Articulation, Bridging Waters Exhibition

Here is my Postcards From Fundy series where I looked at the history of human settlement in the Bay of Fundy through the textiles the people made, wore and used.

When people entered the gallery Wendy Klotz's "Lost at Sea" work greeted them. It was so moving to talk to a man who had worked as a fisherman in Nova Scotia in his youth.
Wendy's work is about the statistic that as a Nova Scotian fisherman you are 19 times more likely to die on the job than any other occupation. She knitted 19 fish.

Miriam Birkenthal's 'Fundy Algae' caused most people to put their faces very close to the work to more clearly see the details in her bead work.

Wendy thread painted a series as a memorial to the now closed Bay of Fundy lighthouses.
Barbara McCaffrey made a series of small 3-dimensional studies of bivalve shells, found as ancient fossils in the Bay of Fundy and still found on beaches today.

Articulated Materials: Bridging Waters Exhibition by Articulation and Material Girls

The 1st showing in Canada of the Articulated Materials: Bridging Waters exhibition opens in a month, at the Cre8ery Gallery in Winnipeg.

The name of the exhibition explains how the it came about and also it's content.

Articulated Materials - Articulation, a Canadian group of fibre artists teamed up with a similar group called Material Girls, based in London, UK, to produce separate bodies of work to be shown together.

Bridging Waters: Each group chose an iconic waterway in their respective country to research. Articulation chose the Bay of Fundy and Material Girls chose the River Thames.

The resulting bodies of work are both contemporary, personal responses to the water ways and they tell stories of the long history of human interaction with the physical environment.

The 'bridging' part happens when Articulation's work was sent to London and toured galleries over 2012, then was sent back to Canada with the Material Girls' work for a 3-gallery tour across Canada over 2014.

The 'bridging' also happens when the viewer makes connections between the two bodies of work.

Donna Clement designed the poster using an image of Ingrid Lincoln's work.

Both are Articulation members.

Fundy Study

I have started working on a new body of work

It began with an Articulation study week, where we explored the Bay of Fundy.
Here we are stopped for a roadside lunch

I have decided to explore all things red because it struck me as the dominant colour whereever we went around the coastline.
Fields of red-leafed low-bush blueberries.

The earth is red

The sea is red

I have started collecting red threads
It is a start....

Continuing Tour - CQA

To continue the tour of Articulation's exhibition at CQA, here are 2 works by Vickie Newington. On the left is the companion work to 'Ally' called 'Concrete Reflection' and on the right 'Big Sky Country II'.

Next to that is Vickie's 'Colours of History'.

On the table was my 'Nana's Garden' series.....

...and Miriam Birkenthal's 2 exquisitely hand embroidered purses and a 3 dimensional table piece inspired by a vigorously growing dandelion.

More 'Urban Textures' Work

I am working with these images to make another piece in my 'Urban Textures' series that will be exhibited with Articulation in the Mennonite Heritage Centre Gallery in September.

Along with other works in this series it is a tribute to those early domestic and professional textile workers in Winnipeg who played a major and usually unacknowledged role in the growth and financial success of the city in its early days.

If you know where to look when in Winnipeg there remains so much evidence of the once flourishing textile industry. Articulation did a study week in Winnipeg, lead by 2 of its members who live in the city - Ingrid Lincoln & Miriam Levi Birkenthal. As long-time residences they knew where to take us so we could discover Winnipeg's past for ourselves.

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.