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.

'Tapestry Stone's' Narrative

While doing research on Tyndall stone that has been used extensively in public and private buildings through Canada, I was delighted to read it was also known as tapestry stone.
I took the idea of weaving and used a random darning stitch to make a woven fabric (burlap as the base cloth).
Tapestry is also associated with the idea of the coming together of many parts, and a popular metaphor for Canadian society.
Going through my stash, I selected fabrics yarns, ribbons and threads I could identify as originating from another country and used those.

When exhibiting 'Tapestry' and 'Walls Talk' (same technique and materials), I don't list all of the materials because it would make the wall label too big.
Here, for the first time is the complete list of materials in these 2 works:
New Zealand cable sock yarn - sent to me by my mother within the 1st few months of immigrating to Canada
China silk scarf
Outer Hebrides Shetland sheep tweed yarn
Brown Sheep Nebraska lightly felted wool yarn
Indonesian cotton batik fabric
European linen
Indian crepe cotton
Japanese nylon scarf
American cotton bed sheet
Finland hand spun linen thread
Thai silk fabric

'Walls Talk's' Narrative

'Walls Talk' has come back from South Korea where it was in the Canadian pavilion at the 2009 Cheongju International Craft Biennale.
It is made up of panels in the same Julia Caprara technique as 'Meadow' but in this work it is the actual materials that tell the story.
The theme of the Canadian exhibition at the biennale was 'Unity and Diversity.' With this work I commented on the nature of Canada's population and geology in those terms.

This is the artist statement for the work.

A wall is built of Tyndall stone, distinctive and unique to Canada. Fibre is stitched to suggest the myriad of marine life in the vast sea that covered central Canada, now captured in limestone. Also known as Tapestry Stone, the blocks tell the story of European settlement of western Canada.
Unlike traditional Fibre craft work, where the emphasis has been on the demonstration of mastery of technique, I have worked with minimal technique to focus on the materials as content. I acknowledge the intrinsic meanings in each textile to provoke the viewer's memories of their own textile experiences. My goal is to stimulate a dialogue between the work and the viewer.

The theme of unity and diversity is found in several levels of the work. The diversity of marine life is unified and preserved in stone as geological history. The diversity of fibres and textiles reads as a stone wall, while closer attention reveals the complex fabric of Canadian society, reference to its social history and deference to its acceptance of cultural diversity within a unified country.

'Meadow's' Narrative

This work is another in a series where i have been using a technique developed by the co-founder and co-principal of the Opus School of Textile Arts, Julia Caprara. (Since Julia's death the school is known as the Julia Caprara School of Textile Arts, of which I am a student)
.Julia published a series of articles in Quilting Arts magazine where she demonstrated several of her distinctive techniques, if you want to see how this work is done.

This work has two stories, one from my interests as a geographer and the other from my interest in the Blackfoot Nation's stories.

The Fireweed plant is known as a 'first coloniser' after an area has been disturbed by natural occurrences such as avalanches, floods, fires and man-made disturbances such as forestry, road works, urban development. Fireweed moves in and stabilises the ground so other plants can then take root.

I have continued to explore this natural process of succession and how humans fit in with it as a concept in some of the new work to be shown in Calgary next week.

At another level, i see the Fireweed as an enabler and nurturer of others, a traditional role taken on by women in our society, which is why it is appropriate for the work to be made from fabric and thread and stitched, traditionally the media used by women in their homes.

The second story comes form the Blackfoot people. A woman went to a campsite of a group of braves who had captured and tied up her lover. She started a fire in the prairie grasses at one end of the camp to distract the braves and ran around to the other side of the camp to untie and rescue her lover. They both then ran across the prairies and headed for the mountains.
When the braves had worked out how they had been tricked, they started to chase the couple. They were gaining on the couple until they came across a string of fires that blocked their way. The fires sprang up where ever the woman's moccasins touched the ground and so protected them from getting caught. After the fires died down Fireweed grew in the place of her footsteps.

If you look at any image of the Fireweed you will see magenta flowers and blue-green leaves. In this work i really pushed the intensity of these colours because i wanted it to appear strong and full of life.