Sculptural Assemblages and Under the Covers
Sewing, knitting and crocheting skills have been transmitted from grandmothers to mothers and then to daughters for centuries. Hundreds of squares stitched into coverings have kept multiple families safe and warm. Over time, as those blankets were constantly being used, they have slowly faded and disintegrated, their beauty becoming closely related to history and time.
I learned my sewing skills from my mother and other female quilt makers. In 2016, I returned to creating sewn blocks of threads on my sewing machine and connecting them to form weavings reminiscent assemblages. Coming full circle with the act of sewing and weaving, choosing the colours and stitching intricate fragments has become a meditative, exhilarating and mesmerizing process. I bind fabrics, tie threads and paint the surfaces to simulate decomposing surfaces. I sometimes use hot pigmented wax so that the segments become enhanced, hardened and protected, a form of mummification.
The “Under the Covers” assemblages are created on a simple wooden frame loom. The hand made look is important for these new works. Similar to the intent for the “Interlaced Series” I wanted to be able to vary the weaving in its open and closed areas and the actual creation of the the segments has become a meditative process.
My focus is not about the materiality and the beauty of weavings as a covering but about feelings when being trapped under different forms of coverings. At times my weavings contain tight threaded links that are stiff, unyielding and no longer representing a safe and warm place to hide under. Then at other times the segments are so dense that little light can penetrate. A symbiotic relationships between yarns, colors, patterns, textures, light and shadows.
While creating this series of works, I try to connect to the pain of loss and insecurity, to the covering up of truths, to the inherent vulnerability of life and death, to disintegration and impermanence, but also to sparks of beauty often found in the processes of change and fading away. My continually trying to hold together pieces of my experiences that I have lost. I build up my weavings and often destroy them - in one way the reconstruction of my psyche - a destroying and reclaiming of myself.
Interlaced Narrative
From the lakeside studio I am drawn into nature and inspired. Such beauty, light, and wonder leave me humbled. And yet, as I take the inspiration of the landscape and begin to paint, it is not simple beauty that emerges. My act of painting pushes me beyond the lovely, the easy. Just as nature destroys itself to be reborn, my work undergoes a similar natural process of evolution, death, and rebirth.
I begin painting a background that has been influenced by the marvel of nature such as the shining sunset reflecting in the water or billowing clouds moving across the sky. Once the background painting is completed I begin to disrupt that cherished image of a memory by meticulously painting lines into a woven textile covering. At times the intersecting lines are painted tightly forcing viewers to stay on the outside and barely able to see the landscape underneath. The covering suffocates the land and it can not breathe. Then in another painting the web splits open to larger passageways, the background comes to the foreground, (a play between positive and negative) and one can see larger vistas of what lies beneath. While immersing myself in painting I think about whether barriers act to protect or keep us isolated, or whether coverings keep us warm, safe, hidden or become suffocating? The work has evolved into a complex dialogue surrounding identity in relation to physical and psychological barriers.
Detritus
My detritus series focuses on the beauty which lies between the symbiotic process of birth and death. During my walks in the forest I take photos of fragments of silver-green lichens and blue mosses on tree barks, or decaying plants along the forest floor. Back in the studio I use those photographs as inspiration. My painting process is complex and involves many steps from constructing woven cotton thread-like grids that I create on a sewing machine and then burying them in hot wax and pulling them out before the wax cools. My goal is to combine paint, threads and wax to simulate the process of the disintegration of life forms.
Sewing, knitting and crocheting skills have been transmitted from grandmothers to mothers and then to daughters for centuries. Hundreds of squares stitched into coverings have kept multiple families safe and warm. Over time, as those blankets were constantly being used, they have slowly faded and disintegrated, their beauty becoming closely related to history and time.
I learned my sewing skills from my mother and other female quilt makers. In 2016, I returned to creating sewn blocks of threads on my sewing machine and connecting them to form weavings reminiscent assemblages. Coming full circle with the act of sewing and weaving, choosing the colours and stitching intricate fragments has become a meditative, exhilarating and mesmerizing process. I bind fabrics, tie threads and paint the surfaces to simulate decomposing surfaces. I sometimes use hot pigmented wax so that the segments become enhanced, hardened and protected, a form of mummification.
The “Under the Covers” assemblages are created on a simple wooden frame loom. The hand made look is important for these new works. Similar to the intent for the “Interlaced Series” I wanted to be able to vary the weaving in its open and closed areas and the actual creation of the the segments has become a meditative process.
My focus is not about the materiality and the beauty of weavings as a covering but about feelings when being trapped under different forms of coverings. At times my weavings contain tight threaded links that are stiff, unyielding and no longer representing a safe and warm place to hide under. Then at other times the segments are so dense that little light can penetrate. A symbiotic relationships between yarns, colors, patterns, textures, light and shadows.
While creating this series of works, I try to connect to the pain of loss and insecurity, to the covering up of truths, to the inherent vulnerability of life and death, to disintegration and impermanence, but also to sparks of beauty often found in the processes of change and fading away. My continually trying to hold together pieces of my experiences that I have lost. I build up my weavings and often destroy them - in one way the reconstruction of my psyche - a destroying and reclaiming of myself.
Interlaced Narrative
From the lakeside studio I am drawn into nature and inspired. Such beauty, light, and wonder leave me humbled. And yet, as I take the inspiration of the landscape and begin to paint, it is not simple beauty that emerges. My act of painting pushes me beyond the lovely, the easy. Just as nature destroys itself to be reborn, my work undergoes a similar natural process of evolution, death, and rebirth.
I begin painting a background that has been influenced by the marvel of nature such as the shining sunset reflecting in the water or billowing clouds moving across the sky. Once the background painting is completed I begin to disrupt that cherished image of a memory by meticulously painting lines into a woven textile covering. At times the intersecting lines are painted tightly forcing viewers to stay on the outside and barely able to see the landscape underneath. The covering suffocates the land and it can not breathe. Then in another painting the web splits open to larger passageways, the background comes to the foreground, (a play between positive and negative) and one can see larger vistas of what lies beneath. While immersing myself in painting I think about whether barriers act to protect or keep us isolated, or whether coverings keep us warm, safe, hidden or become suffocating? The work has evolved into a complex dialogue surrounding identity in relation to physical and psychological barriers.
Detritus
My detritus series focuses on the beauty which lies between the symbiotic process of birth and death. During my walks in the forest I take photos of fragments of silver-green lichens and blue mosses on tree barks, or decaying plants along the forest floor. Back in the studio I use those photographs as inspiration. My painting process is complex and involves many steps from constructing woven cotton thread-like grids that I create on a sewing machine and then burying them in hot wax and pulling them out before the wax cools. My goal is to combine paint, threads and wax to simulate the process of the disintegration of life forms.