Manitoulin Expositor review of the Stardust Exhibition

The Sky is Not the Limit when it comes to Creativity

Walking through the doors of the Gore Bay Museum and into Stardust, the new exhibit by internationally renowned fibre artist Judith E Martin, you are immediately enfolded into the arms of a very personal creativity.  Ms Martin is a visual artist who works in two-sided and three-dimensional hand stitched textiles.

While she was born and raised in a remote area of Northwestern Ontario, Ms Martin acquired a first-class honours BA in Embroidery from Middlesex University in London, England through distance education in 2012.  She and her husband Ned have raised their family at their Bay Estates home.

Ms Martin's work is exhibited internationally and is included in several permanent collections, one of which is the International Quilt Museum in Nebraska.  Ms Martin considers 'time' to be her main material, "both as how it is held within pre-used domestic wool blankets or table linens and also how it can be made visible through hand-stitching added over months, sometimes years.  The inner world is her subject."

There is no mistaking the immense amount of time, effort and love represented through the works displayed in Stardust.  The works are a road map through the many facets of her life, physical representations of the gains, the losses, heartbreaks and jubilation of a life well lived.

Ms Martin's work is familiar to many on Manitoulin island, having been a central part of community projects such as the Millennium Quilt which now stands as a permanent exhibit in the Assiginack Museum.  But many of the works displayed over the next few weeks in the Gore Bay Museum reveal an intimate portrait of the artist and her inspirations.

Several themes work to bind Stardust together.  The aforementioned 'time' features prominently, but so do circles and the role that wrapping has played in assisting Ms Martin in working through loss and mourning.

"Scientist/philosopher Carl Sagan said that we are made of star stuff, meaning that the raw materials of our physical bodies were originally forged in distant, long-extinguished stars" Ms Martin explains the thematic title of her latest show.  "He said, "The cosmos is within us.  We are made of star-stuff.  We are a way for the universe to know itself."

"Included in the Stardust exhibition are women's hankies and doilies, all of which have been given to me with the hope that I would use them in artwork", notes Ms Martin, adding that the exhibit has an intimate and generous quality because of these gifts and expressing gratitude for those gifts.  "I also hope that visitors will feel a connection to nature in most of the pieces..  Sometimes it is an obvious link, while other times the connection is abstract.  The use of the same techniques, colours, or shapes throughout the exhibition mimics what happens in the natural world.  Grasses, trees, ripples on a lake, every one is unique.  It is the repetition that counts."

Ms Martin also expressed thanks to Gore Bay Museum curator Nicole Weppler for hosting the exhibit.  "Nicole invited me to create an exhibit in 2018, even before the Pandemic and water damage closed the building for five years" she said.  "Things always seemed to get in the way of making it happen.."

Thankfully, the time has finally arrived wherein these works can be shared with Manitoulin Island. 

"Hand stitched work takes a long time to make and the pieces in this exhibition have been with me over a lengthy period, supporting me like friends or journals do," said Ms Martin.  "The time in them is another gift, from me to you.  There are several quilts in the exhibition.  Quilts read as comfort, safety, warmth and time; the time it takes to make them but also the time that allows the body to become vulnerable and give way to sleep and dream.  When we pull a quilt over us, it touches our whole body.  Time and touch are what this exhibition is about.  Textiles are tactile.  They relate to the body."

But no touching - please.

Well, except for one piece, a quilted blanket that sits waiting in a basket, ready to provide tactile comfort for those visiting the exhibit.  While time and circles abound in Stardust, the textures of the various textiles utilized by this amazing fibre artist exude the warmth inherent in the concept of quilt, taking things to a whole other level. 

But don't take our word for it.  Go and see for yourself.  Stardust will be on exhibit at the Gore Bay Museum until September 15, Monday to Saturday from 10 am to 4 pm.

This article by Michael Erskine was printed Wednesday July 19 in the Manitoulin Expositor. 

Toronto Star article April 11 2020

Toronto journalist Debra Norton interviewed Judy Martin in the middle of March for an article she was preparing to write about hand-stitching, specifically Soshiko and Boro visible mending.

The article was published in the Easter Weekend edition of the Toronto Star.  In the paper edition, all four images that accompany the article are of Judy's work.

Other artists included in this interview are:
Kate Theriault who teaches mindful mending in Guelph Ontario
Stacey Sproule who teaches it in Toronto and Julie Cathro-Silver who is mending her jeans with hand stitch.

Here is a link to the online article.

quiet zone 2 exhibition , world of threads 2016 review

Dawne Rudman, co-founder and co-curator of the World of Threads Festival in Oakville Ontario, included Lake by Judy Martin in recent review of Quiet Zone 2 from the 2016 festival.  Image by Gareth Bates co-curator above, text by Dawne, below.   

Judy Martin of Maniotulin Island Ontario, Canada, has participated in Festival 2009  Common Thread exhibit, Festival 2012: Continuum exhibit and Quiet Zone, Festival 2014  Solo Shows and Installations exhibitions and Festival 2016: Quiet Zone 2 exhibit.  

Lake is a hand stitched quilt made from re-purposed linen damask and hemp-silk dyed with indigo.

To read more about Judy Martin, take a look at our Artist Interview with her at this link.

Judy:    My practice relies on a vocabulary of archetypal shape and the resonance and repetition found in poetry and music.  I work slowly and in solitude, allowing the pieces to evolve and change through processes of destruction and re-creation.  Most importantly, the work is grounded by the phenomenological idea that the sense of touch is the most effective way to connect emotionally with others.

Mended World exhibition is reviewed on Day In & Day Out by Karen Thiessen

Karen Thiessen of Day in Day Out Blog has written three thoughtful reviews of the exhibition of the Manitoulin Circle Project panels last May at Homer Watson House and Gallery in Kitchener Ontario.

Here is what she wrote about Earth Ark (detail shown above).

Earth Ark has a visual weight. The title and visual elements hint at the Bible story of Noah and the ark, the rainbow as a sign of hope, and the dove going out and bringing back an olive branch. To me, the brown half-circle registers as an island. Earth Ark has a pleasing asymmetry with the ark/island off to the right.

I like what Karen wrote about the community aspect of the project.  The following is quoted from the second post, and I think that it really connects to the idea of a Mended World.  (the title of one of the panels and also of the resulting exhibition.

The MCP participants were a circle of people meeting in what was most likely a square or rectangular building and they made liturgical textiles of circles within squares: the gatherings mirrored the textile designs. While working together on textiles, heads are down and hands are busy, allowing conversation interspersed with moments of silence; this is a great way for introverts and extroverts to work together.

Karen's careful looking, photographing and writing about this body of work affirms it.  Thank you Karen.    All three posts about the project can be accessed from this link.

Mended World at Thunder Bay Art Gallery, a review by Linda Meehans, Thunder Bay Source weekly

 Judy Martin has been here before.  Literally.  Yes, originally she hails from Fort Frances in Northwestern Ontario, nowadays this artist makes her home on Manitoulin Island.

Curretnly, here in autumn of 2013 Martin's textile-and-time-rich exhibit entitled Mended World is on display in the third (main) space at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery.

Walking in, one moves clockwise through the space.  First on the complete left-hand wall hangs a 'living highway' of material looped floor to ceiling.  It consists of recycled fabrics cut and rolled into uniform 14 inch widths, each coiled with glossy embroidery thread, one hue and shade leading harmoniously into the next.  Standing close-up is one way to regard these stitches.  Standing at the far end at an angle produces a completely different visual effect, a whole new landscape.  The length of this is a mind-boggling 225 feet.  Title: Nor to Know But To Go On.

On the next wall, a similar Cloud of Time only 14 inches by 500 inches is a work-in-progress.
Next to it is Martin's title piece of the exhibit.
Close up we see all the stitches, either by hand or some by expert measurements with machine.  Stand back and we are regarding a pale sphere that could be planet Earth if one imagines uniform horizontal dots and lines of pale blue as a pattern; yet instead of the inky black of outer space?  An outer space of pure white is an interesting concept.

Can you imagine?  Anyone who's read Saramago's Idea for Blindness (1998 Nobel Prize for Literature) would know what I mean.

Then stand close to Earth Ark: note the stitches, the materials used.  The lace in Layers of time:  "too pretty to use, but no one can throw it away. I've been given all this material."  Peer close to Precious Water: eerie fot he texture of the water imagined from a satellite view of an earth.

When asked if the message of her exhibit concerns time and reincarnation Judy smiled in recognition.

"You're the viewer I've wanted to hear say that.  Yes, there are so many different kinds of time.  There's the length of it, as we can see in Not to Know But To Go ON.  We can see how long a year is, how long three years is.  Then there's that kind of circular time you're thinking about: that which we hold inside ourselves, the memories of our childhood, our mothers, or thoughts of maybe I could do that" and then we move off and away into some other dream or hope. Our private thoughts that have nothing to do with our daily lives, the here and now.

It's suddenly where time has taken us: could be what you remember, maybe what someone has just said.  This elusive kind, time that goes back and forth, back and forth, that's what leads to self-understanding.  It's like when you are in nature, all by yourself on a hillside looking out to the horizon; you see all those little wavelets and suddenly understand something different, are transformed just a little bit.  That's the kind of time I want my viewers to experience with this exhibit."

Martin's Mended World is here until October 27,. 2013.

A different review of this show is in the Kenora Daily Miner and News  .  click here.