Articulation & Material Girls in Saint John Arts Centre

'Articulated Materials: Bridging Waters' is open in the Frazee Gallery in the Saint John Arts Centre, Saint John, New Brunswick. This is one of 5 galleries in the building and what a beautiful building.

ReBecca Paterson, who lives in New Brunswick, was responsible for getting the exhibit into this beautiful space and she has done all of the work needed to mount the work. She will be giving artist talks in the gallery over the next 2 months.
Congratulations, ReBecca, on a job well done.

In this 3rd Canadian showing of work about the Bay of Fundy and the River Thames the viewer has to work a bit harder to place each work in its geographical location - if that is important to them - because both bodies of work have been combined. In the previous 2 exhibitions they were hung separately. It is interesting to see the differences.

ReBecca made a large 3D installation. Viewers are encouraged to touch the tactile, felted barnacles - an unusual feature of an art exhibition, already being enjoyed by viewers on opening night. 

 

 

 

The exhibition is on until January 10th, 2014.
If you are travelling through New Brunswick sometime over the next 2 months do drop in to see the work.
And please let your maritime family and friends know the exhibition is on.

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....

Something Fiber

Something Fiber

Articulation member, ReBecca Paterson, posted this YouTube clip on her blog as part of a class assignment in her Digital Communication class.

I am posting it as well for 2 reasons: because it is a gem of wisdom and also to test another way to get images into a post - a real problem I am having with my blog this month.

Thanks for sharing ReBecca http://somethingfiber.blogspot.com/

Back To Work

Now that Articulation's exhibition in the Victoria College of Art is over, I am back to work on my dissertation for my BA(Hons) degree studies. The subject of my dissertation is a study of my mother's embroidered afternoon tea cloths as I seek to explain why women embroider flowers.
I have put images of the cloths up on a board so it is easy to constantly refer to them as I read, make notes and write the first draft.

A friend lent me this fabulous book that is proving to be an invaluable support for my argument.

I still have the last of my work to store away after it was hung in the exhibition.
Yesterday I took 2 works down to Polychrome, a gallery in Victoria that is mounting the Victoria College of Art faculty show. Unfortunately I will miss the opening because I will be on the east coast of Canada.

I

I have started packing for that trip - my plane ticket and a juicy book to read.
The trip is this year's annual Articulation study session. We are exploring the Bay of Fundy. ReBecca has organised a jam packed itinerary for us. We are all very excited to be getting together again and to be beginning the research for new body of work. We already have some great plans for it.

Victoria College of Art

Here is more of Articulation's works presently hanging in the Victoria College of Art.
My 'Provisioning' in the Winnipeg body of work.

Gloria's 5 encuastic handstitched views of Winnipeg architecture.
On the right, ReBecca's 'Winter Willow'.

Miriam's exquisite bags, 'Tyndall Bag' and 'The Memory Bag', from the Winnipeg body of work.

I donated a work from my Arctic series for a draw. The president of the college, Professor Peter Such, will be pulling the winning business card from the basket tomorrow.
Tomorrow afternoon Donna and I will be taking the work down. Donna will be driving the Calgary works back over the mountains and we will post the other works home.

McMullen Gallery Workshops

Donna and I drove up to Edmonton yesterday for our 2nd workshop in the McMullen Gallery. We encouraged those who came into the gallery to sit down for a while to play with some design methods: doodling within a divided basic shape & notan (dark & light) - a Japanese based exercise where one uses the negative as well as the positive space in a design.

Donna is showing a simple but effective Notan design. Jane Dunnewold, a well known US textile surface designer, shared this exercise on her website, calling it 'The Expansion of the Square'.

This is ReBecca Paterson's 'Illusion of...' work in Articulation's Urban Textures body of work.

Vickie & I hung it in the gallery facing the busy walkway inside the hospital because it is such an eye-catcher to people on the move past the glass walls of the gallery.

After a 6:30 a.m. start to the day it turned out to be a long one because we had a tire blow out on the way back to Calgary so we didn't get home until 1:00 am!

Alberta College of Art + Design

On the last day of our residency in The Banff Centre, we all drove back to Calgary in the morning. Ingrid & ReBecca weren't flying home until the next day so once we had unpacked the cars, we walked over to the Alberta College of Art + Design campus. Fortunately we caught the Fibre Department's Fibre Fort-Night Exhibition. There we ran into Annamaria Zutko who is a final year fibre student. She had set up a loom for a community weaving project she had initiated. ReBecca, above, is an experienced weaver so she had no difficulty in adding to the cloth. Donna & I had never woven before so Annamaria had to give us a lesson before we could produce anything.

As we left the campus we went via the graffiti stairwell. This is the sign on the door before one enters 'The Stairwell'.

And this is what it looks like. It is a fascinating trip down the stairs.

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 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.

Banff March 27

Last night was finally the night we got to hear the compositions by the 5 composers who have been living in The Centre for the past few weeks. And here we are patiently waiting an hour before the performance for the chance to get in. There was room for only 20 of the general public. And we made it.

Each composer wrote on the theme of Evolution to celebrate Charles Darwin's 200th birthday. This image is of Vincent Ho's score. He won viewer's choice.

Andrew Staniland won the major prize and also the commission from an orchestra.
We all had a wonderful time. It was a most memorable experience. CBC will have the performance on their website for the next year so we will be able to relive the experience.

Today we hung some of the work we have produced this month while in Banff. We had our Open House in the afternoon and lots of people dropped by. Left- me, Gloria S Daly, Linda Mackay, Ingrid Lincoln, Donna Clement, Wendy Klotz, ReBecca Paterson.