Home from Away

And still coming out from under...

This past weekend I was in Edmonton -- for my son's second post-secondary graduation, this time with his Diploma in Digital Media and Information Technology from the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT).

Hi Mom!

After the ceremonies, and before the evening celebrations, I spent part of the afternoon downtown at the Alberta Craft Council's shop and galleries.  SAQA colleague, Margie Davidson, who is a great inspiration to me, has pieces in three exhibits right now and I was able to take in most of two of them.

The first -- her solo show, "Measuring a Year" -- is on at the McMullen Gallery, which is part of the University of Alberta Hospital complex -- until May 11.  This building was a brisk walk across from the Jubilee Auditorium where we'd been to the graduation ceremonies, so my daughter and I thought we'd take it in.  Alas, the gallery was closed...we were only able to press our noses against the glass.

I'd been able to see this exhibit before -- at the Alberta Craft Council's Feature Gallery (scroll down) -- but it was interesting to note how differently it was laid out in the McMullen's space:

Please note that the quality of the photo is tempered by the glass through which I was taking it!

On to the Alberta Craft Council shop and galleries, where Margie is also part of a group exhibit, entitled "Furnish", in the Feature Gallery:

Exhibit Dates: April 5 - July 5, 2014

This exhibit is a jewel.  The work is exquisitely created and arranged; every piece is a treasure.  The post-card blurb reads in part:

The desire to furnish one's home goes beyond the mere practical.  We seek comfort, beauty, meaning and individuality along with function...

Many craft artists work towards objects that will be used and loved daily.  Designed to encourage customers to buy and collect local hand-crafted furnishings and accessories for their homes, this exhibition features over 50 pieces by 21 [ACC] members.

Included in the exhibit is fine furniture -- chairs, tables, lamps -- and textile accessories, such as these:

Diane Krys - Bowls

Diane Krys - Cat's Paw Cushions

Gail Hunt - Footstool

Gail Hunt - Footstool Top

Linda McBain Cuyler - Thread Painting

Margie Davidson - Hanging - "Ferns with Grid"

Margie Davidson - Printed Cushions

Rachelle LeBlanc - Hooked baskets
(L) "The Gathering"; (R) "The Red Scarf"

If you can't get over to the Alberta Craft Council to see these pieces "up close and personal", I encourage you to view the exhibit online.

The third exhibit of which Margie is a part is one I've already described -- "Western Threads" -- over at the Royal Alberta Museum (also in Edmonton) until August 4.  Another one worth a visit!

As for what I'm up to now...that will have to wait.  The end of this week is taken up with work at The Shop and three days in Calgary.  I'll have my SAQA Western Canada Co-Rep hat on for Friday morning, when I get to drop in to St. Albert the Great Junior High School to document an Artists' Visit by two of our members, to the "Art 7" class,  in connection with The Burgess Shale exhibit, currently on exhibit at the school -- through May 14.  Word has it the art class they're visiting will be working on fabric postcards.  I'm hoping to get some photos of the results for the SAQA WC blog...stay tuned!

Passages and Memories

Friday afternoon I headed out to Edmonton.

My first destination was the Feature Gallery at the Alberta Craft Council, where SAQA colleague Margie Davidson was exhibiting as one of four artists.  In the show, each artist explores the concept of time and place -- Margie (Edmonton) with knitting,  Marcy Horswill (Cumberland, B.C.) with quilting, and the duo of Bridget Fairbank(Nelson, B.C.) and Alana Wilson (Hinton, AB) with ceramics and embroidery respectively.

Fence Study #3 - Marcy Horswill

Ms. Horswill's work was taken from her series "The Other Side of the Fence", about which she blogged recently.  I was particularly taken with her use of felted wool as backgrounds, and her interweaving of wire in some of the pieces, as this is a material I am thinking about for my Burgess Shale Project submission.

Alana Wilson

Bridget Fairbank

Ms. Fairbank and Ms. Wilson, who met at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2009, together created "The Isolation Project", inspired by their shared experience as fire tower observers in Northern Alberta -- a very solitary situation that had them contemplating self, society, the meaning of solitude and isolation, and how we are all affected.  Ms. Fairbank's montage of plates evolved from her travelling across Canada to take up her work in Alberta, "collecting places and contemplating time."  Ms. Wilson's embroidery display was her way to capture her thoughts and reflections about isolation, with materials readily available in a remote area.

Talented as these artists are, I felt that Margie's "Measuring a Year by the Minute" installation best captured the 'Passages' theme.  Of course, perhaps I have a bit of bias as she is an acquaintance of mine, someone whose skills in dyeing and art quilting I admire, and who, like me, is also a knitter, and a participant in a prayer shawl ministry.

Margie's Journey begins here..

Inspired by the song "Seasons of Love" from the musical, Rent, Margie wondered how she might represent time visually.  She began on her birthday, April 23, 2011, cast on 60 stitches and marked off the days every 24 rows, knitting every day for the following year.  

Her colour palette was drawn from the vegetation in her back yard, the city's river valley green spaces, and a trip to India during that same year.  Above is just a piece of this very charming, tactile, touching installation...a prayer shawl writ large.  It runs up and over and through the room, eventually ending in a quiet spiral:

And ends here...

The show, "Passages" is up till December 24th, so if you're in the area between now and then, be sure to have a look!  (And if you can't get to Edmonton, check out the online exhibition HERE.)


Friday evening found me in the company of my children, at the beautiful Winspear Centre on Churchill Square, listening to "The Sounds of Silence" and many other wonderful pieces from the incomparable repertoire penned by Paul Simon and performed in partnership with Art Garfunkel.  Messrs Swearingen and Beedle, accompanied by the ESO under the baton of conductor Michael Krajewski, filled two hours with precise guitar picking, sweet harmonies and even sweeter memories.

A.J. Swearingen & Jonathan Beedle

Having grown up surrounded by this music -- folk and rock from the sixties and very early seventies -- my kids were familiar with many of the melodies, if not all the words. Able to mouth along all of the lyrics, I was transported back to a slow dance with my first real boyfriend ("Sounds of Silence", summer of 1966); to my first summer-long trip away from home ("America", summer of 1968); to passing for 18 to get into "The Graduate ("Mrs. Robinson", autumn, 1969), and so much more.  'Twas a passage back in time, and a lovely memory to carry into the future.

Time it was, and what a time it was, it was

A time of innocence, a time of confidences

Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph

Preserve your memories; they're all that's left you.

- Paul Simon, "Bookends Theme", 1968

Play-ces

Zip-bag curing

I like dyeing in the summer, because -- even though I do it in my Back Room rather than mainly outdoors -- everything seems so much less messy because I can keep the windows open, including the one on the back screen door, and I can dry the stuff outside on my wee laundry rack.  So...one of the 'play-ces' I've been for the past 10 days is in the Dye Pot zip-bag, with low-water immersion dyeing.  I've put up 3 small batches of fabric, and there's a batch of Former Failures (i.e. over-dyes!) curing as I post.

I deliberately chose no 'recipe' this time out, playing only with Dharma Trading's Golden Yellow, Sky Blue and Scarlet.  From these three I made a variety of greens, red-browns, some definite sky fabric (I live in big-sky country, after all!) and a brown-black that I plopped in wherever it felt right.

Wanna see?

Dyepot 1 - All cotton, all the time

Dyepot 2 - More cotton

Dyepot 3 - Mixin' it up

In the third batch I dug out some different fabrics with which to play.  At the top: a piece of semi-sheer curtaining in white with little white flecks -- definitely some part synthetic something-or-other -- that turned into the neatest blue-flecked textured piece, as the flecks picked up the dye.  Next up, two white pieces.  Huh?  Yep.  Two pieces of definitely synthetic silky stuff that...didn't hold the dye at all.  Third from the top, my very favourite piece of the batch -- a piece of white cotton velveteen dyed plummy-brown (close up, below).  Then a tiny piece of something labelled 'brocade' that was originally cream-coloured, and a remnant of cheesecloth/scrim that I painted with a pipette -- red and yellow -- and then plunked in a bag to cure.  Last but not least, a wonderful piece of cheesecloth that's going to shred beautifully.  It's my second-favourite of the batch.  As my friend arlee would say, "Yumpth!"

My two faves, close up:

Cotton Velveteen

Cheesecloth

The second 'play-ce' I've been is out in the back yard, with a small experiment in sun printing. Margie Davidson is a member of SAQA Western Canada,as am I. I admire her work so very much that I hesitate to refer to her as a colleague; not yet anyway -- I'm just not there! Anyway, Margie does the most amazing sun-printing of leaves, and I decided I had to figure out how to do it -- how to work with them out in the open air where (at least here) the wind can stymie one's best efforts.  Sure enough, yesterday was perfectly sunny, but by the time I got the fabric prepped and the leaves gathered, a definite breeze had come up. I coped by using fine glass-head pins to tack down the leaves and feathers in my experiment, and was pleasantly surprised by the results.

Feather Print

Fern

Flowering Crab 

And simply because I had to add a little 'weight' into the mix....

Metal washers...or whatever they're called

While this dye-stuff has been curing, I've been keeping at it in the studio.  I finished another CQ block -- with TAST stitch-of-the-week #20, the Dreaded Bullion Knot.  Yes -- I managed to get the hang of it and discovered this:  it's much easier and more fun to make a DBK with wool than with cotton floss.  Heaven forbid I'd try it in silk!

Look closely -- there are some Bullion Knots in there.  My favourite part of this block, though, is the tie (used both right-side-up and inside-out) and finding embellishments to add to the seams so I wouldn't have to do too many of those knots!

I've also continued my sampling for All the Streets End in Trees, which is still in mock-up on my design wall.  I'm trying to create a lacy effect with the leaves.  I began by knitting a swatch of 1/4" fabric strips, and then made a sample of bits-and-bobs bonded by stitching using water-soluble stabilizer.  I combined one sheet of water-soluble Sulky Paper Solvy (r), and a piece of Inspira WaterWorks Soluble Film (I got this on a roll -- 8 inches wide by 10 yards long; can't remember where -- probably at a quilt show merchant's booth, and I can't find an independent website for Inspira products...).  The paper enabled me to draw out a rough 'leafy' sketch over which to place my materials and stitch; however, it didn't make for as sheer a result as I'd like.  At least, I think there was paper trapped in the stitching to make the sample more opaque than I wanted.  So...now I need to go back and make a sample using two pieces of the soluble film instead.  I'm also going to change up the colour of the hand-stitched yarn/floss.  See what I mean here:

On the left is the knit sample -- garter stitch, with live stitches still resting on a strand of red waste yarn -- and on the right, the stabilizer-stitched sample, a combination of machine and hand stitching a la Beaney and Littlejohn, whose DVD, "In Action", is a must have! (It's expensive, but I got it at the Central Alberta Quilt Show last month from our favourite show vendor, Copperfield's Books of Winnepeg. They always carry a wide selection of books, CDs and DVDs for textile artists of all genres, at discounted 'show special' prices.  Who can resist?)

And...today?  It's been cool, rainy and windy -- a perfect day to try 'light printing' (like sun printing but using my south-facing work room window, overhead light, and my daylight lamp), to catch up on this blog, to do some handwork in front of a DVD, and some spinning...Away I go.