Rope making in Patan

Mashru Cloth, Patan, India

Our tour group watched as Mashru cloth was woven with a pit loom

Skeining the hand dyed rayon & cotton thread

The double woven cloth is starched to make it smooth & shiny

Patan Patola, India

I didn't finish telling you about the master weavers who make double ikat silk textiles. Here father and son (an architect) work side by side ...

on a traditional silk sari pattern that they can weave 8" to 9" per day.

This sari took 5 people 6 months to make. No wonder the family members travel all over the world to demonstrate their amazing skill, www.patanpatola.com

McMullen Gallery Artists' Reception

Donna Clement and my artists' reception at the McMullen Gallery on April 24th was most successful. We received lots of positive comments about our work. I feel so good about having work in this particular gallery. It is a special place run by very positive people. It is a refuge from the stress and activity going on in the rest of the hospital. They have a programme called Art on the Ward where patients can request visual and performing artists to visit them at their bedside. While we were conducting a workshop a student came in with a guitar on his back and asked where he should go. A patient had requested to listen to some guitar music and the student was on his way to play for him. A poet stopped by to organise his papers before going onto a ward to read to a patient. People came to the gallery just to sit and look, including staff in their lunch hour. It is a peaceful place.

Textiles in India

Back to my travels in India. I didn't finish telling you about all of the textiley things I saw on my travels. We spent a morning in Patan with the Salvi family who are master weavers of double ikat. The family has been producing these unique silk saris since the 11th century.

The tying of the warp & weft threads is one of the steps in the process of making the textile. It takes 15 years of training to master all 15 steps.

They use natural vegetable dyes on the silk they import from China.

The patola is woven on a primitive hand operated harness loom made out of rosewood & bamboo strips. The loom lies at a slant.

McMullen Gallery, University of Alberta

Early in the morning Donna Clement and I packed the car then headed north to Edmonton to the University of Alberta Hospital Mc Mullen Gallery to install our work.

The large gallery space was daunting as we laid out our work.

But with help of family members we found a place for everything by early evening.

Donna and I will attend the Artists' Reception on April 24th from 7 to 9 pm.

Banff Centre, Artist-In-Residence, Articulation

The conservationist, interpretive guide, author, Benn Gadd, spoke to us one evening ...

...and took us on a walk up the Tunnel Mountain road the next morning.

He told us the Blackfoot tale about why mice try to hide in Douglas-fir cones.

Banff Centre Artist Residency

While in residence in the Leighton Artist Colony at the Banff Centre with the fibre art group Articulation, I made an installation in the trees near our studio.

I was exploring how we manage a natural environment while I was staying in a National Park/ UNESCO World Heritage Site.

This study is part of my Opus BA(Hons) degree work.

Banff Centre

Professional photographer, Willi Schmidt, spent the morning with us showing his amazing photographs taken in the Rockies and talking about how to take a good shot.

He showed us the type of camera the earlier photographers in the Rockies would have used.

Banff Centre

Dr Jennifer Salahub worked with us for a day during our artist residency at the Banff Centre. She focused on how to do research and how to work with an inspiration to produce a personal response to it.

During a tour of the Whyte Museum, she gave us an assignment make a personal response to this image of Mary Shaffer, an early European explorer of the Banff National Park.

My response was to make some close-up charcoal drawings of parts of the image.

Sorting Threads

I sorted threads by colour before putting them away in their right shoe boxes.

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.

Drying the Textiles

Madder & pomegranate drying field. The dyed textiles are laid out on these stones to dry. There was a drizzly rain the day we visited so there were no textiles laid out.

Pomegranate husks in the foreground & the indigo drying field in the middle ground.

A delicious collection of Ajarakh & other traditional block printed textiles, dyed with natural dyes.