Fund raising auction for the new Thunder Bay Art Gallery

The Sun  by Judith E Martin 2018 
felt construction with stitch and acrylic paint  side b

  

The Thunder Bay Art Gallery is having a fundraising auction for the new art gallery building on September 29 2023.  This piece is one of many that will be on the auction block.  

The Thunder Bay Art Gallery is fundamental in Judy Martin's art career.  

To date, Martin has had four exhibitions at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery under the gallery’s regional artist program because she was  born in Fort Frances, part of the vast north western Ontario region.  The first was in 1984, when Judy Martin, Nancy Bjorgo, and Elizabeth Powlowski were featured in an exhibition entitled Recent Work. Then in 1991, Judith was invited to show her quilts in a  solo exhibition “I Will Remember You Until I Die” and again in 2004  "My Hand Sings Red".  In 2013,  the Thunder Bay art gallery mounted “Mended World", an exhibition that featured the four large meditation panels that were created during the Manitoulin Circle Project.       

The Sun by Judith E Martin 2018
 dyed cotton and velvet on felt, side a

 

Even  though Judy has moved away from North Western Ontario, she has never moved away from the North.   Judy, and her husband Ned,  live on Manitoulin Island in the great Lake Huron and they have done so for thirty years.  They so appreciate the spirit and the quiet in this very beautiful place, and acknowledge that it is indigenous land that has been settled by the Ojibway peoples for 30,000 years.

The textile in the auction, "The Sun",  is part of a trio of works that Judy made in 2018 as part of a daily practice.  Every day she would create a small collage on wool felt using a limited palette (in this case indigo and naturally dyed tan cottons and rayons which she then joined together into one art work.  The Sun is a two-sided artwork with indigo cotton and dyed velvet on one side, a drawing of black thread on neutral felt on the other.   The Sun measures:  34 x 25 inches

Best of luck to the gallery as they go forward with a new building in the waterfront of the Port Arthur area of the city.