Connections — interpersonal, intercultural, and intergenerational — are woven into nearly three dozen original fibre artworks that debuted at the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre on Sept. 6.
Carefully Gathered is the culmination of 13 months of research and observation by Madelyn Prevost, a doctoral candidate at Simon Fraser University, who instigated and curated the show.
Prevost transformed the dynamic network of Sunshine Coast textile artists into a living laboratory by studying how spinners, weavers and felters derive meaning from their craft. Fibre art practitioners congregate in mutually supportive groups, Prevost discovered, and at every stage of creation apply a scrupulous degree of attention to quality.
Prevost — whose Forest Shawl and in-progress Dissertation Quilt are displayed alongside work by 20 other artists, joined Coast fibre artists for Tuesday work parties in Gibsons. The group quaffed kombucha and nibbled on appetizers. Superficial passers-by described their work as “quaint” or “cute.”
“While scholarship often feels inaccessible, exclusive and elitist,” Prevost said, “textiles in many ways are almost the opposite. They’re familiar and familial. They’re domestic and intimate, they’re mundane and kind of magical. They draw people in, they gather them together and they help us tell stories.”
A dozen suspended placemats (Weavers Circle Placemats) took ten hours to install in the gallery. The weavings are constituted of mercerized cotton, their geometric patterns rendered in subtle earth tones. Overhead, mats are joined end-to-end and draped like heraldic banners in a medieval hall. Placemats hovering at midriff level form a circle, an apt metaphor for the kinship of textile creators.
At the entrance to the gallery, wool and mohair weavings by Barby Paulus evoke the timeless warmth of nurturing cloth. Visitors are encouraged to run their hands over pieces like A Warm Hug and Fireside Snuggle. Penny Stewart used locally-gathered lichens — combined with natural dyes and gold thread — to form a similarly-alluring handwoven throw titled Elements of My Life.
While many of the works communicate through tactile experiences, others speak to the eye and imagination. Flaxen Dream Weaving, by Amber Samaya Gould, combines hand-dyed wool, dried poppies and driftwood into a wall hanging that simultaneously celebrates nature’s bounty and the earth that produces it.
When fibre works are created in community, Prevost explained, “it is about considering and taking seriously the impact of our choices and consumption habits on the other piece of people, places and things that we are intricately entangled with, and gathering carefully in light of that entanglement.”
Six pragmatic items fashioned from tule rushes of Quadra Island were shaped by Nicola Hodges (Made/Use). A unique history is embodied in each one, from the tight-woven sun hats (“seven years of hard wear and getting lost in gardens”) to a buckle-strapped backpack (“once flung in the woods while being pursued by angry wasps”).
The ecology of the Salish Sea region is reflected in many of the works, as in Juliette Jarvis’s Selkie Jacket, which incorporates sea lion bone in a tawny handwoven jacket with a crimson liner. Others, like Dianne Lilm’s freeform knitted shawl titled Totally of my box, use handspun wool to form abstractions that hint at landscape. (The exhibition’s assembly of re-formed shawls was instigated by knitter and spinner Janice Talbot.) Marianne Hansen’s felted fibre sculpture Chanterelle Bowl — of forest floor is an intricate simulacrum of forest fungi, soft to the touch.
“The artists that I spent time with on the Sunshine Coast use fiber and textiles as ways of imagining,” added Prevost, “and bringing into existence other ways of being human in our current world.”
Carefully Gathered continues at the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre in Sechelt until Oct. 5.
