In the Middle of the World: Artsplace, Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia September 7 - October 26, 2024

The naturally dyed, slow-stitched textile works of Judith E. Martin and Penny Berens inspire ways of seeing, sensing and reflection that are simultaneously outwards, at our surroundings; and inwards, at the landscapes within us.

 

Martin and Berens render time visible, and touch tangible, through the hand-stitched marks the accrue, map-like, across the surfaces of layered fabrics, forming worlds within their works.

Martin explores inner immensity, recording and reflecting upon the mutable nature of emotions, thoughts and dreams.

Berens looks outwards at and to nature, creating work informed by experiences with and within her ever-changing environment.

In the Middle of the World ushers audiences into the liminal space between earth and air, ground and sky, mind and body, knowing and sensing, static and shift.

The earth provides material and metaphor, the world is mother and muse, subject and symbol.

It is central to the artists' ways of seeing, making and understanding.  

Stirred by and searching for both meaning and feeling, the artists continue with and convey the gravity of vulnerability, bravery and humility. 

These works of stitch, natural fibre and plant-based colour speak of the intimacy of human connection that many are seeking out and leaning into amidst these turbulent, socially-distanced and tech-driven times; of connections to tradition  and the environment, and the urgency to renew them before it is too late; and of the importance of knowing and accepting one's location in the world.

All text:  Miranda Bouchard’s curatorial statement.  

Open! In the Middle of the World at The Douglas Family Art Centre, Kenora, Ontario

underfoot the earth divine, her arms wrapped round, my awakened heart, my heart , all by Judy Martin for In the Middle of the World exhibition

Three hanging sculptures by Judy Martin:  Time: Past,  Time: Future, Time: Present 
with Penny Berens wall piece, Woodland Berries

Hanging sculptures, My Heart and Her Arms wrapped round  by Judy Martin  Wall pieces, Resting between Night and Day, A Stream Runs Through It, The Edge of the Woods and Woodpeckers Live Here,  all by Penny Berens, and in the foreground My Awakened Heart by Judy Martin

Medicine Earth, Overhead the Sun by Judy martin, Resting Between Night and Day and the three small intricate stitched wall pieces by Penny Berens.  In the foreground is The Forever, the monumental hanging textile by Judy Martin made from four old blankets

The Forever, Eternity, Time Future hanging sculptures.  Penny Berens wall piece, Summer's Dance

Time Present, Time Past, The Forever, and Eternity installed in The Muse, Kenora, Ontario

Resting between Tides and Beaver Moon Dreaming by Penny Berens.  Eternity, Flowers Bloomed, and the Forever by Judy Martin.  Time Present in the background and Underfoot the Earth Divine in the foreground by Judy Martin

In the Middle of the World was installed at The Muse in Kenora Ontario at the end of March 2023.  It is now open for viewing by the general public, Tuesday through Saturday, 10 - 5 pm. 

The artists (Judith E Martin,  Penny Berens and curator Miranda Bouchard) will be in attendance on the weekend of May 12 and May 13.  There will be an artist talk on May 12 and a tour of the exhibition on May 13.  Please contact the gallery for further information.  807 467 2105

Thank you to Sophie LaVoie, curator of the Douglas Family Art Centre, for installing this work and for these photographs.  

Closing talk for In The Middle of The World now on Youtube

Melanie Girdwood-Brunton, exhibition manager at the Mississippi Valley Textile Museum beautifully introduces the closing question and answer session with Miranda Bouchard and the two artists, Judith E Martin and Penny Berens on the YouTube video. 

Michael Rikley-Lancaster the executive director/curator is generous in his closing remarks. 

The exhibition was very well received.  It will next show in Kenora Ontario at the Muse gallery March 20 - June 17 2023.  A catalogue of the exhibition will be published in January 2023.

Click on THIS LINK to view the video.

when my arms wrap you round I press my heart upon the loveliness that has long faded from the world W B Yeats

In The Middle of the World exhibition closed at end of day, December 18, 2021.  (slide show here)

The two person exhibition with Penny Berens / Judy Martin and curator Miranda Bouchard will be touring to Northern Ontario and hopefully Nova Scotia in the next few years.  A catalogue about this body of work will be published in 2022.  

The two pods on the right of image went into a private collection in January.  The collector approached Guildworks gallery and Guy de Carteret acted as an agent with the artist.  The titles of the two wrapped bundles are:  When My Arms Wrap Round (the hanging one) and My Heart (the floor one).  The hanging artwork on the left in the above image is entitled Time Future: Touch the Stars by Judy Martin.    

Photo by Paul Latour

Earthiness and Ethereality in Conversation: An Artist Talk

In The Middle of The World closes December 18, 2021 after a three month run. (Oct 2 - Dec 18)

The exhibition was very well received with many 'in real life' visitors.  Judy Martin, Penny Berens and Miranda Bouchard wish to thank the Mississippi Valley Textile Museum in Almonte, Ontario Canada.

The show was beautifully installed in one of the most unique gallery spaces in Canada.  

There will be an online zoom event at 2 pm December 18.  The link to pre-register is here.

Miranda Bouchard joined up with Judy Martin and Penny Berens in 2016 with the idea of creating an exhibition of new work by these two senior artists that would dig into their personal belief systems and express the deep connection each feels with their individual rural environments.  Judy is from Northern Ontario and Penny is from Nova Scotia.  

The artists wanted to be free to seek and explore new directions yet have a support system that kept them on track.  Miranda ,with her natural depth of understanding combined with her experience in art management and curatorial work was able to provide that kind of support.  

Miranda will lead the conversation during this zoom event, just as she has led the many conversations the three have had through online meetings and emails and face to face studio visits over the last five years.  The two artists approach their work from different slants.  

Judy's work is more meditative than descriptive.

She gets brave by looking at other fine artists' work and lives.

She believes that art made from cloth has power.

Cloth is familiar and our bodies understand it at a deep level.  

Time and timelessness combine in her work, and the marks she makes are evidence of lived time.

Her work is about the huge topic of being human.  She talks about the inner world a lot. 

Penny loves nature.  

Penny walks every day in nature with her dogs and observes it closely.

She works in solitude and allows her work to change as it goes along, but the basis remains her experience of living in a rural environment.

Her work is meditative and brave.  "No matter how you think about it" she says "you're completely exposing yourself in your work."

Over the years, Miranda has become quite familiar with the two artists and sees differences and similarities in their work.  She brought organization to the conversations and often used categories to clarify things.  

inner / outer /in between  

touch changes / heart changes / time changes

change  / open / share 

heart / head / hands

Miranda will lead the conversation on Saturday.  She has promised to ask some stimulating questions.  

Here are two examples: 

Q:  What keeps you curious?

Q:  Where does vulnerability show up in this exhibition?

These kinds of questions open up ideas and it will be interesting to hear what we say.  It will not be scripted.    The gallery has promised to record the conversation and share it with people who have registered, so that if you can not make the exact 2 pm date in this busy pre-Christmas time, I encourage you to still register and watch it later.    Here is the link again. 

https://mvtm.ca/mvt2/event-page/middle-of-the-world/

There will also be a live Q and A with those who attend.

All photos in this post are by Paul Latour except for the 4th and 5th ones (Judy Martin)

David Kaye Projects

David Kaye Projects has listed In The Middle of the World as an Event .

Although the David Kaye Gallery closed December 2018, the newly formed David Kaye Projects is a developing platform that David Kaye will use to continue promoting the many artists he has represented.  Judy Martin's 2017 exhibition is well documented here.  The photographer is Frank Myers.

David Kaye says: 

I am pleased to be able to continue working with this great group of artists, that grew over the years, by allowing this website to be available. I feel it is important as an archival online document that showcases the amazing efforts of all those with whom I worked and exhibited. The newly formed DAVID KAYE PROJECTS will be a developing platform that allows me to resume promoting these extraordinary talents.

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.  

Cloth of Time Opens in Halifax at Mary E Black Gallery, Halifax Nova Scotia July 12 2018

Not To Know But To Go On, stitched textile Judy Martin hangs from the ceiling in centre of gallery space.
 Cloud of Time, stitched textile by Judy Martin hangs from the ceiling in the window of the gallery. 
The Sun, The Moon, And Also The Stars by Judy Martin are also suspended and hang in front of the left wall in above photo

I love to stitch by hand.
I need to do it every day, or I do not feel settled.
I stitch for an hour or two every  morning before breakfast as a way of preparing my inner self for the rest of the day.
I schedule appointments for the afternoon so that they do not interrupt this quiet time with my self.

Daily Scratchings by Penny Berens hangs on right wall in above photo

I think a lot about love and things spiritual.
The tactility of those marks made with thread help me to communicate my ideas.
The gentle bumps of thread in cloth beg to be touched, even when we are in an art gallery where touching is not allowed, yet we still know how pleasurable the simple repeated stitches will feel under our caressing fingers.

Penny Berens and Judy Martin at the opening of Cloth of Time, July 12 2018

Touch has been called the mother of the senses,
because it is able to reach each of us on a more emotional level than the sense of sight.

Stone Pathways (left wall) and Cris Cross (right wall) both by Penny Berens

The largest piece in the exhibition, Not To Know But To Go On, addresses mortality and the relentless rhythm of time.  Fabrics that I've saved for years were couched onto artist's canvas with an entire skein of cotton embroidery floss each day, for three years.
Inspired by the Finnish rugs of my heritage and the writing of Agnes Martin, this piece makes the whirl of time visible.

Cloud of Time  by Judy Martin encourages light to shine through, like a cloud  

The large wall piece, Cloud of Time,  although created with the same techniques as the sculpture, has colours that are limited to that of a cloud filled sky and is not a journal, but a document of one year of time.

The Sun, The Moon, And Also The Stars, three hand stitched drawings on felt by Judy martin

The Sun, The Moon, And Also The Stars, are three smaller wall pieces that evolved through the practice of creating small daily collages.  Plant dyed velvet and other fabrics were stitched into individual designs on backings of wool felt.  These were then stitched together.  When I ran out of felt, I turned the pieces over and drew onto them with black thread stitched marks.

Susan Charles, director-durator of the Mary E Black gallery spoke at the opening reception

I think that the main reason I make things with cloth and thread is that the process heals me.
Creating something that was not here before gives me a sense of well-being.

Also, I consider my stitched pieces to be poems as much as they are drawings or sculptures, but I'll talk about that another time.
Judy Martin 2018

The exhibition continues until August 26, 2018
Mary E Black Gallery, Halifax Nova Scotia