UNESCO World Heritage Site

Yes, another World Heritage Site!
In past years I have created pieces based upon these Canadian UNESCO sites: the Rocky Mountain Parks in Alberta + L'Anse Aux Meadows in Newfoundland + Haida Gwaii (SGand Gwaay) in British Columbia + Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta + Quebec City in Quebec...

My latest interest is JOGGINS FOSSIL CLIFFS in Nova Scotia on the Bay of Fundy.

Employing a technique I have used in other series, I am drawing with free machine embroidery stitch on archival tissue paper.

Piece #1 is fish fossils...

Close up - tea dyed, waxed, black thread...

Piece #2 is the Ammonite shell...
Starting phase - draw and colour

Close up of the stitching...

And the final pieces framed...

I can't wait to present them to the public and hear their comments on them!

Banff - Day 12

Being in the dye studios for the first week was very productive in that you could see results every time you washed another batch of fabrics. Now that we are all back in the Leighton Colony studio stitching, progress is measured in different terms. Slowly!

One of the themes I am working on for Women Rock are the fossils of the Burgess Shale. I spent last week silk screening some images onto different fabrics, and have backgrounds I made at home and brought to Banff. Here are pictures of the three pieces as they exist at this moment.




Continuing with the themes that the others in the group are working on, Ingrid Lincoln is focusing on the fine clothing that women brought to the mountains from their high society lives in the northeastern USA (specifically Philadelphia / Boston areas.) She is studying the contrast between social and cultural mores of society versus the new west. Here the very beginning of a piece that originated with Catherine Whyte's engagement dress and its ribbon work.

Donna Clement and her Women Rock work

As I am collecting items together to pack for Banff, I am narrowing down which pieces I will work on while I am there. I have five themes that I am exploring:

(1) flowers of the Rockies Mountains - specifically childhhod memories of Brown-eyed Susans, Queen Anne's lace, and Indian Paintbrush

(2) devestation caused by the mountain pine beetle

(3) fossils of the Burgess Shale

(4) textures of the Rockies (leaf shapes, animal pawprints, branches, fur patterns)

(5) and, continuing the work I started for the Winnipeg exhibit on immigrants to Canada, exploring the rounding up of Ukranians in Alberta during WWI into an internment camp located in the Banff national park.