In a new exhibition that coincides with National Poetry Month, the Gibsons Public Art Gallery on April 6 unveiled creations by visual artists allied with poets, stitching language into intricate textiles.
Stories from Skins and Skirts features collaborations by Eleanor Hannon and Elizabeth Dancoes, and Jane Kenyon and Jude Neale. Each artist-and-poet pair has maintained a mutually inspiring friendship for years. Their approach prioritizes the integration of verse into the art itself; neither contributor simply “reacts” to the other’s output.
Artist Kenyon and poet Neale have been friends for three decades. “We talked about collaborating on work,” said Kenyon, “but we could never figure out how to make it happen. Then two or three years ago, Jude wrote a long narrative poem that spoke to me and I began seeing things in my head. Since then we’ve been collaborating on textile and poetry. We work fairly independently but we’re always working off each other’s work.”
Kenyon’s irregularly-shaped textiles contain concentrations of intense colour inspired by the natural world. Standing next to The Greening, Neale read from her poem by the same title: “I soak in spring’s / lusty extravagance / of burnt orange fungi and / velvet patches of fern moss.” The verse concludes with autobiographical revelation: “This is where I come to, / to collect splendour, / and flood the crevasses, / of my awakening mind.”
For Hannon and Dancoes, an age-old demonstration of feminine power is woven into their pieces: the Anasyrma Gesture. The act whose origins lie in Mediterranean culture involves a ceremonial raising of skirts to simultaneously invite and endow fecundity.
The two began exploring the theme over 20 years ago. Their drawings and verse began to coalesce into the four “powers” of the Anasyrma Gesture: Defy Death, Cow Bulls, Still Waves and Blind the Devil.
“In our later works, the lifting of the skirt gesture is hidden in the works; it’s not as obvious,” explained Hannon, who wore a vermilion skirt referenced in many of her artworks. “It’s a gesture that’s sexual, but it’s also been a gesture of humour or protest. There are so many stories of women all over the world using the Anasyrma.”
The pair’s latest collaboration is derived from Dancoes’s narrative poem Suitcase in which words are literally stitched into layered fabric scenes. Like the undulating outlines of Kenyon’s textiles, Hannon’s landscapes defy the 90-degree contours of their frames. In Suitcase Scene 4, leafy tendrils extend from the verdant setting beyond its bottom border. A section of the image appears to be peeled back, suggesting an airy firmament lurking beyond the flaps of nuanced greens formed of appliqué, stitching and stuffing.
In Interior 3, criss-cross lettering of Dancoes’s verse mimic the construction seen in one corner of Hannon’s image, where a supine figure reclines alone in a bare room: “No one wants to be that person / The one who stops and thinks, / The one who stops and thinks, / who lets go and is left behind helpless.”
The gallery’s current installation also includes paintings and drawings by Salt Spring Island artist Sibéal Foyle. Her charcoal and pastel portraits of tree defenders glorify West Coast chic (denim, flannel shirts, toques like tiaras) with poses that show implacable resolution. Foyle’s large oils use abstract patterns to project foreground subject matter into the viewer’s frame of reference, whether birds (as in Western Tanager) or a solitary paddler (Summer Paddle).
“My colour studies are a new body for me, going quite abstract,” said Foyle. “They’re an exploration of colour, and line, and gesture and emotive responses to each piece.”
Stories from Skins and Skirts and Foyle’s Reflections continue at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery until April 28.
