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 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 21

I spent yesterday morning in the Whyte Museum, in Banff township. I was looking for artifacts in the museum's collection to work with. I am focusing on the equilateral triangle as a symbol and I found lots of examples in the current exhibition.
Beading on moccasins

A beaded choker. (nice Art Nouveau one in front of it)

Beaded repeating motif on hide leggings.

Great example of 2 ancient motifs used by many different cultures.
I am setting up a time for next week to go down to the basement of the Museum to study closely specific items I have asked the curators to pull for me.

Banff March 20

Yesterday morning, when we were in the dining room, we saw performance art. A person was standing with a bag over her head & a sign on her front, that read 'Failed Artist'. Even though the room was a buzz with conversation about her there was no interaction with her and she was ignored.

This morning she was there again with a different sign, 'Great Artist'. This time people shook her hand, danced with her & gave her a big hug. Most of the interaction was with non-artists, mainly people who work for a bank.
The artist, Flossie Peitsch, said she felt personally the different effects the 2 signs had on the way she felt.

We have just finished 4 intensive days with Martha Cole, which proved to be invaluable because of all we learnt about ourselves, our group and life as an artist.

Martha works on her own work for a change, on the last night when we watched a movie in our studio in the woods. We had popcorn to celebrate. This morning, after breakfast, Martha and Vickie left for Calgary and the airport so Martha can return to Saskatchewan.

Banff March 18

Last Sunday I took the afternoon off and went cross country skiing with Ron. The fresh air and vigorous exercise was mind clearing.
Today we are continuing our sessions with Martha Cole. This morning we learnt some strategies for coping with negative criticism of our work - great tools to have when putting your work out there.

Gloria is working on a large hand embroidered work. She is covering great expanses with french knots. One afternoon Ingrid offered to help out and make knots for her.

Donna planning her work.

Banff March 17

We are now into our 3rd week here in The Banff Centre. On Sunday, Vickie Newington, the 7th member of Articulation to arrive, brought Martha Cole with her. Martha is a successful, established artist who we asked to join us for the week to work with us to get ourselves as individual artists and our group to the next level in our development.

Donna Clement, Ingrid Lincoln, Martha Cole

Vickie Newington

We have been working on exercises focusing on becoming aware of our strengths these past 2 days. We rented another studio space in Glyde Hall for the 4 days of the workshop. We have each covered a section of the walls with our work and a diagram of our interests and strengths which we continue to add to and rearrange as items emerge from the exercises.

This is what my part of the walls looked like 1st thing this morning. I have since added to my strengths & interest diagram and taken the bottom right work off the wall because it doesn't reflect the characteristics of my style.

This evening I have an individual critique with Martha, which I am very much looking forward to.

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.

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.