Maria Hupfield : Jingle Spiral

Maria Hupfield was born in Parry Sound, Ontario, Canada in 1975.  She works across disciplines such as video, performance, and industrial felt.  After ten years of living in Brooklyn, NY, Maria has returned to Canada, and resides in Toronto. She identifies as an urban Anishinaabe who belongs to the Wasauksing First Nation (Huron Robinson Treaty) in Ontario.

Jingle Spiral (2015) (pictured above) references the Ojibwe sacred powwow dress.  Such dresses feature hundreds of metal cones that creae a soothing sound when the dancer moves.  In her 2017 exhibition at the Power Plant in Toronto, Jingle Spiral was presented mounted on the wall as well as in a performance video. Watch the video at this link.

Maria Hupfield is assistant professor in Indigenous Performance and Media Art at the University of Toronto in Mississauga where she runs the Indigenous Creation Studio and is also the Director and Lead Arrtist in the Department of Visual Studies / English and Drama.  As well, she works with graduate students at the St. George Campus of U of T.  Hupfield states:  "My research brings together studio based practices and processes with expansive definitions of art that are informed by knoweldge from nations connected to the campus in the Great Lakes region."  

Maria Hupfield is number 9 in the Canadian Arists who work with Textiles series.  

the sun, the moon, and also the stars

moon, wool thread, wool felt 2018  Judy Martin

sun  wool thread, wool felt, acrylic paint ( in progress)  judy martin 

and also the stars  wool thread, wool felt, 2018 judy martin

 

Intuition and conceptual thought are married in most of my work.
And some of the time they live happily ever after.

But there is usually some tension along the way.

I need to make my work as true as I can.
Believable.

Real

I rely on the archetypal shapes of circle, cross and dot and use them as language.

The works in this post are the under-sides of pieces made last winter  (see here)

They are the backs I suppose.
Felt drawings
I plan to display them so that the original 'first side' will not be shown.

I don't mind that the original designs will be secret.
Believe me.

I took them outside and laid them in the garden, amongst the caterpillars
and forget me nots.

from left to right:  sun (february)  and also the stars (march and april)  moon (january)  2018

These three pieces document each day of January, February, March and half of April 2018.
I used velvet and found fabrics to make small collages on wool felt

which were then attached together.

I kept going until I ran out of felt.

Then I turned them over, and used the felt 'backs' as if they were pieces of paper
and made completely fresh and new drawings.

Drawings that don't have anything to do with the winter.

These new drawings will have their first showing in Halifax Nova Scotia this summer.
Penny Berens and I have produced an exhibition entitled Cloth Of Time.

the underside of the leaf

cool in shadow

sublimely unemphatic

smiling of innocence

Agnes Martin

the private side

I pinned the daily practice wall pieces up on the design wall.
These are daily collages that I stitched on every day between January 1 and April 7 2018
In the first one, I tried to make collages about observations and intuitions.  (Super Moon an example)
In the second one, I used abandoned work, attempting to give new life to some cyanotypes.
In the third one, I just recorded the passage of time and the containment of love.

Then I flipped them back to front...and wow.

They stir my emotions more.
I wonder why.

the reverse of these pieces are simpler than the front
minimal colour
naked maybe, yet marked with those black dotted lines
they are sensuous
private

there's a serenity to them
maybe they are more spiritual
more connected to something ineffable

 the materials are wool felt and wool thread

they remind me of the sweet grass baskets stitched with black thread that I collect here on Manitoulin
made by the indiginous crafts women
this scented grass remains so sweet even when it drys from green to a golden colour.

I began collecting these small and simple lidded baskets when we moved here 25 years ago
this one holds some pieces of mica, gifts from nature

the three wall pieces also remind me of mbuti bark cloth from the congo in africa

click here for more examples of bark cloth

To make the daily practices, I stitched arrangements of plant dyed velevt to the felt

always designing from the front of the piece.

yet I prefer the back sides.

The inner side.
the inner world.

The front is too distracting and noisy.

we've been thinking about being alive for thousands of years 

Jessica Stockholder