Sandra Brownlee

Sandra Brownlee was born in Fredericton, New Brunswick in 1948.  

She studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax Nova Scotia and then in Cranbrook Academy of Art in the USA where she received a MFA in 1981.  

She won the American Pew Fellowship in 1991 and the Canadian Governor General's award in 2014.

Sandra is a weaver and became renowned for her white and black spare abstract wall pieces. See here.  She spent many years as an educator and exhibition artist in the USA.  She returned to her home in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia in 2005, and continues to maintain her studio in Canada. 

Sandra has kept notebooks through her career, and the connection of sewing to text is a longtime concern for this gentle and thoughtful artist.  I wrote about her notebooks on this blog in 2014.  See here. 

Meaningful Words, annealed wire, 2025-2026

Sandra has a solo exhibition in Halifax, Nova Scotia at the Blue Building gallery in the autumn of 2026, entitled The Word Made Physical.  The exhibition focuses on her tactile notebooks on continues until November 7.  

“Whenever I need to understand something, connect to something, I sew,” Brownlee says while explaining how her style of hand-embroidered text developed. She traces it back to a trip to India in her early career and struggling with what to write in a letter to her husband: “I had a pen. It ran out of ink, so I got my needle and thread out, and I sewed the rest of the letter, and when I sewed the letter, I knew what to say,” she says, explaining that “rhythmic making” like stitching or weaving has “allowed me to connect, to access thoughts, feelings, memories, and ideas, specifically through the sewing. So that's the seed of The Word Made Physical. By making it physical, with a thread, the needle, the floss, in and out, up and down, I was able to express myself in a sincere and unselfconscious way.”   From the CBC interview by Morgan Mullin

 Canadian Artist who Works With Textiles 

Deschambault-Grondines

typical house in the village of Deschambault, Quebec, Canada

This post is about the visit that Ned and I made last week to a small village on the shores of the St Lawrence river called Deschambault.    We were invited to come before October 4 so that we could see the interior of two of the three historic buildings before they close for the season.     

the moulin a vent de Grondines, built 1674

On the my Process blog, almost all recent posts have been about my work with linen.  This is because throughout August and September I have been researching and gathering ideas for new pieces that use old linen.  I will be sharing my progress on these pieces over the next few months. 

(the old rectory)  le vieux presbytere de Deschambault built 1815 

The Bienniale Internationale du Lin de Portneuf is held every two years.  It is a festival where original, conceptual art works about flax and linen and heritage are showcased.  The variety of art is displayed across the historical sites of the villlages in the community of Deschambault-Grondines, located about a half hour from Quebec City.   

The old mill
  Moulin de la Chevrotiere built in 1802 with an annex built 1766

Twenty artists are invited every two years to create new work that will be installed for the entire summer season outside, around, or inside these historic sites.  2027 will be the twelth biennale, and the dates are June 11 until October 3, 2027.  There is a catalog of the first ten biennales and I was thrilled to find some of my favourtie artists from Europe and Canada included in this Canadian festival over the years. You can purchase the beautiful catalogue that celebrates the first ten biennales (20 years ) on the website.  (here)

I looked at the exterior park-like area and walking trails through tall trees as potential sites for my linen pieces.  These trails go along the creek up to the dam and to the pond.  

I also looked at the interiors of the two historic venues that would be available for my work.

interior of the old mill  

Both interiors were beautiful with thick stone walls that were smoothed with white plaster.  They had lovely windows.  The ceilings are low however, and that will limit the size of my work, which is usually quite large.  

interior of the old rectory
(exhibition of Marie-Charles Nadeau's weaving and photography)

I loved viewing the several exhibitions in the two buildings.  All of them were excellent.  

I was especially impressed by the young Montreal artist, Marie-Charles Nadeau, who wove and dyed ordinary household linen to speak about the past life of early French settlers.  Her photographs of them burning struck me at an emtoional level.  

Marie-Charles Nadeau 
Archives du Temps Passe

Marie-Charles' work showcased the labour and care that go into creating 'ordinary cloth'. 

Her photographs emphasized the poignant fact that eventually cloth, like the human body, is ephemeral.  Her photographs and careful handwoven textiles resonated with me. 

These things are what I also want to also express with my work. 

Marie-Charles Nadeau, Archives du Temps Passe
in the Vieux Presbytyre de Deschambault

I'll write more on this topic as we go through the winter ahead of us.  I'm so proud to be one of the artists invited to show new work in the 2027 edition of the biennale.  I am supposed to ship it to Quebec in early May.  

It is good to know what will be occupying my creative brain and hands over the next months.  

The Aesthetic of Simplicity

the beauty 2026

 

We have been taught that textiles either a) protect and nurture or b) demonstrate social status and cultural belonging.  These two purposes remain, regardless of the time or the culture.

The exception is art textiles.  Art textiles do what art does which is to communicate wonder.  

Wonder is an impassioned state that takes the viewer beyond a horizon line.  We are surprised by wonder.  Wonder is beyond intellect.  Wonder is an aesthetic experience at the brink of our senses, and when wonder happens, we experience an existential condition.  Art can give us this. 

Art textiles can give us this. 

sky with many moons  2025

Art work that has a minimal composition, but that is exceedingly rich in material, 

that has a wealth of texture, adjustments, and repetitive marks, 

and that has the touch of the hand and therefore, the movement of the makers’ body

has wonder embedded within.  

The time it took is embedded in the work.  The labour is embedded in the work. 

 softer and dreamier 2024

There is space for contemplation.  There is an aesthetic of simplicity. 

Every unnecessary element is discarded. 

Simple lines, a minimal palette and labour intensive mark making.  

Every unnecessary element discarded.

love the soul inside of me 2023

Every unnecessary element is discarded.  

In order to create work that is emotional, and that enables viewers to access their own immensity within, is it necessary for the artist to withdraw into isolation for a period of time?  Yes, I think so.  .  

“We should work for simple, good, undecorated things, but things which are in harmony with the human being and organically suited to the little man on the street.”  Alvar Aalto, 1957. 

Images in this post are a mini retrospective of recent work, one piece for each year.  The text is from the introduction to the 2010 dissertation I wrote for my 2012 BA from England,  The Immensity Within Ourselves. .

Going Slow

Mornings are slow lately.  It’s like I’m on pause.   I may wake up at 7:15 but it is 9:00 before I rise.  

The plant in the bedroom needs water so I carry it to the kitchen.  When I open the window above the sink and look out at the garden and the yard,  the staring begins.

I do more staring in my favourite chair with my coffee.  Things go through my mind as I stare. 

For example, there is a quilt on the wall that I stare at.  It's wearing out from old age, and I've started to mend it. 

'Mom, if you saw that quilt on someone else's instagram, you'd like it' says my daughter who doesn't think I should alter it.  

All the things I'd like to do overwhelm me and my head fills up with obligations.  Some of them are about the people I've reached out to and then let drop. 

My old journals are packed with ideas and sketches.  Really, why do I feel that I have to find new ideas? I have so many saved ones.

I also get snagged by social media.  I spent time looking at Emma Larsson's feed.  She is a self-taught Swedish artist who paints wet floral shapes from her imagination in uncanny ways.  I think this was a good thing for me.  I think it was.

I was going to finish reading the art book Unravel:The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art this morning.   That’s what I was going to do while in this chair.  

There are so many things to do that I want to do, but I just can't.  I stare at them and think about them, and then I think about something else, and then some one else and then a new thing. 

I have been so busy lately with my work and with my family.

Now, I wonder if it is really OK for me to not have time for anything but my work and my family.  To not have time for friends and hanging out and writing and responding to emails and listening to gossip and personal health problems with other women.  If it’s OK to not have time to walk near a river or sit in the grass and feel it touch my neck when I lie down on it because all I have time for is my work and my family. 

The images in this post are of the two nearly identical big-girl quilts that I'm making for the twins (now three and a half).  Except for images five and six which are of the SISU pillow I gave my almost 6-year-old granddaughter who started a new school last week. 

"What does SISU mean? asked her aunt."  

"Be Brave" she replied.   

The Mothering Bundles in Toronto

Since 2022, I have been tidying up items I've saved from my artist-mothering life by wrapping them in pieces of wool blanket.   

I call the resulting objects Mothering Bundles.

#33  

Each bundle has a number so that I can remember what is inside it because I forget what is inside a bundle almost as soon as I start stitching it shut.

Number 33 above contains:  Two maternity blouses that I embroidered, the small tea cloth that the young Brownies in Rainy River embroidered and gave me when I left my teaching job to move in with Ned and marry him.  Also contained in this same bundle are several friendship bracelets made by my daughters.

in the window, our daughter April's quilt, Spider Silk

Art is not just a respite or escape, it is a formidable tool for gaining perspective in troubled times.  Olivia Laing

I made a list of what is inside each bundle.  

So far, there are 38.  

It is an ongoing project and I hope to continue to bundle.

Sometimes, I need to open one up and retrieve an item so this list is valuable.  

(There is also a small green account book with written details about bundle contents).  

It is necessary to abolish distinction between art and life.  Marcel Duchamp  1957

the quilt on the wall is called Sunflower Sky

They are simple things, these bundles

They feel safe and calm.

They invite you to slow down and consider your own life.

They help you to connect to your inner self.

They are as mysterious as the stars in the sky.

#20

Number 20 (above) contains eleven canvas draw-string camping bags that Ned inherited from his cousin Richard.  Labelled with black ink, ( coffee, flour, white beans, rice, brown sugar, wheat porridge, candy, spices, milk powder and tea) they are in two sizes.  

from left to right:  Judy Martin's The Beauty of the Green Earth, some Mothering Bundles, and then April Martin's Neptune in Pices, Hourglass in the Sky, Same Same (above) and June Skies (below) Far right is Judy Martin's Lake Full of Stars.  

The images in this post are of the exhibition I had in Toronto this past summer with my artist daughter, April Martin.  We both exhibited hand stitched quilts.  

The exhibition was entitled Earlier and Later and it was held at the Craft Ontario gallery at 401 Richmond St, Toronto.  June 17 - July 25, 2026.

All photos in this post are professional documentation of the exhibition by Jocelyn Reynolds.

You have to follow your work even if it seeems ridiculous.  Follow your intuition.  Go with your work.  Kiki Smith

Kimsooja

Ned and I went to see the Kimsooja exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Toronto.  It was really beautiful and I wrote about it over on my Modernist Aesthetic Blog  I hope that you will go to that blog and read more.  Click here.

With a big sky and with elm trees

My coming-of-age time (13 or so).

I'm the one in the aqua coat and no boots.

I grew up in North Western Ontario, ten miles west of Fort Frances.  It was a flat area, with reasonable land for farming.  My father built our home and continued to build it for my whole childhood, often moving rooms or stairwells while I was at school.  He was born in Finland and immigrated to this area of Northern Ontario with his mother when he was 5 years old.  I am very proud to be 50 percent Finnish.  I feel that the aesthetic of noble poverty and simplicity and love of lakes and nature is part of that culture and is evident in Finnish design.  My mother was born in Fort Frances, and married my father when she was a school teacher in a rural school.  She loved elegance and made her own clothes using Vogue patterns.  She loved literature, especially Virginia Woolf, and she loved learning, teaching herself French from reading mystery novels, and psychology through distance education.  She had allergies and had to take needles for them when I was growing up.  She was very shy and so we never went anywhere or had anyone over to our house.  I felt isolated and wanted to get out of there, move to a city, see art and movies and interesting people.  I wanted to go to university and study literature or art.  On the other hand, my mother’s love for culture meant that there was good literature in the house all the time and lots of magazines and art supplies for us to use.  I took piano lessons and got quite far in the Royal conservatory exams.  You can see the landscape in the background – the horizon and the sky and the elm trees, there is an especially beautiful and large beautiful tree just out of sight in this photo, at the corner of our driveway and the highway.  There was a long bus ride east towards the high school in town or west when we were younger to the new public school in Devlin.  

I believe that our childhood and youth inform our creative work more than we realize.  Early in my career I read Originals by Eleanor Munro, a book of interviews of American women artists. Munro always asked the artists about their childhood landscape and time and again, that landscape would appear in some way in their mature art.

My childhood landscape was one of isolation and emptiness.  

With a big sky and creative parents.  With elm trees and a highway and a sister and a brother.  

Mended Rail Fence

 One of my projects at the cottage was mending this rail fence quilt that I made in 1976. 

The fabrics were newly purchased especially for this piece.  I've had to replace some of the worn out cottons and I've used mostly velvet to do so.  

Usually I did the work in bed before going to sleep.  I worked with the reading light on my side of the bed.  It was a quiet and nourishing thing for me to do after a busy day.

I grandmothered during the day time.  Sometimes the grandmothering resembled patchwork.

We had a fam-jam on Canada Day. 

The big news for this year is that our oldest took ownership of her great uncle's cottage.  It’s quite near the  main one.    

This quilt was originally made as a wedding gift for my sister, the second quilt I ever made.  I look forward to returning it to her as she celebrates 50 years with her guy.