Lily S. May–Life with Art
I began working on this wool felt appliqué in the spring and finally finished it (for now anyway) during this past month. At first, when I assembled the shapes, the piece looked like a scene of innocence. That didn't feel right to me because this time has not been innocent what with the arrival of… Continue reading Springtime During the Pandemic
The sky, it feels like freedom, like safety, like a reprieve from this hard time on earth, offering a different perspective that the birds know and inhabit, flying south to the lake in seconds, soaring and diving with grace. I imagine flying with the birds, unchained from fear and vertigo, into the dusk clouds as… Continue reading The Sky
There is a small, excellent museum in Toronto called the Textile Museum of Canada. It re-opened recently and I went there on the weekend to see the work of one of my favourite artists, Anna Torma. She does large scale hand embroidered pieces that are spectacular. Her exhibition is called Permanent Danger after a piece… Continue reading Anna Torma at The Textile Museum
I’ve been contemplating what to post for weeks. The artwork I’m doing now is not finished and I’m not ready to show it in its unfinished state. So I’ve decided to post a linocut from 1989 that I printed on some T-shirts. I had scribbled an image on a lino block and carved it following… Continue reading Face
I am working on another felt appliqué. In the meantime, here’s two photos I took in May at Evergreen Brickworks. I loved that the clouds and blossoms mirrored each other that day and that the red-winged blackbird stopped long enough to be in the first photo. The Brickworks is a reclaimed brick factory and quarry… Continue reading One Day in May
My mother's name was Bernice Barsel. She lived from 1922 - 2014. She was a prolific artist and it is through her that I took up creative work. I surprised myself earlier this week by thinking it would be a shame if her work went unknown and invisible beyond the circle of people who already… Continue reading My Mother’s Artwork
I made this felt appliqué over the past few weeks. I had started work on a linocut but developed a great deal of pain from the repetitive strain of carving the block. I then decided to put the linoleum aside, but wanted to continue doing some creative work. So I started designing an image for… Continue reading Speaking of Birds
I often cry while listening to the news during the pandemic. The news, not new, of horrible murder and racism in the United States, not unique to that place, of old people dying in squalid long-term non-care homes in my province, of the poor, the discarded dying more often than the comfortable. So far, I… Continue reading For the Nighthawks
As I’ve been reading over my writing, I’ve decided to put more of it on the blog. Here’s a poem I wrote in 2011/2012 along with an appliqué from 2005. Confetti The fortune reads: Because of your melodic nature the moonlight never misses an appointment. *** For years I liked to believe that I alone… Continue reading Confetti
One day last month, after making a few drawings, I scribbled a wavy line across a page in my sketchbook. I turned the page this way and that and the line became a face of sorts. I named it covid-19.
Arts of May 