June 17 - July 25, 2026
Reception: TBA
Craft Ontario Gallery, 401 Richmond St West, Suite 108, Toronto
A two-person exhibition featuring the work of Judy and April Martin, a mother and daughter whose quilted compositions explore themes of time, domesticity, and feminism through intricate, hand-stitched textiles.
April Martin works primarily in sculpture, ceramics, and textiles. She sees her work as a revealer of connections, burnishing, sculpting and exposing the webs of associations amidst the ecology of materials that make up our daily shared experiences. She is drawn to sources of light, life and energy and believes that the human impetuous to create is similar to the energy of natural forces such as wind, weather and water.
She lives in Toronto which brims the Great Lakes region where she was born (Kenora), grew up (Manitoulin Island) and studied (Montreal, Chicago). She considers the reflective freshwater a collaborator in her process and thinking and chooses to work with it as a mirror to document both her soft and permanent shapes. Materiality is an experience of being alive, and in her work, she draws this reality to the surface of the textile and the clay.
Canadian artist Judith e Martin combines traditional hand stitch, local natural dyes and used domestic textiles to make poetic quilts about the interior world. These large hand-stitched textiles have garnered many awards, notably several from Quilt National, the most prestigious exhibition in her field. A long-time member of Craft Ontario, Judy Martin received the award for mid-career achievement in 2018. Her art is included in many private collections around the world as well as several public collections in Ontario, the Canada Council Art Bank and the International Quilt Museum in the USA.
Judy Martin exhibits her work internationally and holds two BA degrees in fine art; one from Canada (Lakehead 1993 chancellors medal) and one from the UK (Middlesex 2012 first class honours). The artist grew up on a large rural property in Northwestern Ontario. Long solitary summers spent in the shade of willow trees with art supplies and books nurtured an inner dreamworld that has since become her main subject. For the last thirty years, Judy and her husband have lived on Manitoulin Island in the Great Lake Huron.
judithemartin.com
