a pilgrimage

pilgrimage:  noun

a journey made to some sacred place as an act of devotion

a visit made to a place that is considered special, where you go to show your respect

I visited the Royal Ontario Museum when I was in Toronto last month.  The main reason to visit was in order to see this quilt, then on display in the special exhibition of  Quilts: Made in Canada.  

I met my brother and Kirsten there.

Pieced Triangles Quilt 1880
  Maker no longer known. 
 Asphodel-Norwood Township, Ontario. 
 Roller-printed cotton, plain weave

Look closely at this quilt: it's made of over 8000 light and dark triangles, each less than 2 centimetres long and hand-stitched together to create an intricate pattern from the smallest scraps.

The patient maker who sewed it worked outwards from the centre, creating a series of rectangular frames that slowly increase to build a quilt.  (wall text)  

I look at the movement of the colours

I sense the amount of time that each triangle took to place.

I appreciate the passage of time that this quilt has remained even though the maker has passed on.

I marvel at the accuracy of the intricate handwork.

I understand this woman.  

My imagination is engaged.

My interior world is entered into.

Her repeated touching reaches me at an intimate, personal level.

The sense of touch is powerful. 

"The impact of art touches something buried deep in embodied memory.  It is a mystery."  

Juhani Pallasmaa 

Anong Beam

Spring Bay, Mennonite Barn, oil on canvas, 2020 by Anong Beam

Looking at my life, and with my mother entering Alzheimer's' I have been painting memories.

My practice has always centered around water and how it holds and contains us, and is a silent witness again and again to all events, constantly renewed and present in us, as it was for our ancestors.

Ghost Moose and Camp, oil on canvas, 2019 by Anong Beam

But now I am looking back and I feel like I am reclaiming histories for myself.  

I am inspired by other histories of place like Camp Forestia by Peter Doig.  It is a classic camp from the Ontario north, there are many all around me, and they are completely other.

I have memories of seeing people go to them.  They are the settler camps, even though they are so familiar.

They are a visual image of privilege and isolation.

Camp Cadillac oil on canvas  2018  by Anong Beam

All around my home, even on reserve, the waterfront belongs through long term lease to non-native families, who have held them for years.  These paintings are emerging to reclaim images of where I live, and to relate them back to me.  It's strange to live somewhere and be of a place so fundamentally, but seeing it depicted only in a way that isolates my culture.

Mountain Lake oil on canvas 2018 by Anong Beam

It is this medium and genre of oil on canvas.

Sections of Tom Thomson's West Wind, and his Jack Pine, appear with Doig's Camp Forestia, alongside a ghost moose, myself swimming in the lake, my boat in Swallow Lake at first snow.

My father's recurring image of a rocket launch, birds and birds and birds!

An old Cadillac, fireworks, lakes, birds, bears, and the stars.

It is just immensely pleasurable to rectify this even if it is just in  my paint-world..  I love these painters as well and hold them no ill will!  Peter Doig, Tom Thomson, Kim Dorland, these men are painting their lives, and I am grateful to live in a time and place where I can do the same.

Beaver Dam Overflowing, oil on canvas 2018 by Anong Beam

Also, reaching deeper into art history, I'm happy to explore painting devices from Matisse (table with pansies, the joy of life) Botticelli Birth of Venus, Rothko's colour pairings, Georgia O'Keefe's skulls, and Agnes Martin's grids which influenced my father, back into me, into dancing elk herds.

It's really something to be the child of a famous artist.  It's intense, and I've seen so much of the art world that is unkind, and unhealthy.  I've seen my mother's pain inside that she was not recognized like her husband.  

But all that pales in the joy that I feel creating these landscapes, internal, wishful, desirous, wanton, exploding!  In some real ways they are ecstatic love stories to paint.

Deluge, oil on unstretched canvas, 2019 by Anong Beam

Being the first series where I have made all of my own oil paints, there is an incredible circuity to making paint from rocks from Bay Fine near Killarney, then painting that same scene with those rocks that are now paint!

Each image that I make I feel and I fall immersed in the history of painting, learning devices from those who have already travelled this path.

Miigwetch.

Anong Beam

detail of Deluge by Anong Beam

The text in this post is Anong Beam's powerful artist statement for her exhibition:  Anong Migwans Beam at Campbell House.  It was curated by Elka Weinstein.  I saw the show in July 2022 when it travelled to Manitoulin Island and was mounted in the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation. 

I admire how Anong has addressed the huge issue of white settler colonization / indigenous land and human rights with these multi-layered paintings.  These paintings appropriate subject and style of white male artists' paintings of iconic Canadian scenes.  Make no mistake.  This beautiful and tender and luscious work is also political. 

It's about love

Art is about relationships even if it appears to be about nature.

Coastal Trip by Paterson Ewen (1925-2002)  acrylic and metallic paint on gouged plywood  1974

I visited the Art Gallery of Ontario last week.  

Paterson Ewen is one of my favourite artists.

Coastal Trip by Paterson Ewen  1974  (each part is about 60 inches)

I respond with my whole body to the rugged materials and strong marks in his unique paintings.

The scale of his work holds us.  

coastal trip detail by Paterson Ewen  acrylic on plywood cut with first with a router 1974

Monotones (Seascape) by Silke Otto-Knapp watercolour on canvas 2016

I took my 7 year old grand daughter with me.  

We only lasted about an hour.

Monotones (seascape) detail by Silke Otto Knapp  

It's hard work, 

looking and thinking

 and climbing all the curvy stairs.

When we got home we made collaborative drawings with ball point pens in my journal.    

highway 17 return home

Our visit with our son and his family was beautiful and I am so very grateful. 

 

How long does it take for moonlight to reach us? Just over one second. And sunlight? Eight minutes.

How Long Does It Take Moonlight to Reach us?  Just over one second.  And Sunlight?  Eight Minutes  by Harja Waheed, 2019, Sunned Paper (detail)

In November 2019, I visited a real (not virtual) art gallery and experienced (in real life, moving through and looking at) the exhibition  Hold Everything Dear by Harja Waheed.  It was at the Power Plant in Toronto and I went with daughter April and now, over a year later, I am reflecting on that experience. 

The artist showed a variety of media: ceramics, textiles, installation, video, and works on paper.  

How Long Does It Take Moonlight to Reach us?  Just over one Second.  And Sunlight?  Eight minutes by Hajra Waheed 2019  sunned paper

Her use of sunned paper started when she was in art school.  Unable to afford traditional art papers, she scrounged the display papers that stationary shops had in their windows.  The shops eventually saved paper for her, as they couldn't sell it.  She still visits shops and bookstores when she travels and collects 'sunned' paper.  

A River Runs Through It, Hajra Waheed, 2019  cyanotype on a bolt of linen

We are living in a time where it is becoming difficult  to identify fact from fiction.  

"allowing objects to speak for themselves, allowing histories to infuse one another and viewers to steep in the mystery of interconnected clues, creating just enough tenuousness or uncertainty in order to leave space for viewers to come to the work from their own perspective and histories - these all remain urgent bottom lines for me, allowing for possibility, imagining and reimagining." Hajra Waheed

Studies for a Starry Night by Hajra Waheed  glazed porcelain and stoneware, 2019

One body of work in the exhibition are fragments of starry sky-scapes displayed on shallow shelves.  The words in the title, Starry Night, remind us of the expressionism and wonder we associate with Van Gogh.  

"I am interested in the space of not knowing.  We are so used to going to an exhibition and having a set beginning and end, where every gesture has been clarified and every mark has been noted.  But that is not as important to me as an affective experience."  Hajra Waheed

detail of Studies for a Starry Night 2019

"I see my practice as a slowly unfurling process, a chronicle or story that reveals itself over the course of a lifetime rather than within the space of one exhibition. Each body of work is borderless, porous, temporally unbound,  not limited with some discernible end-point."  Hajra Waheed

Letters 1-8  by Hajra Waheed, ink on paper, 2019

The artworks in the set of work entitled Letters 1-8 were inspired by John Berger's novel that uses the device of love letters entitled  from A to X .  Waheed's series of letters combine careful drawings of palm leaves and personal notes.  

Letters detail Hajra Waheed ink on paper 2019

I felt Hajra Waheed's poetic sensibility as I moved through the several rooms containing the exhibition.  The title,  Hold Everything Dear, is borrowed from the British art critic and novelist John Berger's 2007 book of essays.  Other key texts that inspire the artist are: Rebecca Solnit's book of essays Hope in the Dark and the non-fiction of Arundhati Roy. 

The exhibition is quite political yet I was able to understand it on a personal and emotional level. 

Forget What They Tell You

There is hope in the room.  Moving slowly along side the many different items we feel an invisible web-like connection.  The guest curator, Nabila Abdel Nabi explains that that the artist considers all her work as if it is in a spiral.  A spiral that is felt, not seen.  

forget what they tell you, this longing for you is deeper than any blue 

 

The spiral is more than just a form, it can denote evolution and involution, it expands and contracts, it reveals and it hides, it does not settle or occupy, it does not want you to believe it is invulnerable, it is a study, not an art, it is smoke entering the air, it is our umbilical cord, it is the form found in heart cells, it is the form found in nerve cells, it is never redundant, it is the act o remembering, it is a compass that allows us to stand in the center of a storm, it is the belief that what we do matters, it represents the awareness of the self,  it is about keeping an open heart in the face of a broken one.  

(only some of the text read by the artist at this link. )

Hold Everything Dear  by Hajra Waheed, The Power Plant Toronto 2019

 

There is enough space in the exhibition to allow us to make our own connections.

number twenty

On The Lake

Made in 1989 when we lived in Kenora and would take the kids boat camping on Lake of the Woods.  Lake of the Woods is a deep lake, full of islands.  I was always looking between the islands for an open, uninterupted view.

It's a quilt of stitched photographs.
Film photos - digital cameras were not invented yet.

In the boat, motor going, long trips, fresh air, the four kids eating boat candy,  I would take photo after photo of the sky and the water.  I'd take another roll, more sky, more water.  We went camping with them in that open boat that we would pull up on crown land.  I took photos of the kids too of course, and more photos of the sky and the water.

Once settled at home again, I would drop the rolls of film at the drug store to have them processed - or maybe it was the grocery store.  It would take two or three days to have that done.

Once I got the envelopes of photos, I felt as if I was a painter with a new palette.  Or a quilter with dyed fabric.  I cut the photos into one and a half inch squares and arranged them, stitched them to cotton with white thread.

With no islands.
Just horizon.

In 1992 I think, I was invited to bring some actual work to a gallery in Winnipeg - Ace Art I think.  It was an artist run space and the purchasing committee of the Canada Council Art Bank was planning a visit to make selections from our area of the country.  I didn't think I had a chance as my work would be viewed along with many well known Winnipeg artists, but I took this piece and I think three others. It was a two hour drive from my house into the city.

So now this piece is still in the Canada Council Art Bank collection, and they have updated their web site so that it is possible to view online.  This photo is much better than any I have ever been able to present online - since I was having to work from film photos and scan them.  Anyway - it's nice when you come across these kinds of things and I thought I'd share with you.

It's number 20 on one hundred quilts

Colour With a U

2006

 In Canada, we spell colour with a u.  We also spell labour, favour, honour and neighbour with a u.

flesh and blood 2007

 That 'u' could stand for unique, unforgettable, universal, unity, understanding, utopia.

2008

 It could include the unusual, unexpected, unbound, unabashed, unaccounted, uncanny.

light of the moon 2009

 We care about the 'u', it makes us unique.  We care about the 'you', it brings us together..

2010

What do the Canadian values of diversity and inclusion mean to you?
How does your labour in your favourite medium honour your neighbourhood, your community?

energy cloth 2011

How do you colour yourself into our Canadian culture?

niagra falls 2012

We are looking for artworks that visualize these ideas and that together will give an insightful
perspective on our Canadian cultural identity.

2013

All types of work are encouraged, including representational, abstract, and social commentary,
in 2 or 3 dimensions.

lake 2014

Opening location:  Homer Watson House and Gallery, Kitchener Ontario Canada
March 15 - April 19, 2020

2015  providence

The exhibition will travel across Canada until March 2023.

This is a Studio Art Quitls Association exhibition for Canadian members of SAQA only.
Read the full Call for Entry at this SAQA link

Entries must be received by January 3, 2020.
For further questions, please contact Tracey Lawko, chairperson of the exhibition committee.

2016

 All text in this post is from the Call for Entry for Colour For A U for Canadian readers of this blog.

the cloud in me 2017  

 The images are a celebration of my years of blogging.
I chose one from each year:   2006 until 2019.

2018

See the sidebar for further details about this call and information about
the SAQA conference in Toronto 2020.

my awakened heart 2019

Nadia Myre

This post is about Nadia Myre's exhibition Balancing Acts, now on at the Textile Museum of Canada in Toronto until mid-September.  Nadia Myre is of mixed Algonquin and French Canadian heritage.  In 2014 she won the Sobey award, Canada's $50,000 prize for artists under 40 years old.

Sharing Platform 2018  ceramic, various oxides, stainless stell thread  Nadia Myre

From a distance, the artwork in the above photo looks like an antique sweetgrass basket, but on closer examination the materials are like beads.  Maybe it was made by an indigionous woman from long ago, presented for us to admire in this respectful museum setting.  But the artist, Nadia Myre, has fooled us.  Although she is indigionous, the 'basket' is brand new, made in 2018, from ceramic copies of clay shards that the artist found on the banks of the Thames river in London, England.

When Europeans arrived in the New World in the 1600s, tobacco use became popular and clay tobacco pipes pre-stuffed with tobacco werer manufactured in London and Glasgow.    The pipe had a bowl and an elongated stem that was broken off in segments as the tobacco was smoked.  It is these shards and segments that were collected by the artist and her son.

The exhbition includes large-scale digital photographs such as the one above, entitled Code Switching: Pipe Beads (2017). 

Tobacco Barrel 2018  ceramic, oxides, stainless steel thread, Nadia Myre

Nadia Myre's deep respect or and committment to the act of making things by hand is evident as she explores the politics of identity and belonging through poetic, feminist backdrops of craft, care and resilience.  (wall text, textile museum of Canada)

In this body of work, she makes new objects and images that demonstrate how institutionalized archaelogical narratives can be easily destablized.   She also shows how museums simultaneously preserve and erase cultural context.

Besides the work with pipe beads, there are several large scale digital photos in the exhibition.  Above is Gathering Sky 2016, an image of a net superimposed over an atmospheric blue and white sky.  But sky is impossible to contain.   Click here for a pdf that will explain further about Nadia Myre's work.

Scarscapes 2  Time  seed beads and thread  Nadia Myre

Nadia Myre uses photographs, beadwork and textiles to represent human presence.

Between 2005 and 2013 Myre invited people to cut or tear and then mend their scars, both real and symbolic, on stretched canvas fabric and, as well, to write about these scars.  Over the 8 years, 1400 canvases and accompanying texts were created for this Scar Project.    As a follow up to that project, Myre made loom woven beadworks that isolated the most prevalent motifs: sorrow, love, healing and survival.  Scarscapes (2009) and Scarscapes 2 (2015) are in the current exhibition.

Scarscapes 2 2015  Mind  Loss  Time  Nadia Myre

human interaction
environmental change
cultural production

Meditation  (respite 01) 2017 digital print (above)  is a large scale photograph, the first thing the visitor sees upon entering the exhibition.  The size of the photo and the repetitive handwork depicted in it prepares the viewer for a contemplative experience in the rest of the exhibition.

I also want to mention a project not included in this exhibition, but that is an important work for Canada.  Between 1999 and 2002, Nadia Myre organized the Indian Act project, in which she enlisted over 230 friends, colleagues and strangers to help her bead over every word of the Indian Act.   Each English word was covered up with white beads, all negative spaces with red beads.  Very labour intensive, beautiful, and political, the beaded works call attention to that colonial legislation and  provide a step forward for social change.

Nadia Myre asks enduring questions around colonial legacies and I felt lucky to be able to view her new work.