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. 

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 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.

Banff Art Centre - March 26

We spent time yesterday putting up this poster to advertise our next exhibition, which begins tomorrow. We will hang in the morning and attend the opening in the afternoon. Family & friends are coming from Calgary for the event.

We have been handing out small invitations, with this image on it, to everyone we know around the campus.

Must go. I am spending the day in the dye studio.

Banff March 22

We woke this morning to see fresh snow. This is the view of the dining room from the Lloyd Hall 6th floor balcony. With glass on 3 sides it feels like an eagle eerie when eating in there.

Yesterday I worked in my room in the morning then after lunch in our studio in the woods. (I'll need my snow boots to get there this morning.)
I am strip piecing furnishing fabrics to make whole cloth.

These cloths will then be cut up to make my 'Women Mountain' work. I plan to work on it most of today again.

Banff March 15

Wonderfil is a thread manufacturing company headquartered in Calgary. They generously donated boxes of machine thread for our Women Rock project. I think most of their employees are sewers and one contacted her quilting guild to tell them about our project. She told me, for several days she would find bags of treasures left on her front step. People had been saving leftovers for something special and this project in the mountains seemed right.
I brought the cache up to The Banff Centre and we set up a 'shop' in the sewing studio. We go shopping when we are looking for something we don't have. It was quite a challenge to anticipate what we would need to work on for a month, especially for those in the group who had to fly here. We have also been able to offer materials to other artists in The Centre also.

I am using some of the donated materials in this thread-rich piece. Here I am sampling using Valerie Campbell-Harding's strip piecing technique. This patchwork cloth will be cut and re-joined with a cover stitch many times before it is done.
So a big thank you to the staff at Wonderfil for supporting and enabling Articulation's Women Rock project.

Banff March 14

ReBecca Paterson, the 6th member of Articulation to arrive in Banff, had to ignore her jet lag because we had booked a curatorial led tour of the Whyte Museum collection where we were looking for inspiration for our Women Rock body of work.

Michale Lang is the curator of the Whyte Museum.

She took us through the Peter & Catherine Robb Whyte Banff Heritage House, which is such a treasure trove of Banff mountain culture, frozen in time.

Leighton Artists Colony

Here is a view from our studio looking out towards the neighbouring one which is designed for an artist working with sound.

Here we are last March, all bundled up in our winter gear, heading to our studio for a mornings work.

Click on the title of this post to find out more information about this wonderful programme the Banff Centre offers artists. We will be doing an Independent Residency in The Gerin-Lajoie Studio which is a space specially designed for visual artists. The light coming into the studio is perfect.

At the same time we have many services and facilities available to us at the Banff Centre, including a large arts-focused library/archives, exhibition space and printing/media departments. All of our personal needs are taken care of with private, serviced, hotel-like rooms, meals in a spectacular eagle-nest type restaurant, full fitness centre and ozone drenched mountain air everywhere.

Imagine having all of your personal needs & physical requirements being taken care, being surrounded by mountains & trees, & being continually supported by colleagues who speak the same language - for a whole month!

With these conditions, I predict some amazing work is going to be produced by Articulation.

Banff Centre , Leighton Studios

Exciting news! Articulation, the fibre arts group I belong to, has been accepted into the Artist in Residence program in the Leighton Studios for the whole month of March next year, 2009.
Last March we spent 2 weeks in our studio in the trees carrying out research for our 'Women Rock' study. We are all now back in our studios across Canada developing our ideas, sampling & gathering materials. Come March we will return to our goup studio in the mountains to make the body of work. We already have bookings to exhibit our 'Women Rock' work which will complete the last phase of this large group project.

Banff Centre Residency

Here we are, 7 of 10 members of Articulation, in our residency at the Banff Centre.

Our studio in the woods.

A hike up a frozen river with Dr Paul Mackay, a structural geologist, who spent the day with us, explaining how the Rockies were formed. He was most inspiring and I started to develop a piece the next day.

The Banff Centre, Banff, Alberta, Artist in Residence

I am taking a break from posting blogs about my textile experiences during a recent trip to India because I am heading up to the Banff Centre in the Canadian Rockies with my exhibiting group Articulation.
We have been granted a 2-week stay as Artists-in-Residence where we will collect information and inspiration and start developing our ideas on the theme 'Women Rock'. We have all sorts of interesting people coming up to work with us: Dr Jennifer Salahub, a craft historian (among many other things), Willi Schmidt, a professional photographer, Margaret Anne Knowles a museum curator, Ben Gadd, an environmentalist, Tara Moran, a glaciologist, Paul Mackay a geologist and more.
We have a huge studio, nestled in the trees all by itself, to work in. We have full access to the Centre's extensive archives on mountain culture which includes all of the films shown during the annual Mountain Film Festival, so lots of movie nights are planned. We will attend the concerts on at the Centre during our stay including the ballet 'Anastasia' and a Tin Alley String Quartet performance. We will visit many of the museums and art galleries in the town of Banff, including the treasure trove of archives in the the Whyte Museum. We will experience what it was like for women last century when they stayed in the Banff Springs Hotel to take in the mountain air and have high tea in the Rundle Lounge which takes in the world famous Bow Valley view.
We will then work in our own studios for the next 11 months where we will develop our bodies of work. We are planning to return to the Centre in 2009 for a month to work on making the work. The 4th phase of our 'Women Rock' plan is to exhibit the work widely in Canada.