Harmony and Polly and Regina, oh my

Grey Scale I by Polly Apfelbaum,
marker on silk/rayon velvet, 60 x 37 inches,  2015

 

Ned and I went to the National Gallery of Canada to view Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction when we were in Ottawa last February.  

Grey Scale detail, marker on silk/rayon velvet, by Polly Apfelbaum, USA

This is the important exhibition that you have probably read about online.  It debuted in Los Angeles at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in September 2023, and then travelled first to the National Gallery in Washington DC in the spring of 2024, and then to Canada in late 2024 until the end of February 2025.  The exhibition is scheduled to open at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York in April. (April 20 - September 13 2025. ) 

Syaw (Fishnet) by Regina Pilawuk Wilson,
acrylic paint on canvas, 48 x 79 inches, 2011

Fishnet (detail) by paint on canvas by Regina Pilawuk Wilson, Australia

The exhibition was beautifully installed in our spacious national gallery.    

I was familiar with Regina Pilawuk Wilson's work as I own the catalogue for the Marking the Infinite exhibition.  It was great to see this painting face to face.  I really appreciated understanding with my body that that this painting is as large as one of my quilts.  (48 x 79 inches) 

Pink Weave, by Harmony Hammond, USA
 oil and cold wax medium on canvas, 24 X 24 inches, 1974 

Harmony Hammond   is a recognized artist in a wide variety of materials, and has, through out her 50 year career,  privileged textiles in her work.   I find it interesting that of all her work, the curators chose these two oil/wax paintings to represent her contribution to abstract art.  

Grey Grid, by Harmony Hammond, USA
oil and cold wax medium on canvas, 20.5 x 20.5 inches, 1974 

These two paintings by Harmony Hammond along with the velvet piece, Grey Scale I, by Polly Apfelbaum, (who is no slouch in the art world either, btw,) expand the thinking of those of us who unconsciously put art into categories.  Why? I wonder.  Polly Appelbaum's audacious idea to use permanent marker on sensuous silk rayon velvet gives me such pleasure.  (see top photo of this post)    

Untitled #8 by Agnes Martin,
india ink, graphite and gesso on canvas, 72 x 72 inches, 1977 

Untitled #8 by Agnes Martin, A Canadian who worked in the USA for most of her career.

It's rare to see an Agnes Martin piece in real life.  

I love that her pencil drawing is so much larger than the Harmony Hammond cold wax pieces.  That's one of the main reasons I like to go to art galleries.  The scale and the texture of the work can only be understood when you stand face to face with it. 

(By the way, the above artwork is not included in the beautiful catalogue, although two other Agnes Martin pieces are.  This makes me wonder if each installation of the exhibition is slightly different.)  

Floor Pieces II, III, and VI by Harmony Hammond,
acrylic on fabric, dimensions variable, 1973

Floorpiece by Harmony Hammond, paint on linen that has been braided  USA

I looked carefully at these floor pieces to see what had been painted and what had not been painted.  

In this post, I am showing some of the artists who created work that highlights the idea of domestic textile methods, (woven cloth, braided rug, pieced quilt) with fine art techniques (painting, drawing).

I plan to write another post about this exhibition.  If you are near New York City this summer, I hope that you will visit the MOMA and walk through this beautiful exhibition.    

Joyce Wieland

Balling  1961  oil on canvas by Joyce Wieland

I visited the National Gallery of Canada a few weeks ago.  I looked around for my favourite artist, Joyce Wieland and found four of her pieces in a quiet area and photographed them for this post.  The National Gallery of Canada has a large collection of Wieland's work in their permanent collection.  (listed here).  In 1987 Wieland had a retrospective at the Art Gallery of Ontario and art critic Geoffrey James covered it for Maclean's magazine.  His article as well as Johanne Sloan's most excellent online book about Joyce Wieland are sources for this post.    

Joyce Wieland was born in 1930 in Toronto.  Her parents died before Joyce turned 9.  She went to Toronto Central Technical school to study dress making, but the art teacher, Doris McCarthy, encouraged her to switch to art.  Wieland became a commercial artist for four years and designed packaging and animated films.  In 1956, age 26, she met and married artist Michael Snow.  The couple went to New York in in the early 60's and returned home in 1971.  The painting at the top of this post is from that time in her life, when New York was bursting with abstract expressionism.  Balling is one of Wieland's  Time Machine series of paintings.  Joyce called them 'sex poetry'.  A significant painting from this time is Heart On,  which you can view in this link.  

Joyce Wieland used a wide variety of media.  Film.  Quilts.  Paintings.  Assemblage.  She was what we would call now, a multi-disciplinary artist.  Geoffrey James wrote:  "Hers is not a body of work that offers a clear progression of a single, recognizable style.  Instead, the viewer is confronted by what appears to be sudden, impulsive leaps."

Spring Blues  1960 oil, paper collage, mirror on canvas by Joyce Wieland

Wieland experimented with media.  Spring Blues is an example of how she broke away from the dominant New York art style.  The mirrors are there because she wanted to include the viewer's reflection.  She would be pleased by how the National Gallery is protecting this fragile piece with a plexiglass frame which clearly shows my reflection looking and photographing this bright painting, now a bit damaged from age.  For a better view of this painting, have a look at this article from the Globe and Mail - you will need to scroll down to find Joyce's piece.  

spring blues detail

While many of her art works had to do with male-female relationships, Wieland is also known for art that communicates a great love for Canada.  In 1971, at the age of 41, she was given a solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada entitled True Patriot Love, the first ever living female artist to have such a thing, a truly remarkable achievement.  In her National Gallery exhibition, she showcased the work of women who embroidered, knitted,  and made quilts.  A celebration of sisterhood and domestic art a few years before Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party (1974-79).  A photo of a rarely seen  set of knitted flags from this exhibition is here.   The best thing about the True Patriot Love exhibition for me is the catalogue for it, a government publication on Arctic Flora that Wieland altered with photos and sketches.  With this simple subversive act, she highlighted another overlooked domestic art, The Scrapbook.

Confed Spread 1967  plastic and cloth by Joyce Wieland

In 1967, when Wieland still lived in New York she made many pieces about her love for Canada.  Confed Spread, shown above, was first shown in Canada at Expo 67 to celebrate Canada's 100th birthday. 

Cooling Room II  1964  metal toy airplane, cloth, metal wire, plastic boat, paper collage, ceramic cups with lipstick spoon, mounted in painted wooden case by Joyce Wieland 

Also from the 60's are the many boxed and plastic wrapped assemblages, one of which was on display in Ottawa.  They seem like film strips and tell stories.  Planes plummet, sailboats sink, and elements of disaster, travel, love, and time passing are the plot.  Joanne Sloan has written about these and also Joyce's quilts here.  

If you google Joyce Wieland now,  Joyce Wieland Canadian Filmmaker comes up first, because film making was a primary medium for her.  Her work in film culminated in the full length feature film, The Far Shore in 1976, a love story loosely inspired by one of Canada's star artists, Tom Thomson.  The MacLean's article implies that this film, a five year project, took a toll on Wieland and she almost stopped making films, and turned to painting and drawing with coloured pencil in the 80's.  Then in 1990, Wieland was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. 

Cooling Room  II detail by Joyce Wieland.  This sculpture is named for the words printed on the box that Wieland used to make the assemblage.  

When she died at the age of 68 in 1998, women artists across Canada mourned her.

Two biographies came out 3 years later in 2001.  Jane Lind's Joyce Wieland:  Artist on Fire and Iris Nowell's Joyce Wieland:  A Life in Art.

I've written about Joyce Wieland on modernist aesthetic.  I'm a fan.  Her name comes up in eleven different posts on this blog.   Here's one from 2009.   

The National Gallery in Ottawa,  Ontario,  Canada is a beautiful place to visit for humans of all ages.  It has the feeling of a grand, clean, cool palace of culture.  (My companion here is 18 months)