MAKING OTHERWISE / FOLK LORE AND OTHER PANICS

passion over reason  by Mark Clintberg and members of Winds and Waves guild , Fogo Island Newfoundland

I have chosen a quilt made with wrong side out fabrics to begin this post about Folk Lore and Other Panics, a 12-artist exhibition curated by Mireille Eagan that was up at The Rooms in St. John's Newfoundand until April 26 2015.

The quilt flips the text from Reason over Passion , the quilt that beloved Canadian artist Joyce Wieland made for prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau in 1968.  We learn from the wall label that artist Mark Clintberg designed this quilt because he is interested in women's intervention in politics and had ten similar quilts made by the Wind and Waves artisan group of Fogo Island Newfoundland.

Clintberg is one in a growing trend of young Canadian artists who are employing traditional craft, folk art, and commonplace materials to help us understand our panic-ridden contemporary world.

I like that the sixteen women's names from the Wind and Waves collective are listed on the wall label.  I like that the ten quilts in this edition are placed randomly on beds in the Fogo Island Inn.  I like that the story of the Wieland/Trudeau gift is held up for contemplation.  I like that artists as cool as Mark Clintberg are speaking the language of the quilt.

1970 stomped globe  by Kay Burns  2003 and ongoing

These interesting circular shapes are also from the Folk Lore and Other Panics exhibition.  The text on the wall label reveals that the artist, Kay Burns, impersonated Iris Taylor, the fictional founder of the Flat Earth Society and that these discs are the results of stomping on globes, an initiation act that new members do in order to express their common sense.

Like so much conceptual art, it helps to read about the intent of the artist, and then something goes bong in the mind and new insight (and laughing out loud) happens.

Two interesting and more comprehensive reviews of Folklore and other Panics are here and also here.

Road Trip  2012  by Janet Morton knitted wool man's outfit, video approximately  60 minutes

In Cambridge Ontario's Idea Exchange gallery, there is a second exhibition, Making Otherwise that features two videos about knitting.  In the first, Robert Kingsbury unravels an odd suit knitted by Janet Morton. Entitled Road Trip, the sixty minute video explores the dimension of time, and Morton connects ephemeral with repetitive, walking with thinking, and real time with embedded time for the viewer.

That suit took at least a month for Morton to knit but Kingsbury easily unravels it into a single ball in an hour as he walks through the outskirts of a town - past gas stations, alongside ditches, rhythmically lifting his legs to undo her labour,  not losing a step.  (Video was recorded by Nick Montgomery).

The second video, Shiny Heart, reminds us that while making things by hand is a slow and meditative quiet act for the maker, the result can be seen (and heard in this case) by others in mere minutes. Janet Morton's use of time based art forms such as music and video in combination with her slow textile production confounds us.  All the time that is spent making.  It's invisible.

 

The tuba that Colin Couch performs Bach's Goldberg variation #25 is muffled with knitted yarn over the 13 minutes that it takes to play it, beginning at the mouth piece and going around and around each and every tube large and small while he determinately makes his music.  It makes us think about all the time he spent learning and practicing the difficult piece.  It's invisible.

Janet Morton spent weeks covering the tuba with knitting, a complicated and fiddly thing to do and then in 13 minutes, it was undone.  The video of the undoing was shot by Morton's collaborator, Robert Kingsbury, and then played in reverse so that the instrument is magically covered up.  What is mind boggling is that the sound of the Bach variation is unaffected by the reverse video.  The hours spent by Andrew McPherson editing and fiddling with the video and sound looks effortless, but it's not.  It's invisible.
This Canadian Art review gives more information and a photo of the silent tuba.  Click  here.

The final artist I will mention is Sarah Maloney from Nova Scotia who uses embroidery and sculpture to address art history and women's  place in society.

A mother of three, the non toxic and portable art of embroidery allowed her to maintain her art practice (MFA Windsor) while raising the girls.   She also made the heavy oak frames for her large pieces herself as well as a fainting sofa with bronze tulips that is also part of the installation but not shown here.

The beauty of the curves and patterns are compelling.  There is intensity in this careful art.  The botanically correct and much enlarged couples of fertile tulips are bursting with life.

Making and otherwise: Craft and Material fluency in Contemporary Art includes six Canadian artists and was curated by Heather Anderson and organized by Carlton University Art Gallery.  It will be in Cambridge until June 27 2015.

sensual experience

"cherry blossoms" detail by Ana Galindo, linen, thread and cherry stems, 2015 

The exhibition Sensorial Objects continues until May 2 at the Craft Ontario gallery 990 Queen Street West, Toronto Ontario.

Here, cherry stems are couched with thread onto re-purposed linen by artist Ana Galindo, arranged without altering their beautiful naturally curved shape.  The viewer recalls how cherries taste, how the stems feel in our fingers.  We understand blossoms.

"cherry blossoms" from the series "of the everyday and its leftovers"  21 3/8 " x 64 1/8" x 2", linen, thread and cherry stems, 2015 by Ana Galindo

"In a world of materials, nothing is ever finished.  Everything may be something, but being something is always on the way to being something else.  We can call this re-cycling, but from a materials centered view it is simply life."  Tim Ingold

Accompanying the exhibition is a publication that besides double spreads of each of the artists' work, also contains an introduction to the exhibition by Craft Ontario Curator and director of programs Janna Heimstra, a curatorial statment by Kathleen Morris and Monica Bodirsky, and an essay entitled A Continuity by artist and educator Judith Leemann.  Leemann reminds us that the viewer's own life experience with familiar materials acts as the way to understand not only these artworks but also allows us to imagine further possibilities of the artworks and/or the materials and/or ourselves.

"jaryu" detail.  Chung-Im Kim  2012

For example, Chung-Im Kim (above) uses a familiar material in an unfamiliar way and Dorie Millerson (below) uses unfamiliar material in a familiar way.  Kim prints the felt, cuts it up, and through careful hand stitch, manipulates it into a kind of distorted animal hide while Millerson creates anew something recognizable and nostalgic that references un-locking, opening up, crossing thresholds.

Key  by Dorie Millerson.  Needle lace, cotton, wire  2" x 7.5" 2011

All of the work in the exhibit address the sense of touch.
History and possibility.
The work of the hand.
The aesthetic of time.

Return To the Next by Eva Ennist.  reed, concrete, hand made paper, recycled fiberglass.  72" x 27",  2014-15

Experiencing artwork made from materials and through our senses encourages deep reflection.

Return To the Next detail  Eva Ennist 2014-15

The ten artists in this exhibition are faculty at OCAD, Ontario College of Art and Design.
Their names are:  Monica Bodirsky, Eva Ennist, Ana Galindo, Lynne Heller, Chung-Im Kim, Rachel MacHenry, Dorie Millerson, Kathleen Morris, Meghan Price and Laurie Wassink.

In the language of landscape by Kathleen Morris.  56" x 24" x 1", wool and fleece, 2015

Each of these makers have manipulated things from the real world into new things that have never been seen before..  The act of making new objects from materials that already have a history and a language, places both maker and viewer on the same path.  One of the curators, Kathleen Morris, (whose work is shown above) states that "the act of making becomes an invitation for my body to reunite with the living landscape."

In the language of landscape  detail, Kathleen Morris, 2015

In another gallery just down the street (NO FOUNDATION 1082 1/2 Queen St W) was another exploration of the senses, David Ballantine's installation The Remembering of the Air.  Ballantine's three well crafted and beautiful inventions were made to be handled by those who entered the gallery. He states: "Through the reverent interaction of instruments and the body, my work investigates the sensuous within a growing digital and immaterial world." read more of his statement here.

David Ballantine with one of the instruments he made for his installation
The Remembering of the Air

the c word

Luanne Martineau, Parasite Buttress 2005

Professor of craft history at the Nova Scotia School of Craft and Design, Sandra Alfoldy speaks about craft as a noun. She writes in Studio magazine:

"On a recent visit to the National Gallery of Canada I realized that the idea that it does not collect craft is a falsehood. Yannick Pouliot , Regency: Monomaniac, 2007

The gallery's exhibition It is What it is: Recent Acquisitions (Nov 5 2010 - April 10, 2011) was filled with materials and forms from the craft world, such as Luanne Martineau's felted and stitched works and Yannick Pouliot expert furniture making and upholstery.

The difference was that neither the didactic panels and exhibition catalog nor the curators and artists employed the term craft." Sandra Alfoldy

The curator of the exhibition, The C Word, currently up in Toronto's Doris McCarthy gallery thinks of the word craft as a verb. The artists chosen for this show are mostly painters. Elizabeth Bailey, Pink Bed, Warm 2011-2012

"If you work in one of the more traditional artmaking genres, you soon become aware that certain sectors of the art world hold the view that being too skillful in your use of materials, or taking the formal visual concerns of your art too seriously, is somewhat gauche.

To raise the “c” word is to run the risk of being seen as a mere technician, whose work must therefore be devoid of any deep feeling or thought." Richard Mongiat

What do you think?
(all images in this post are from the artists' web-sites)

Bound

a limitation
a binding
rule bound
neatly bound
out of bounds
north bound
forward to the unknown, backward to memory
bound with a rope
secure

What are the boundaries of quilt making?
How do quilts bind me as an artist?

The tradition binds me - the old patterns, the layers
The stigma binds me - it's a domestic art
The labour binds me - each piece takes a year to make

Considering

What is the culture of quilts in today's society?

quilt guilds
quilt shows
quilt competitions
quilt shops
quilt magazines
quilt fabrics, more and more fabrics
quilt notions, special rulers
workshops
prizes
women for the most part

Walk into any quilt show, only one or two quilts shine out as true.
There is disdain for quilts among other textile artists. Why is this?
Is it really because the bulk of quilts in quilt shows are made
too fast
with lots of tricks and short cuts
like stack and whack?
Remember those Amish quilts from the 1920's? Made from naturally dyed wool and cotton they used large shapes, squares mostly and no embellishment or fancy tricks with fussy cut prints. The way that the colours were made and then how they were arranged makes us feel that the woman who laid those fabrics beside each other on the floor really thought about how they could best express the emotions she felt in her soul.What WAS quiltmaking?

an integral part of a woman's work day along with cleaning, laundry, mending, child caring, wood chopping, gardening
a welcome relief from those domestic chores
a creative option for a woman in her confined domestic sphere
a visual language where she could express joy, ambition, sorrow, even politics
What IS quiltmaking? (or should I say, what can quiltmaking be?)

a place to design with colour and shape in an original way
a tactile painting
a metaphor for warmth and comfot
an intimate connection with the body (we SLEEP with them)
a pattern (like music)
a way to recycle materials that might be thrown away
a way to keep things that need to be treasured
a way to gather things up and try to make them make sense
an object that takes a long time to make and gives contemplative space to the maker
a place to express concerns
about the body, about feelings, about relationships, about frustrations, about values
in a tender way
in a resourceful way
in an enduring way

craft theory

Working with craft media is a viable alternative for artists. Craft is an alternative creativity, resistant to the modernist notion of the heroic genius. Craft workers make objects and those objects give us ways to know ourselves. They gather their meaning through use and act as vehicles for identity and memory. Wearing objects such as jewellery and textiles shows who we are.

This new definition does not require ‘art’ to change, but it does allow craft to enter the art world. Craft theory realises that craft practice is as reflective as fine art practice and that craft is so interconnected with global human activity that it can transform existing culture.