What have I been doing???

I haven't posted images of any of my work for such a long time. You must be thinking I have been lying around painting my nails or something.
I have been making stuff but I can't show it to you.
Articulation is exhibiting at the Whyte Museum, Banff Alberta in September this year and the curator, Michelle Lang, wants it all to be new work unseen by the public. As a result I am short on images to post here.
But here is something to make you smile and feel good.
A performance artist....a juggler.


Download  The Juggler. 

Articulation Exhibition at Whyte Museum

Catherine Whyte

An exciting event that has come out of Articulation's Women Rock project is an invitation to exhibit at the Whyte Museum in September 2011. Michale Lang, the Director and Chief Curator of the Whyte, saw some of our work while it was hanging in the Other Gallery in the Banff Centre last March. On the spot she booked us for an exhibition.

Eleanor Luxton

It will be Articulation's first curated exhibition. Michale will select work to go with artifacts and archives from the Whyte collections. For the past 2 years Articulation members have been researching women and mountain culture in the Rockies, much of the work being inspired by what was found in the museum and their archives.

Georgina McDougall Luxton

A number of Articulation members have been inspired by particular women who have lived in the Banff area over the years. These are images of some of the 'Luxton Ladies'. While other members are working with the concept of women and mountain culture and issues that are relevant today.

Annie McKenzie McDougall

It is an exciting and unique project where planning has started in earnest. We are presently divvying up all of the jobs involved in making this project happen. I'll keep you posted as things develop.

Take Down at the McMullen

This week Donna Clement & I travelled to Edmonton to take down Articulation's exhibit of Winnipeg inspired work that has hung in the University of Alberta Hospital McMullen Gallery for the past couple of months.

This a bag made by Miriam Levi Birkenthal that was a late entry to the exhibition because the courier person couldn't find the gallery so sent the package with the bag in it back to Winnipeg where Miriam lives. Miriam had to send it to Vickie in Calgary who took it up to the gallery when she next did a workshop there. Everyone was very pleased when this well travelled bag made it to its plinth in the gallery.

The works have now been packaged up and will be sent on to Winnipeg where they will be exhibited in the Mennonite Heritage Centre Gallery from September this year. This space is twice as big as the McMullen so Articulation members, as I post, are making more Winnipeg works as a 2nd installment. It is a valuable opportunity to have the time to develop initial ideas further. I suspect the new work will have a different feel to it, especially after the progress each of us made over the month as artists-in-residence in the Banff Centre.

After My Banff Residency

People have been asking me about my month-long residency experience. When they are looking for the short version tell them about the thrill of having my bed made every day, my room cleaned and tidied every day and my breakfast & lunch prepared for me with no cleaning up for me afterwards. It was bliss. My mind was free to focus on my work - you would think.
The longer version of the experience is all about how much I grew as an artist, how our group, Articulation, matured, and how much stimulus there was all the time all around the campus.

But, now I have been shot out of that time warp and I am in catch-up mode here in my studio.

The above image was taken at the Calgary airport when I took Ingrid to catch her plane back to Winnipeg. It is the luggage of Calgary's ice hockey team, the Flames. They obviously have an away game. The regular season has finished and the Flames made it to the playoffs. Calgary gets very excited when this happens. The first playoff game is Thursday "Go Flames Go" There are avid Flames fans in my household.

'A Soup of Chefs' or is it 'A Stew of Chefs'
I love the symmetry in this shot taken on the campus of SAIT, Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, well
known for the quality of training the Culinary Arts students receive.
I often see great moments like this when walking through the campus to shop at Calorie Counter, where the students sell the meals & meat they have prepared in class that morning. I also shop at their book store, stop in their numerous coffee shops and attend events. It is a great place to visit.



This is a work I successfully bid on during the ACAD Miniature Silent Auction. It was hand stitched in varying weights of black thread by Nauma Reigo (I hope I have her name right). I love watching people's reactions to the fur she strategically placed on the work, very provocative.

Banff Dyeing Days

While in residency at The Banff Centre, Donna Clement & I got to know a new type of dye Donna had bought, called Alter Ego. Some very clever chemist has developed these dyes to work on cellulose (cotton, rayon, tencel, bamboo) fibres & protein (silk, wool, soy) at the same time, in the same dye pot & produce different colours. Amazing & exciting. I made 10 stitched samples of 40 different fabrics & threads. Here are the first batch simmering away.

These are the results of our sampling. Each sample of white/unbleached fabric & thread was put into a pot with a different combination of the 5 dyes we had to work with. In each sample the protein fibres & cellulose fibres came out different colours. Wow.


Donna dyed a bunch of devore scarves, which is what the dyes were developed for. Our experimenting gave us lots of ideas for using the dyes in other ways.

Happenings at Banff

The person next to ReBecca is Jorie Adams. She is a special person. While she was heading up the music & sound department at The Centre, she suggested Articulation apply for a residency & gave us all of the information & contacts required. So we owe her a great deal. She has since retired & is enjoying working a few days a week in a quilt store while she pursues her textile passion. We invited her to have lunch with us one day and showed her our studios & our work up in the Other Gallery. One of Articulation's strengths is the active support from people such as Jorie.


We all attended Flossie Peitsch's Staged Four where she had modified parts of her installation in the Other Gallery & her studio was open for viewing. Darren Miller had composed music from the sounds pieces in the installation made when struck. Chris Chafe played the celletto & this was added to the music that was played over speakers placed around the gallery. Flossie used a soft mallet to keep suspended fluorescent tubes & strips of plastic moving & so making moving reflections on to the wall. She called it All Things Temporary Time-Lapse Installation and Soundscape.

I enjoyed the informal, graffiti-like dialogue that went on on a flip chart kept outside a meeting room. This week's one was a battle between the different art disciplines.
This was typical of the stimulation found throughout The Banff Centre. There was so much to see, do & hear; so many people to talk to and learn from; so many services & support to enable the artist to work on her own thing -time management turned out to be a much bigger issue than I had planned on having to deal with for the month while in residence.

Banff Memories

This is Erika Lincoln, an artist who works with electronic media, who was also in-residence for the month. She was part of a large group in a directed residency called Liminal Screen, where each artist worked on their own project but all focused on getting the electronic image off the 2D screen.

One afternoon, all of the Liminal Screen artists with most of the self-directed artists in residence at the time, opened up their studios. It was a unique opportunity to talk to and see the innovative work of so many artists in one place at one time.
Erika had a number of the parts of her complex installation available for us to see: a number of birds that moved & sang when one went near them, movement also activated a computer program to build a nest on the screen, a nest building machine one could operate (see image above).
Erika is one of those electronic gurus & she helped us out several times over the month when we got stuck, such as the time when we were all set to watch a movie on our studio computer, the popcorn was hot & we couldn't get the DVD to play. She came to our rescue.
The other special thing about Erika is she is Ingrid Lincoln's daughter. Neither of them knew they would be in The Banff Centre together, until they were getting ready to go.

We all went to so many concerts, performances, lectures and exhibitions during our month in Banff. This performance by Catherine Thompson was particularly memorable. She offered us hot Douglas Fir tea as we walked in to a small lounge with a fire in the grate & candles burning on floor-stand candelabras. Catherine sang & recited her own poetry while playing on musical instruments she has made. The evening was a look into her very interesting Skuld project.

Banff Mountain Building

I caught this mountain man on his way back from his coffee break. Just look at all of the safety equipment he has to wear. He looks like a mountain climber.

I zoomed right in with my little point 'n' shoot camera (so not a good quality image) to get a closer look at conditions on top of the mountain they are building. The billowing orange tarpaulins indicate how strong the wind is, which would drop the actual temperature the body felt. The low wind chill factor means exposed flesh freezes in seconds. Whatever the conditions, whenever I looked up to the top of this mountain, I saw these men working. Sometimes I couldn't see them very well because it was snowing so hard but they were still working.

Banff Memories

+Quality time together so Articulation was able to move to the next level as a successful textile arts cooperative.

+Time to share & learn from each other while we all speak the same language.

+Experiencing life in the mountains as contemporary women
+Developing empathy for the women who came to this place before us

+Appreciating The Banff Centre & its staff for all that it offered us

This is the new Creativity & Innovation Centre under construction. Every day I marvelled at the people who worked in all weathers to make this building. They looked as though they were mountain building, inspired by the one behind them.

Banff March 31

This is Wendy Klotz's work in Articulation's Loose Threads: Works in Progress exhibition on the Other Gallery here in Banff. 2 of the themes Wendy is exploring are Edith Cavall's story and the pine beetle problem. Wendy's specialty these past couple of years has been working with sheers. This month she has made a lot of felt then machined into it - to make a forest.

This is Donna Clement's wall. Donna spent 2 weeks of the month dying & screen printing backgrounds & motifs for her Burgess Shale & pine beetle studies.

Gloria Daly spent the month putting french knots on her glacier. She said glaciers take a long time to do their work so her glacier will take a long time to make. She had indigo dyed all of the cottons & silks she used in this work.
Today is our last day in Banff after a month long residency. We have talked about the tremendous growth each of us has experienced in our practices and we have noticed major movement in the development of the group and a shift in focus. It has been such a valuable experience we are already into the planning for a fall 2011 residency when we will complete phase 4 of our Women Rock project.

Banff March 30

Here is the work I put up for our Loose Threads: Works in Progress exhibition in the Other Gallery, Glyde Hall, The Banff Centre.

A deconstructed silk screen, whole cloth. I was thinking about harmony & balance while working on this.

This is Woman Mountain, part of my 'Re-gendering the Mountains' series.

A deconstructed screen, heavy cotton cloth that I will cut into to make a series for my Women Rock body of work.

Banff March 29

More images of our Loose Threads: Works in Progress.

This is Ingrid Lincoln's work. She is Queen of the Deconstructed Screen. She generously shared her knowledge of this silk screen technique with all of us. Deconstructed screen printed cloth features prominently in the exhibition because we all found the technique very expressive.

Ingrid is also exploring the cultural implications of TLBD (the little black dress).

Above and below in Linda MacKay's work. She silk screened her photographic images & drawings onto dyed cotton.

Banff Art Centre - March 28

Loose Threads: Works In ProgressSome of the work we did during our month-long stay in The Banff Centre, as self-directed, Leighton Colony artists-in-residence.
The Hanging -Ingrid, Donna


ReBecca

Linda MacKay, who arrived the day before.

ReBecca's wall -silk fabric & threads dyed using a variety of dyes & techniques. The grey & the draped pieces are hand stitched.