What’s it like revisiting ‘Bare Rocks/Protected Buds’ today?

There are some pieces you remember with fondness. That was one of those pieces.

Sometimes pieces, they surprise you. There’s something that happens in the [process] that you weren’t expecting.

I mainly work with the subject of land and place, using the vocabulary of textile. That little piece came out of a series from a residency in Newfoundland. I was walking the coast every day. Sometimes I’d take fabric with wax on it that I could lay on the rocks and scrape to get almost a rubbing.

During that time, I was working in a batik technique. I came out of a painting background. I moved to Canada with a group of people working mostly in craft-based arts. I was trying to think of something I could do that was similar to painting. Batik filled that space because I could use tjanting tools [and] draw. I could paint the dyes on using paint brushes. The tools were familiar, so it made a nice bridge between painting over to textile.

Of course, I had a whole new tradition to learn about and research, which has been a lifetime of work.

Tell me more about ‘Bare Rocks/Protected Buds’.

All of those little black marks [seen on ‘Bare Rocks/Protected Buds’] are tjanting marks drawn by hand with a tjanting tool and wax. They were drawn on black cotton and then the color was discharged or removed.

‘Bare Rocks/Protected Buds’ and ‘Between Two Fields’ [are from the time] when I had just figured out how to draw into the wax and have the discharge go into the drawn marks so that you would see the drawn mark as a white mark on black instead of a black mark on white.

It took me a long time to figure out how to do that. I started using regular beeswax and paraffin, [which] was too hard to get delicate marks. Then, I tried potter’s wax. By building up layers of that on the fabric, I could then draw with a sharp object into the wax. It’s similar to printmaking or etching. [‘Bare Rocks/Protected Buds’] was one of the early ones. I hadn’t quite figured it out yet, but I was really thrilled to add that way of working to my vocabulary.

What’s your mindset like when working?

I start with making a surface, either the batik marks or the silkscreen marks so I have something to grip onto and work with; it’s not a white piece of fabric or a white canvas.

I’m not really thinking particularly of anything. Sometimes [the marks] reflect textures from the land, but I don’t think literally in that way. It might just come through.

Then I put the fabric up on my studio wall and look at it. Then I really hate it! I see all the flaws. But those are actually what I work with.

I almost consider my work as a repair project. Once I figured that out, then I don’t get so worried now when I put it up and I hate it; I know I can reconstruct, mend, repair. That’s what actually informs the piece.

Sounds like you have faith in your process.

That’s how I start working.

‘Between Two Fields,’ was from a period where I was working with the place that I live. I came out of Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., to a very rural community [in Canada] and started to notice the human marks on the land, how they collide with the natural textures and landmarks that are there naturally in forms. I like that contrast.

[I realized] that the four patch, the simplest of quilt configurations, was like the land I live on, which is four fields divided with two tree lines. I really liked that relationship. If you fly over, you see it very dramatically. It’s present in our cities that are grids as well.

I like the way fields come together and one’s barley, one’s wheat, the subtle differences. That set off a whole way of looking at land. I still look at my own place and think about how we all live on a stage and have landmarks that hold you there. I’ve lived on my farm for a long time, and the hill behind is an anchor. The body of water in front is another anchor. Those forms show up in my work. This long, lovely line of the hill. Might just be a line. No one knows it’s the hill, but for me, that’s where it came from.

At what point do you name your pieces?

I name them after. [‘Bare Rock/Protected Buds’ came from the name for] Newfoundland, ‘the rock.’ It’s not cold because there’s ocean and there’s ground cover. The things that grow there are low to the ground, these lovely textures over the rocks, like a sweater for the ground.

I always liked seeing in the cracks, the crevices in the rocks where things would start to grow. [The plants] could have this microclimate that would protect them enough to let them create a little garden in those cracks.

Sounds both hardy and soft.

There’s a duality. I often look at the larger geological form in a place. For example, looking at a mountain, you’re looking at it from a distance. You don’t really touch it with your body, you see it. But then, when you walk over land, your feet are walking on ground cover, you can actually have a very intimate relationship.

In many of my pieces, [there’s] a larger form that sets an anchor for the piece. Their intimate details are experienced when you go up close.

What informed your artistic eye?

I was always an artist. I never had a choice. When I was fifteen, I tried to be a veterinarian. My parents were horrified, going, ‘She’s not really very good in chemistry.’ They really were supportive of my art. It was always what I did, from the age of three. It was a part of everything. More than drawing, it was ‘making.’

My parents were into making stuff, too. My dad’s father worked in the Central Market in Washington, D.C. He was a dairy man. He sold milk, cheese, and eggs. My father’s family developed patterns for Easter eggs. As a family, every year, they painted eggs, which my grandfather sold in the market. We did this every year. He taught us this whole set of patterns. That really made me interested in pattern and repetitive marks.

When did you discover textile art?

I grew up with my grandmother’s and my great grandmother’s quilts on our bed. But I never thought of it as ‘art.’ I mean, it didn’t occur to me.

When I went to art school many years ago, there were no textile courses. I probably would have gravitated to it had it been an option. I was just on the cusp of women’s lib and discovering women’s art. It just wasn’t a part of my school.

[My mother took] me to the Jonathan Holstein quilt exhibition [at the Renwick Museum] in the 70’s. It started at the Whitney Museum. It was a big deal, [an exhibit of] visually stunning quilts from his collection. I was blown out by those quilts. They were like the Color Field paintings we were looking at in art school. They were almost better! It still didn’t occur to me that that was art, or that was something I could do. But I was totally taken by that exhibition.

[Later I] moved to Canada with this group of art students. We all wanted to get our art practices started. We had this idea to buy land together. It was too expensive in Pennsylvania. We were thinking of upper New York State. One of the people in our group had been on a canoe trip in Canada. He said, ‘If we’re going that far north, maybe we should think about Canada.’ He described…the petroglyphs, this important group of ancient carvings made by the First Nations people. We all just went, ‘Yeah, that’s where we should go!’

We had enough money to send two people up. They scouted for a suitable place for this group of seven, three couples and one single person, all artists recently graduated from art school in Philadelphia. They found this lovely little 50 acre farm and farmhouse with little outbuildings that could be studios and a barn. It was $13,000 so we each had to come up with $500. Difficult at that time, but we managed it.

There was a glass blower, a ceramic artist, a weaver, everyone was in craft-based arts. I guess I didn’t feel that committed to painting, although I did paint for the next couple of years. I started to make forays into textile and seeing where that would go.

My real commitment to textile came in the 80’s when I was part of a six-week program called the Fiber Artists Interchange in Banff, Alberta. They selected 10 artists to come and work. The fabulous thing about it, was every week they brought in a really well-known textile person. One week, Mildred Constantine, who was the head of drawing at MoMA, came. She ended up writing one of the first books on contemporary textile. Jack Larson came for a week. [They] made me realize, ‘Wow, you can do this and be an artist.’ That solidified that direction for me.

I’m struck by the story of you and your friends taking this awesome leap and moving together, fully committing to art.

I think about it now, I go, ‘Wow.’

It was very important that we were this group. The house we lived in, it was lovely. I actually live across the road from the original farm now. It had no electricity or running water, which was all the more exciting to us. Although, a few years down the road, when we got electricity, we were pretty excited about that.

How do you sustain a creative life?

Community is important. Being an artist is a very solitary endeavor. I like that about it.

I spent a lot of years teaching and that was a nice balance because I could go and see what other people were doing and interact with students. Very few artists make a complete living from their work, especially in the beginning.

I did a lot of teaching in Australia. I generally had a grant to then go and work in the outback and work with materials from those places: earth pigments, plant material, and so forth. I [also taught in] Italy, England, Switzerland, as well as the Canadian Arctic.

You’re not only inspired by your surroundings, but using the very earth to create your art.

Place is really important.

I do a lot of research. I really use museums. I would go and spend days taking notes, photographing, making drawings, and looking at the textile tradition.

Australia [houses] a lot of work with handmade, hand-spun string. [I learned] how to make string from the Aboriginal women. That is used to construct baskets and bags. The coloring material is usually Australian earth pigments and ochres. They rub them into whatever material they’re using. Dyeing fabric in a country with no water doesn’t make sense, but using these beautiful earth pigments made sense.

That led me to working in some of the ochre pits that had gorgeous colors. Each trip built into the next trip. By the time I’d taken a few trips, I was preparing fabric beforehand in my studio, heavily stitching cloth that I could carry out to the ochre pit and then work with the ochres, grinding them, and working them into the fabric that’d already been stitched. Then I could work back into it, scraping with a knife or taking some of the pigments off the stitches to bring them up. Using the materials directly from the place was very satisfying.