Articulation's Forest and Sea and the Place Between Artist Reception April 13th, 2019

Cedar Wind Drawing, detail

The Artist Reception for Articulation's 'Forest and Sea and the Place Between' exhibition at Portals Gallery, Duncan is on Saturday 13th from 3 to 5 pm.

Artists Wendy Klotz, Ingrid Lincoln, and Lesley Turner will be in attendance to talk about their work and they look forward to answering questions about the exhibition.

Tree Wind Drawings

My contribution to the exhibition and the Salish Sea biosphere story is a triptych of 3 drawings done be 3 different trees found in the Pacific Northwest coastal maritime forest.

Big-leaf Maple

Douglas-fir and Western Red Cedar

 By getting the trees to draw on a fabric I explored the connection between the air and the earth in the Salish Seas' biosphere.

I blogged about my process to make the first of these works here.

Understanding this place we call home is an ongoing area of interest for me and continues to be an area of focus in my work.

Articulation's 2016 Study Session

This year Articulation members collected in Winnipeg Manitoba to begin their annual 2016 Study Session.

Winnipeg has wonderful artwork on its buildings - old and new.

View from the rooftop of Mandy's studio building.

This rooftop building has stories to tell.

Descending

Wendy, Mandy, Donna

Go to the Articulation's blog  link here to see more of what we got up to.

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.

Articulation Opens At the Whyte

This weekend the Whyte Museum in Banff, Alberta, opened a new series of exhibitions, including one by Articulation

6 Articulation members traveled to Banff for the opening

There is lots of signage outside the museum

Opening speeches by Michale Lange, museum director, Gloria Daly, Articulation rep, and curator Mary Beth Laviolette

and demos by Articulation members: Wendy Klotz, Donna Clement

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....

Articulation Demos & Tours

After a successful opening night, Articulation members conducted tours . . . here's Wendy leading a tour . . .

. . . demonstrations . . . Ingrid demonstrated collage techniques while Wendy and I hand stitched on her creations. Audience members sometimes took over the stitching and were delighted when they were given a sample.

Donna and I did the tours and demos the 2nd weekend and gave tours to a number of different groups the following week.

People watching the demos practiced making backgrounds on burlap.

Articulation at VCA

On the left hand side of the upstairs room:
'The Day the Queen came to Tea' - mine and Donna's 'All That Glitters Is Not Gold'....

...and next to that my 'Cryosphere'.

On the end wall: my 'Black Rock~White Cliffs~Blue Sea' and Wendy's 'Frobisher' portrait.

Also, my 'Compass With Lattitude'. All in the 'Frobisher' body of work.

The Hanging

Friday morning Wendy and Bob hang the last works.

People coming to the exhibition in the Victoria College of Art, open the front doors and see my 'Reading the Past I' from the Badlands body of work.

Then they look up the stairs, to see Vickie Newington's Winnipeg - 'The Colours That Lie Within', which leads to the 3rd room of the exhibition.

Continuing along the corridor visitors see 2 works from Articulation's next body of work, Prairie, just a taster of what is coming next. These 2 works are by Leann Clifford,'Wheat' and 'Dirt Devils'( a poor image of this work, it is much richer in colour than shown and has lots of layers).

Narrative Articulations

The morning of the hanging began with looking at each of the spaces we had to hang work in the college then unwrapping the works and putting them in the rooms where they would would be hung.

The work was grouped into 5 bodies of work: Badlands - Dinosaur provincial park, Alberta, Frobisher - ice and northern lights and the Canadian opera 'Frobisher', Winnipeg - architecture in downtown Winnipeg, Rain Forest - forest ecosystems on Vancouver Island, LINKS - small work inspired by 3 words we each gave each other, a colour, a material and an inspiration.
We also had 2 works from our next body of work - Farm - a study of the Saskatchewan prairies and farm life.
The 3 Articulation members had their wonderful husbands to help with the hanging.

Barbara McCaffrey, the Textile Arts member of the College Advisory Committee and Professor Peter Such, President of the college, worked together with Nancy Ruffolo, Vice President, to produce a catalogue for the exhibition. Barbara also produced all of the labels for the 60 works.

Derek and Wendy during our welcome coffee break mid-afternoon.

Victoria College of Art Exhibition

The post office delivered more art work yesterday. This morning I have been gathering up all of the things we will need to hang the show.
Wendy and Derek will be in the middle of the Rockies at the moment as they drive over to the island today.
I am about to go out to the airport to pick up Ingrid and Bob who are flying to the island.

I have also spent the morning planning the exhibition layout.
This is the Drawing Room at the college where I plan to hang Articulation's most recent body of work, Rainforest. This probably where the Opening Reception/Open House will be held and the location of all the demos and workshop help over the 2 weekends the exhibition is up.
During the Open House on Friday evening, 6:30 p.m. to whenever, most of the faculty will be present also so people interested in taking a course at the college can meet up with the instructors. Of course there will be nibbles and drinks too so it should be a great evening.

This is the Photography/Print Room (de-blacked out) where I plan to install the Winnipeg body of work. It is down stairs in the lower level.

This is the Art History/Art Therapy Room where the Links body of work will go.
That's the plan anyway. It is always good to go into a project with a plan and then keep flexible. Ultimately we will put the work where it looks its best. And it will all look so good in this lovely 100 year old building that was built as a place of learning.