In The Middle Of The World

We become aware of the body moving slowly, hands not touching.

Looking up with our necks bent back at wool blankets tall as cliffs, we become aware that we yearn to touch.  

 Knowing how it would feel if we did; we’ve touched wool before. 

We know how being covered in this medicine wool would feel.  Heavy stitched wool weighing on shoulders, over arms, on the length of our body lying under it.

How safe we feel.

If we were wrapped in this work, we might feel closer to how earth feels under a field of blowing grass, how water feels as it moves constantly in a quietly ruffled lake.

A small velvet cross in a taffeta square is a stone to hold onto and pray to forever. 

Bed quilts and blankets, hillsides and suns, seas and skies.

We become aware of the body moving slowly, hands not touching.

Perhaps we think that we understand time but no, not really. 

Yet time is the material in this body of work.

We can’t touch time in a gallery, but we know how it feels. 

As we move through, slow steps, hands not touching, we become aware of the body.

It’s not possible to understand. 

It’s only possible to feel. 

We can’t ask why this work was made, only know that it is.

Time is here in these pieces.  

Time is enfolded in your body. 

In The Middle of the World

Judy Martin and Penny Berens, curated by Miranda Bouchard

Mississippi Valley Textile Museum, Almonte Ontario

October 2 - December 18 2021  Tuesday through Saturday, 1-4 pm

Photos in this post by Ned Martin of Judy Martin's sculptural work.

Text in this post is Judy Martin's artist statement for the exhibition.

Penny Berens' wall pieces are on Modernist Aesthetic, please have a look.