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.

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 25

I have put in a few more hours on Woman Mountain. The red triangles are feminine, the blue/green triangles are masculine.

We attended Sandra Hawkins' (aqua shirt) artist reception. She has been on a self-directed residency in Glyde Hall this month. She has been working with her journals & photographs from her time working in the Arctic.

We also attended Flossie's talk about her 'All Things Temporary' installation, a collection of materials she found on campus that people had thrown out. She arranged the items into a number of compositions in her studio. Today she added sound, which added another dimension to her work.

Banff March 24

Yesterday, when I got back to my room after working in the studio all day, I found this beautiful vase of flowers on my desk. I have a secret admirer.

Being in Banff for the month, Donna and I would have missed our monthly neighbourhood book club meeting, if they hadn't come up to the mountains today and had the meeting here with us! Left - Ann Cockerton, Cindy Johnson, Roberta Davis, Donna Clement, Sharon Gainor, Jan Brummit

We took them on a tour of The Centre. While down in the paper making studio they thought they could help Wendy with her felt making.

Banff March 23

This was the walk to the studio yesterday. There was not as much snow on the ground because the trees had caught so much of it. But when we walked back to the dinning room at lunch it was warmer so big blobs of snow fell on top of us & we were quite wet when we arrived.
The campus is a buzz this week. Many of the artists in residence are finishing at the end of the month. They are pulling all-nighters, planning their open houses/exhibitions/presentations, and getting their publicity out around the campus.

There is much excitement in the music & sound area of the campus. I have seen people looking at large sheets of music over breakfast, people carrying hard black cases running between buildings, a filming crew following people and now the music huts near us have little pink signs on them. On Thursday we will hear the results of all of this activity. It is eagerly anticipated event.

Banff March 13

Flossie Peitsch from Sydney, Australia, began her self-directed residency in The Centre this week. We invited her to visit us in the woods. We had lots of fabric we could give her to get her started on her project.

She generously gave us her time to listen to each of us talk about our work and offered feedback to help us along in the work's development.

As a group we have decided we are ready to learn how to self critique and our work needs to be critiqued by others outside the group who are qualified. So Flossie's arrival is timely.

Banff Art Centre - March 12

It is still cold up here in the mountains but the days are clear and sunny.

On our last day in the dye studio, I printed with 2 more deconstructed screens.

Last time I put too much thickened dye on the screen & didn't squeegee it on so the dye came off in lumps & I lost the pattern after only a few passes.
I'm learning lots with this opportunity to work long, uninterrupted hours in the dye studio. When something doesn't work, I can repeat the process straight away, applying what I have just learned.

This time I put the dye on more thinly but I suspect too thinly. I embedded different grids which produced interesting patterns.
I do like this technique for adding lots of pattern to cloth. It is much looser than stamping and stencilling and with practice I think I could develop some control of what is happening. It is a real test of one's knowledge of colour mixing.

Banff March 11

Yikes it is cold here. A couple of nights ago I was walking from our studio in the woods down the mountain to the dye studio. My forehead started to ache & my thumb started to freeze again. I realised it was really cold so I started to jog to get there faster but the moisture in my lungs started to freeze which made me cough. Anyway, I made it. The next morning I found out it had been minus 40.
We have finished our 1st week in the dye and print studios. Now I spend mornings in my room working on my BA(Hons) Embroidered Textiles studies. I had a phone tutorial with my tutor in England but had to call her 3 times before I got the time right. Daylight Saving is very confusing when calling internationally. I have to go through the logic again at the end of the month when the UK changes.

I spend the afternoons and evenings in the studio in the woods. This is my current work -inspiration, sampling & paper mock up which you can't see very well. It will be all hand stitched.

On the way to the dye studio I had to walk out onto the road to give a herd of wild deer space as they grazed in front of the indoor swimming pool. Last night when I was in the foyer of our accommodation building, I saw a vole. I propped open the door so it could run out but it ran straight past the door, which I would have done too because it was so cold out. Then I rounded him up, he shot out the door and straight into my bag the door had pushed over. A few shakes of my bag sent him off into the trees.

Banff March 10

On Sunday I took the day off. Ron came up to Banff and we planned to go cross country skiing but it was cold and a bitter wind made it feel very cold. I hadn't packed my really cold weather gear. So we settled for a walk along the river.

The scenery was looking beautiful until I couldn't feel my thumb. We turned around and went back to the car. The Penhold Trail will have to wait until things warm up.

The beavers are still busy. We went back to the Banff Centre and had hot drinks in the Kiln coffee shop to warm up.
At 6:00 we all met in the Other Gallery and took our work off the walls. We had called the exhibition No More White Walls so we returned the white walls.

Here is Donna plastering the holes we made. The next day another exhibition started moving in.
We will be back at the end of the month, Friday 27th, with an Open House (wine and food supplied by the Leighton Centre), with the exhibit continuing over the weekend.

Banff March 9

On Friday, March 6th we all attended Concert Night Out, one of a series of Friday concerts in the Rolston Recital Concert Hall . As resident artists we get in free to these concerts (We are treated so well here at The Centre). We were most fortunate to catch a very special concert. The first half we heard Linda Andonovska play solo on flute, then Cheryl Law on viola with Cecilia Lee on piano, then Nick Alvarex on cello with Kieth Kirchoff on piano. All wonderful, so young and so accomplished.
The second half of the concert featured a group from Japan who play contemporary Japanese music on traditional instruments. What an experience to contrast their music with what we had just heard.

I managed to get some after-concert images of the group Pro Musica Nipponia and some of their instruments. This instrument is played like a horizontal harp and appears to be quite a physical feat to play.

A tray of percussion instruments.

Those magnificent soul stirring Japanese drums.
So we had an uplifting night off after 6 days of work.

Banff Art Centre - March 6

Yesterday we spent most of the day in the dye and print studios. After Ingrid's demo on making a deconstructed screen with thickened dyes, I made one and left it overnight to cure. The next day I printed through it onto a length of soda ash soaked cloth. This is the first layer of colour with the 2nd colour, blue, ready to be pushed through.

This morning I rinsed it after it had cured overnight.

...and hung it to dry. I won't be able to see the complexity of the layering and colour mixing until it is dried and ironed. The stringy stuff in front is cheese cloth. I was wanting analogous warm and cool but the warm is too much like salmon so I will be over-dyeing it.