Banff Dyeing Days

While in residency at The Banff Centre, Donna Clement & I got to know a new type of dye Donna had bought, called Alter Ego. Some very clever chemist has developed these dyes to work on cellulose (cotton, rayon, tencel, bamboo) fibres & protein (silk, wool, soy) at the same time, in the same dye pot & produce different colours. Amazing & exciting. I made 10 stitched samples of 40 different fabrics & threads. Here are the first batch simmering away.

These are the results of our sampling. Each sample of white/unbleached fabric & thread was put into a pot with a different combination of the 5 dyes we had to work with. In each sample the protein fibres & cellulose fibres came out different colours. Wow.


Donna dyed a bunch of devore scarves, which is what the dyes were developed for. Our experimenting gave us lots of ideas for using the dyes in other ways.

Happenings at Banff

The person next to ReBecca is Jorie Adams. She is a special person. While she was heading up the music & sound department at The Centre, she suggested Articulation apply for a residency & gave us all of the information & contacts required. So we owe her a great deal. She has since retired & is enjoying working a few days a week in a quilt store while she pursues her textile passion. We invited her to have lunch with us one day and showed her our studios & our work up in the Other Gallery. One of Articulation's strengths is the active support from people such as Jorie.


We all attended Flossie Peitsch's Staged Four where she had modified parts of her installation in the Other Gallery & her studio was open for viewing. Darren Miller had composed music from the sounds pieces in the installation made when struck. Chris Chafe played the celletto & this was added to the music that was played over speakers placed around the gallery. Flossie used a soft mallet to keep suspended fluorescent tubes & strips of plastic moving & so making moving reflections on to the wall. She called it All Things Temporary Time-Lapse Installation and Soundscape.

I enjoyed the informal, graffiti-like dialogue that went on on a flip chart kept outside a meeting room. This week's one was a battle between the different art disciplines.
This was typical of the stimulation found throughout The Banff Centre. There was so much to see, do & hear; so many people to talk to and learn from; so many services & support to enable the artist to work on her own thing -time management turned out to be a much bigger issue than I had planned on having to deal with for the month while in residence.

Banff Memories

This is Erika Lincoln, an artist who works with electronic media, who was also in-residence for the month. She was part of a large group in a directed residency called Liminal Screen, where each artist worked on their own project but all focused on getting the electronic image off the 2D screen.

One afternoon, all of the Liminal Screen artists with most of the self-directed artists in residence at the time, opened up their studios. It was a unique opportunity to talk to and see the innovative work of so many artists in one place at one time.
Erika had a number of the parts of her complex installation available for us to see: a number of birds that moved & sang when one went near them, movement also activated a computer program to build a nest on the screen, a nest building machine one could operate (see image above).
Erika is one of those electronic gurus & she helped us out several times over the month when we got stuck, such as the time when we were all set to watch a movie on our studio computer, the popcorn was hot & we couldn't get the DVD to play. She came to our rescue.
The other special thing about Erika is she is Ingrid Lincoln's daughter. Neither of them knew they would be in The Banff Centre together, until they were getting ready to go.

We all went to so many concerts, performances, lectures and exhibitions during our month in Banff. This performance by Catherine Thompson was particularly memorable. She offered us hot Douglas Fir tea as we walked in to a small lounge with a fire in the grate & candles burning on floor-stand candelabras. Catherine sang & recited her own poetry while playing on musical instruments she has made. The evening was a look into her very interesting Skuld project.

Banff Mountain Building

I caught this mountain man on his way back from his coffee break. Just look at all of the safety equipment he has to wear. He looks like a mountain climber.

I zoomed right in with my little point 'n' shoot camera (so not a good quality image) to get a closer look at conditions on top of the mountain they are building. The billowing orange tarpaulins indicate how strong the wind is, which would drop the actual temperature the body felt. The low wind chill factor means exposed flesh freezes in seconds. Whatever the conditions, whenever I looked up to the top of this mountain, I saw these men working. Sometimes I couldn't see them very well because it was snowing so hard but they were still working.

Banff Memories

+Quality time together so Articulation was able to move to the next level as a successful textile arts cooperative.

+Time to share & learn from each other while we all speak the same language.

+Experiencing life in the mountains as contemporary women
+Developing empathy for the women who came to this place before us

+Appreciating The Banff Centre & its staff for all that it offered us

This is the new Creativity & Innovation Centre under construction. Every day I marvelled at the people who worked in all weathers to make this building. They looked as though they were mountain building, inspired by the one behind them.

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 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 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 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.