the road report

I've been taking advantage of the lengthening days and going outside after dinner, walking the roadways of my youth

twilight here is a beautiful thing, the sky of changing blues always tinged with various shades of pink and purple depending on the clouds and the dark silhouettes of the trees

I forgot just how many trees there are in this subdivision, built in the 1960s when people only cleared the forest in the spot where there house was to be built

everywhere you look tree branches are silhouetted against either the snow on the ground or the sky

below is a tree branch against the snow, which also looks blue in the fading light

too cold to do any sketching outside but I'm practicing my drawing skills inside, cozy and warm,

 copying sketches from a drawing book recommended by a friend:

https://www.amazon.ca/Drawing-Landscapes-Pencil-Ferdinand-Petrie/dp/1626543860

I love drawing by copying sketches from a book - it's almost meditative in a way and there's a sense of ease in it; I'm not trying perfectly capture a tree or rock I'm standing in front of so the pressure is off

it's more about practicing shading, angle, and pressure - playing with different pencils to see what they can do and not at all about finishing

I work on them for as long as I feel like and when I'm tired of it I move on

the other night I started a bit of stitching, inspired by the colours I was seeing and the landscape of lines: the outlines of the mountains, telephone wires, streetlights, trees, roadways etc. etc. 

not replicating anything, just lines in colours on a grey linen that reminds me of the dirt on the roads and the dark smudges mountains and hills where they aren't covered with snow

not finished but no plan for where it's going either

on some of the evenings walks I am noticing things that trigger memories - the other night, walking by where our old house was and the vacant lot next door (which could never be built on as it's solid bedrock), remembering climbing the trees and picking wild roses in summer and rose hips in winter, I found this little branch so I brought it home and did a quick sketch in a small journal I plan to add to in the same manner over the next eight weeks

"evening walk along the old ways, a twig gathered from 40 - 14th Ave., the smell of woodsmoke, the sound of barking dogs... closed my eyes and I was twelve, walking to Cheryl's"

above, the pattern tread of an atv on the sidewalk

"you know you're in a small northern town when..."

it's given me an idea to explore though, based on a radio fixture from when I was a child which is still done every single day

"the road report"

an update on the conditions of the highways of the territory - there aren't very many so it's a short update but a necessary one, especially in the winter

travel is a necessity, especially for people who live in the communities outside of whitehorse and with the only options being the roadways or light planes,  being prepared for travel in frigid conditions is key

  it did something else though, almost equally important

it emphasised the fact we were all in it together, there was a common concern and awareness of just how few people lived here and how spread out they were and how the roads brought us together

and it's still exactly the same

yet more to ponder

things I love

arrived in the yukon in the thick of winter a few days ago

out for a walk at twilight the next evening,  crunching snow under foot, we walked the streets of my childhood

  snow sparkling under the streetlights as if a hand had strewn a thousand tiny diamonds across the surface

i hadn't forgotten the crunching snow but the sparkling snow i had

what a delight to see that again

a friend who lives here still has always sent me photos from her daily walks - the two below were taken last November

she graciously allows me to crop and edit them and use them in my work if and as i choose but mostly i just edit them to zero in on the qualities of the landscape of my heart

rocks and water were a first love - the image below is of the yukon river shore as it winds it's way through the city

below, a cropped version, zeroing in on those rocks and their ice formations

next is the view from the same point as above but looking across the river instead of alongside it

the clay cliffs that run the length of the downtown area, a silent sentinel, the backdrop of the city

seeing green plant-life in November here, north of 60, is unheard of

a cropped version below - focusing in on the water

I do love the water here, the lakes and rivers - the ever-changing colours that i can't choose a favourite from

i do plan to centre some of my creative time here on the landscape, especially the wildflowers, but these two images will also play a part

i also brought a few other things to work on whilst i'm here

i've a hankering to do some small stitcheries with little animals, along the lines of this small bird embroidery i did a few years ago using a painting from the book 'A Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady"

there's an owl, a fox and a rabbit that caught me eye that i'll use as a jumping off point

as well, i want to make more tags similar to these from a couple of years ago

same size and shape but perhaps not as "fussy"

 a small handful of scraps and some strands of embroidery thread left over from previous work for whatever comes to mind

small things, easy to pick up and put down

a stitch or two here and there as time allows

i'm here for a couple of months i think but looking after my little grand-daughter as her mama returns to work so the days will be busy, busy but in the best possible way

colour

usually the title of a blog post comes to me first and the narrative builds from there

seems to be the other way around today... so the writing will unfold and the title will appear somewhere along the way

the new year began with me working on a large project for a friend so there has been no time at all really for my own creative pursuits other than a few small colour trials and some looking back at colour explorations a few years ago

"twilight" is still much on my mind and below are three of the colour trials I've done

still considering ruskin's description of "blue turning into gold" and inspired by the cover of the book I'm reading on the same subject, this first is with indigo ink and a fine gold metallic thread stitched in a flattened detached fly stitch to emulate ripples on water

 dark lines reminiscent of tree trunks

 next is a misty grey/mauve, another colour of twilight, gold threads again though straight this time, and a stitched tree - it's too literal for my taste so there's more to do on it

the last is smoky-plum, same straight lines for the metallic and also straight lines for the trees

a good beginning but as usual, not exactly what I want though I've been given a new idea to investigate which I think is very promising

this work, along with an email from a friend about her intended colour study pursuits with accompanying reading list sent me off to add to my amazon wish list where I was reminded of a book that was published in May of 2021:

Nature's Palette: A Colour Reference System from the Natural World

taking the colours and corresponding information from the book "Werner's Nomenclature of Colours", this new book includes over 1000 illustrations of the plants, animals and minerals Werner referenced

and what a book it is

the day it arrived I parked myself in an armchair for an hour poring over it, page by page, each more beautiful than the last

as I was looking at the colours and it's inspiration I was reminded of a colour study I began a few years back, when I first discovered Werner's delightful book

I wanted a reference based on my "tools": fabric, paint, thread and embellishments, so I devised a document on my computer I could print out and work on

below is the first iteration of that idea

Werner's book is based on colours of things: birds, animals, shells, rocks etc. but there are also things of the natural world that aren't in it such as fog, dusk, storms, etc. and those were the kind of colours that interested me the most

as I worked on this colour study I realized something was missing - my perceptions of the colours and the feelings they invoked were as important to me as the colours themselves so I created another template to include them and added headers to the columns 

I can't find it just now but it was laid out so that across the page it would be:

name, paint, thread, fabric, embellishment, perception

I think I want to re-visit that idea so will begin with a fresh list of words to think about in terms of colour and explore from there 

I can't think of a better way of discovering what my colour palette is

honesty

in my creative life there are things to learn, things to understand, and things to accept

at some level or another it seems i've been fighting with these concepts for most of my creative life, especially the latter

there's what is and there's what i want there to be

 disagreeing with that gap when it exists causes me no end of trouble, usually culminating in things being set aside for weeks, months and often years

case in point, these small pieces of antique linen with snippets of fabric and lace attached with tiny, almost invisible stitches

some I'm kind of pleased with, others seem a bit more orderly and contrived than i would prefer, and so they sat for more than a year... what to do?

take them apart and start again?  hack at the pieces so they look more tatty?

i used them as i found them, no trimming, just straight from the scrap box... the thought of hacking into them deliberately seems a bit contrived

and those with ordered layouts - take them off and just plonk them back on any which way? 

close my eyes and do it?

again, that would be even more contrived than just doing what i thought looked nice 

as well,  the neatness of whatever embroidery had been added - it's what comes naturally for me, to stitch neatly... the only way I can make my stitching look "bad" is to either purposefully make it messy or take scissors to it and mess it up that way

(and yes, i have taken scissors to my work to get a random appearance)

in looking at these small pieces the other day, trying to decide what to do with them in my ever-present quest to finish past works, a dawning realisation came over me, that they are very much "me"

not contrived, nor orchestrated... each thing placed where I thought it looked best - to showcase the particular beauty of each scrap... stitches placed just so to enhance a particular quality of the fabric or lace

planned and deliberate, yes, but not in a deceiving way, not to make any of it look like something it wasn't

there's honesty in this work and it's taken me until this exact moment, in the typing of the sentence above, that the final puzzle piece has jogged into place

it's all about honesty

when i fight what i do naturally my work is not be an honest reflection of me and all that i bring to it

that fight takes my work and makes it a lie

and therein lies my struggle these past months, years even

in not accepting what is, i was creating what wasn't and it felt hollow

a shallow reflection a best

and so the way forward has now become a whole lot clearer 

feels like a pretty great way to start a brand new year

the little things

christmas...

the big things in life seem to usually grab all the attention - often for very good reason, but it's the little things that bring us back to who we are

they're what settle us, bringing equilibrium to the see-saw of life

this time of year, when the days are darkest and life draws near, the seeking of warmth of comfort tend to be what's needed most

i don't have all the "To Do"s done but i have spent wonderful days with family and friends in the companionable enjoyment of simple small pleasures

visited with our son in edmonton for a week and during a break from studying, he and i did some watercolour painting - there were a few ideas on pinterest so i tackled the two you see here

quick and simple, seasonal but not overly so

yesterday was a baking day and for the first time in a long while i made butter tarts... my grand-mother's recipe, using currants, not raisins

i miss her most at christmas

the times we lived with them in the big house, excitement filling it from top to bottom, with five adults and four children under 8 years old, it was a houseful and my grandmother loved every second of it... 

then it was parcels that came in the mail after they moved away, loaded with christmas baking - the butter tarts were a favourite of all and they seem to bring me nearer to her than anything - except maybe fudge...

it's time now to take care of those last few things on the list, 

and then to put my feet up, and enjoy the quiet magic of christmas

and to wish you the best of the season

Merry Christmas!

old loves

if there is one thing I have loved since my earliest memories it is old and weathered wood

the yukon territory has a number of old and derelict buildings... cabins, stores and saloons hearkening back to the gold rush days... wherever gold was found buildings followed and in the 1960s, long since abandoned,  they were free to wander in

they fascinated me, even at a very young age... who had lived there, why didn't they now, what music played, the wind in the trees, an echo of distant chatter that whispered through the rooms... 

my hands on the walls, the feeling of raw, time-worn wood a tangible link to then

i'm taking this work slowly, finding my way as i go; the more i do, the more feelings that bubble up to the surface and the more i begin to understand what this place and these things mean to me, the influence they have had in what i like and how i think

still looking at photos, editing, cropping, adjusting colour and contrast - it's really one big paper shuffle on my worktable these days as i work on layering and collage

the image below is a digitally edited crop of a photo of the back of a quonset hut in whitehorse, yukon - down the alley from my grand-parent's house, i walked by it daily for several years as a small child

this photo was taken a a few years ago - it's been cropped and converted to a "silver tone" version of black and white which has enhanced the grain of the wood and highlighted some of the faded areas

the one below is cut from a montage of yukon photos printed on acetate

water, mountains and wood

below, the two have been layered with the acetate on top

i love this...

the way the lower portion of the wood almost appears as water; shining, sparkling light acting as ripples 

 the edges of the boards, a kind of wave action... the last impossibly tiny waves as the lake finally calms

next, a slightly darker version... the light is fading, twilight approaches

and now with the sky cropped and the whole lightened

wood as water less effective here but the sky takes on more luminosity 

the dark blues, sparkle of light, water and wave action, sharp lines in the sky... the effects of the somewhat muddled acetate print layered on the weathered wood

all of these things come together, a kind of "polaroidesque" sum of the parts, that is all that i love about the yukon

 all of my memories, layered in mind over the years and compressed into one enduring image

a picture of love

the making of me

it feels finally, as if the pieces have really started falling in to place...

the things i have wanted to learn have slowly but surely been worked at

bookbinding

calligraphy

making my own inks and paints

painting

and now printing

these have been my big five, long since desired, and though i'm by no stretch a proficient in any, i can usually muddle through to get the results i'm after and sitting here, feeling rather content about it all, i know the next part to master is the part pertaining to me

what i like

what i'm drawn to

the story i want to tell

for many years i've taken a few minutes here and there to think about what all of that might be and made lists in various notebooks

this morning, in looking at one of those lists, it seemed it would be a nice thing to have one place to write all that down in; a record of my preferences,  snippets of favourite fabrics and threads,  and notes about what draws me to them

i see small colour palettes,  in thread, fabric and/or paint... so often as i'm searching through a box of thread i notice one that somehow seemed to escape my notice up until that moment... in minutes i have added darks and lights, colours to enhance, greens for foliage, browns for wood - it's always the same, i play and then it all gets put away... how nice it would be to record it somehow

 a place to keep all the bits and pieces that, when cobbled together, are the making of me

of course it must be a book... it's always about books

a small book to take with whilst travelling... one that is not precious but still something special 

for years a little book sat on my writing table, a bought book with a tooled leather cover and the most beautiful paper inside

in february of 2016, a few scraps of japanese yarn-dyed woven fabrics were being shuffled around my worktable for the umpteenth dozen time when it occurred to me they could be stitched together in boro fashion and make an interesting piece of cloth 

i stitched the fabrics onto a page, made a note but then thought if it was such a good idea why not start right away?

and so i did

nothing else has been added to this book since that day which makes it the perfect choice 

next was to gather up some of the lists scattered here and there from the times i was thinking my way through what i like and what i don't

as these lists already have good homes they'll stay where they are but the enduring bits will be recorded in the new book and then continued in there

the lists above and below were written years apart and yet the essence is the same

this next page was an interesting one to do

can't remember exactly when it was done but i had decided i wanted a list of what mattered to me in my making from a thinking perspective rather than from a descriptive one

 this book is not meant to be a sketchbook in any way, not a how-to or a reference of ideas - rather, it will be a book of ideals

"a principle to be aimed at"

a place to jot things down as they are observed, to add a snippet of fabric to that has become a constant in my work, to capture that colour combination that is intriguing me though there is no plan as to what to do with it

this isn't a project, not a thing to spend days or weeks working on, just one place to keep the bits and pieces that reflect the "me" part of my work

hence the title

"the "making" of me"