Frances Dorsey
When Frances Dorsey was seven to ten years old, she lived in Saigon, Viet Nam. She remembers "a paradise on the edge of conflagration". When she was twenty-one, she moved to Canada. She has a duel citizenship with USA. "I am a citizen of North America."
This piece, Shot Through the Heart, is made from used table linens that have been naturally dyed with extracts and earth oxides, as well as discharged and immersion dyed with mechanical resists. Some have been over printed with silk screen and also with block printing. The linens were cut up and reassembled. They were embroidered hand stitched. It is a large piece: 11 feet x 11 feet. It was made in 2010.
Suzanne Smith Arney saw this piece at a conference in Nebraska in 2010, and wrote about it in the fall 2011 of the Surface Design Association's journal.
"The napkins and tablecloths are soft with age and use. Looking closely, I can make out a nine-block structure, with those blocks subdivided into four. Each discovery revealed another level to decipher. Stepping closer, I read the fabrics' histories written in monograms, embroidery, as well as small tears and stains. Dorsey added her own text in faded yellow, red and purple dyes. There are folds and stitchings and photo -derived images of her father's army photos and letters, such as b-52s and mortars. I read the title and stepped back. Shot Through the Heart infuses the room with a chilly clarity; the whole and partial circles are no more suns than dinner plates. They are targets."
Frances Dorsey taught about textiles at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design for sixteen years. Her father was a rifleman "who relived his combat daily." She currently lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada and continues to make thoughtful and beautiful artwork with textiles.
This is the first post about a new series on this blog: Canadian Textile Artists.