Connected Heritage INSPIRATION 2

More time exploring in Gimli, Manitoba. Now getting to the Viking roots...

Famous Icelandic cake - Vinar Terta

into the museum for some history

the boats in town still fly the Icelandic flag

a visit out to Hecla Island

and Grassy Narrows Park

then a field of sunflowers on the way back to Winnipeg

and we couldn't leave Winnipeg without a visit to the architecturally stunning Canadian Museum for Human Rights

Articulated Materials: Bridging Waters

Finally the opening of our first Canadian showing of the exhibit that toured England in 2012! And it is so much more... as we have been able to add pieces to it.

The show opens at THE CRE8ERY GALLERY in Winnipeg, Manitoba today, May 10th.

The name Articulated Materials is from the name of the two groups: ARTICULATION, the Canadian art group represented by fibre artists from British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and New Brunswick; and MATERIAL GIRLS, the British fibre art group based around London UK.

Bridging Waters refers to the two iconic bodies of waters that each group studied in their own country: the Thames River and the Bay of Fundy.

Here is the poster I designed using an image of Ingrid Lincoln's work.

IF you are attending the Embroiderers' Association of Canada national conference called "Seminar 2013" (40th anniversary) then take in this show as part of the gallery tours.

We have two other galleries booked for this exhibit in 2013 in British Columbia and New Brunswick...

Busy as a Bee, Stitching Away...

ARTICULATION is one of the guest artists invited to show at the Canadian Quilters' Association (CQA) conference being held at the Telus Convention Centre in downtown Calgary from April 28th through May 1st. We have over 200 feet of exhibition space that we are filling with the theme of Canadian landscapes.

Our artist statement reads:

“Ess-scape” – A Flight From Confinement

Shedding the threaded bonds of traditional textile art, Articulation presents a collection of work by female artists who have studied issues and landscapes of Western Canadian mountain, rain forest, and urban regions. They break new ground while portraying the essence of the history, culture, and surroundings that the Rockies inspire. The BC rain forest communicates its own unique story while the architecture from man-made structures provides a different frame of reference for study and outlook.

The suffix for ‘female’ is ‘-ess’ and by using it as a prefix, Articulation sets the tone for an exhibit that celebrates some of Canada’s diversity while presenting cultural and social issues and the environment in a fresh format. ‘Escape’ also means a ‘flight from confinement’ – what Articulation always strives to accomplish.

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Seven of the nine Articulation artists will be in town for this show, working the floor, interacting with the public. We would love to see you there!

Here is one of my pieces that will be on display, inspired by our study session of the rain forest out on Vancouver Island in 2007.

It is called WESTERN REDCEDAR and is approximately 15" square. The artist statement reads:

"The 80-year-old woollen blanket given to me from a friend's grandfather's attic was felted combining three layers into one, echoes the age that rain forest trees can live without man's interference. By transferring the motif onto the central square, emphasis was given to this sentinel of the forest - the Western Redcedar, identified by its flat sprays with scale-like leaves growing in opposite pairs."

Articulation Textile Group blog

Articulation has exciting news with our new blog created to tell the world about our exhibitions, study sessions, group news and anything else that pertains to the group.

Articulation members live across Canada and we are:
ReBecca Paterson - New Brunswick
Ingrid Lincoln and Miriam Birkenthal - Manitoba
Leann Clifford - Saskatchewan
Donna Clement and Vickie Newington - Alberta
Lesley Turner and Gloria S. Daly - British Columbia
and Wendy Klotz - currently in Qatar, Middle East but soon coming back to Alberta.

Our latest exhibit opened in Winnipeg, Manitoba at the Mennonite Centre on September 18th.
Check out the blog for news on that.

http://articulationtextilegroup.blogspot.com/

Summer..

Summer is hanging around here in Alberta. Long lazy days of endless sunshine - love it!

August was full of lazy days with every weekend spent at the cabin - the most amazing time this year with no bugs - the mosquitoes are non-existent! At the end of the month my daughter and I went to New York City for a week - more on that later now that I have the pictures downloaded.

Over the summer I have been working on more pieces for the new exhibit in Winnipeg (opening September 18th) based upon the heritage architecture of the Exchange District of that city. I finished two more pieces (for a total of seven) for my deadline of September 8th. I thought this video was apropos!

Deadline Post-It Stop Motion

An amazing amount of work went into this by Bang-Yao Liu of the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Art sent to Winnpeg...

I have shipped off 5 pieces to Winnipeg along with art from other Articulation members in preparation of the September show. Lesley and I spent a morning packing and finished with three large boxes filled with 18 pieces of art - and Canada Post was successful in delivering it all within two days - thanks to them for a job well done!

I was especially happy with how my two new pieces turned out. I ended up painting matching canvases to mount them on and came up with a fabric-looking backing to sew them onto. I love the colouring and textures they add to the entire piece. Can't wait to get them out for public viewing!

Winnipeg Work - new for Winnipeg

I have been working on a couple of new pieces for the exhibit moving to Winnipeg in September, based upon architectural details I found while touring the city. These photos show the original piece - one is the base of a column, and the other is a detail high on the side of a bank on Main Street.

Starting with two aluminum cans of pop, I cut them open by removing the top and bottom, and flattened the cans. The images were then embossed onto the aluminum with an old ball point pen, and decorative borders added to fill in the space. Then they were painted with black acrylic paint to highlight the raised areas.

I made backgrounds to mount these metal pieces onto using velvet, painted Wonder Under, and two colours of chiffon scarves. Now I am playing with layout and figuring out what else to use for borders and design interest.

Have to wait until Winnipeg to see the final piece!

Winnipeg Work - art shown in Edmonton

Showing at the McMullen Gallery in Edmonton from April through June this year, I contributed three pieces to the Articulation show on "Urban Textures" inspired by our study session back in 2006 to the city in the centre of Canada (horizontally at least!)

One piece, called "Motif de Fleur" as a nod to the French settlers, is based upon the Bas Relief flowers that decorated the outer walls of the stately banks where, in early 1900 Winnipeg, twenty banks once lined Main Street.

This art has been hand and machine stitched upon archival tissue paper; coloured with chalk and oil pastels; then tea dyed to age the finished piece. Golds of different types and colours were then added as a final gilding.



Another piece is inspired by the immigrants who came to Canada at the turn of the century. Called "Gateway To The West" it tells the story of European immigrants who sailed to Canada landing in either Halifax or Montreal, boarded trains for Winnipeg, then spent time there accumulating household goods before heading out in wagons to their new lives on Government issued homesteads on the Canadian Prairies. Winnipeg truly was the gateway to the west for them.

My family was among these in the 1890s. Both my mother's and father's families moved from the same small village on the Austria/Ukraine border to a small town in central Alberta. This piece shows statistics of the different cultures who were coming west. Squares are hand painted and stamped reminiscent of the plowed fields; the saying "Come to Canada, the land of your future" is written out in various languages that would have been used in Europe to promote immigration; and the names of countries who sent the most settlers are scattered throughout.



My third piece shows the different types of lilies that can be cultivated in Winnipeg's prairie climate. The many different gardens in Assiniboine Park shows locals and visitors to the city the vast range of flowers that can be grown in their global temperate zone.

Again this piece is done on tissue paper, machine stitched, hand coloured, with borders of stitched, melted felt.

Back to reality...

This spring has been so hectic with travel that since I've returned from my last trip I am just hunkering down and vegging at home - can you tell by the date of the last blog entry!?!

2009
The month of March in Artist Residence in Banff...
April travelling the US Southwest...
May bonding with friends on Vancouver Island (more on that next post)...
My daughter's university graduation...
Finally being able to use the cabin since the floods of 2005 when we had 9 feet of water inside - the past summers have been spent cleaning and rebuilding...

And working on upcoming shows...

This week Lesley and I drove to Edmonton to take down the show at the McMullen Gallery on the main floor of the University of Alberta Hospital. This show, based upon the architecture of downtown Winnipeg, Manitoba, is moving to the Mennonite Gallery in Winnipeg in September and will be twice as big as the Edmonton show - so we are all hard at work in our studios producing more masterpieces.

Urban Textures at McMullen Gallery

Articulation's show on Winnipeg's historical Exchange District has been hanging at the University of Alberta Hospital in the McMullen Gallery since April and several of us living in Calgary have made the drive up to Edmonton every other Thursday to teach workshops as part of their art program. I finally got some photos of the exhibit, but encourage you to go to Lesley Turner's blog as she has been featuring each artist with closeups of their work.





This show moves to Winnipeg and the Mennonite Cultural Centre in September and as it is a much larger space to exhibit in, we are all busy producing more work to hang in the fall.

Urban Textures 6 - Lamp Posts

Turn-of-the-century cast iron metal lamp posts seen in Winnipeg's Exchange District...

Urban Textures 5 - Window Coverings

From Winnipeg's Exchange District, one of Canada's National Historic Sites, here are details of metal coverings over windows...

Urban Textures 4 - Stone Carvings

More photographs from Winnipeg's Exchange district - this time focusing on STONE CARVINGS...

Urban Textures 3 - Doors

The last blog showed Winnipeg's Exchange District and full shots of buildings. Today is about architectural detailing... Starting with DOORS: