck me the most that winter

the other day I came across the remnants of a piece of work I had made several years ago - narrow strips of linen stitched together and then covered with white gesso and watercolour paint 

it was rather wrinkled so with nothing to lose I tore the strips away from each other and was rather pleased with how they looked; the paint had taken differently across the piece so within in each strip the colour was fragmented

it all reminded me of some fragmented ice trials I had done at the same time, with random strips of linen, silk and paper

 I began assembling small pieces of the torn linen into little collages, thinking of both fragmented ice and boards

 

next is a sample I had made last year, working on a  version of the cargo door based on one of the above drawings 

again, strips of linen and gesso, with watercolour paint to distress it a bit

the centre is done with paper and grid stitching, then the piece is immersed in water

once the paper is good and wet it's all rubbed and scrubbed until some of it starts falling away 

after it dried I coated the fabric, thread and paper with gesso and then added the paint

 

and in the vein of how we start to really notice things that relate to what we are interested in, one morning after dropping my grandson off at school, I came home to see the light in the garage spilling out the frosted black-trimmed windows

looking like the rippled glass of the cargo door

I'm thinking it has a kind of encaustic look to it

hmmm

and here I go again...  

it's all black & white

a few good days in the studio this week, 

feeling like I've finally truly found my way back

a fun session of painting paper with acrylic ink, achieving some interesting textures with a balled up piece of paper towel

I always find it interesting to take a "frame" and look at some potential crops

it's surprising what can be found in a limited view

the work I enjoyed the most came about from an experience I had last summer in the Yukon

arriving in Whitehorse on a rainy day last June, I noticed a raven perched on the peak of the house watching as we pulled into the driveway

they stayed there, in the pouring rain, as we unpacked my luggage... every so often it called out whilst looking down at me 

I stood in the rain for almost two minutes, watching it walk back and forth over the peak, calling every so often

finally I thought to take out my phone and take a photos, realizing later the last one happened to be a video

it's short, just one second, but the call is clear

this week, working on the Sound Module in "Sensing Place" I attempted to draw what I heard

drawing sounds is an exercise in abstraction and before I began I resolved I would do several iterations, each building on what I noticed in the first one

that day I only had time for two, tomorrow I plan to do a few more

my first thought was that the sounds were somewhat "circular" in trajectory, it felt like they were curving around, like a warble in the throat

making the mark in the way I was hearing the sound, looping around and down, dropping slightly to begin the next

a curving swoop then, not a circle

black ink, because the Ravens are

I chose a dip pen, wanting an uneven, scratchy kind of mark, like the wobbly warble sound it made that day

the first one had a little "tuft" spring out from the lower right, a little "jog" of the pen I think - it reminded me of the scruffy look of the feathers in the throat area so I worked to include that in each mark

some parts of the sound seemed larger, louder - more volume, so I varied the size of the marks

and then there was the persistent sound of the rain

("when the raven called me home" is a riff on the last line of the Spell Song Blessing" - you can listen to it hear https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg1xFYpXuWA )

the next version had me acknowledging the calls in the video have a slight space between them so this time I spaced out the marks, making some less complete than others to illustrate the variations in the sounds themselves

I also changed the rain - in the first one the long marks seemed more what I saw than what I heard

at first this felt a bit of a daunting exercise but I like how it makes me think about what I'm hearing in a way I never have before, bringing me closer to nature and more importantly, looking at these birds in a new light

they are the territorial bird of the Yukon, symbolizing knowledge and transformation among other things, and being greeted by one in this very engaging way was a truly transformative experience for me and one I'll never forget

fitting then, to experience it again in a new way