The Fibre Art Pieces
(Details of these pieces can be seen here.)
Underwater
Untitled, 1994; 12' diam.
I've always been interested in textures. With Mom and Gramma sewing or knitting all the time, there were always scraps of fabric and yarn around the house to manipulate. I learned to embroider the basics in Junior High School, but thought it was kind of boring, just doing a daisy chain and a stem stitch, outlining transfers. I tried some simple weaving when I was out of art school; that was fun, lots of fibres to handle ... silk, raw wool, etc. Then I met Jo, the design art teacher at my first school, and she introduced me to real embroidery: she had passed her City & Guilds exam in Ireland and was a designer. She showed me that threads could be used to create paintings, and to have fun with, in a way that high school Home Ec. classes never explored. So now I have a new medium to work in, although it takes me a few years to finish 'major' pieces. This is my first complete work, and as you can see it isn't limited to fibres. I started it under Jo's wing, then left it for a few years as I explored other things, and returned to complete it when I was teaching a fibre unit in my studio art class, ten years later, 1995. It was selected by my peers, the other members of the Winnipeg Embroiderers' Guild, to receive the Eleanor Thomas Award for our members' show.
Timepiece or It's All relative
When I was on the Program Committee of the WEG, we started having little lessons at guild night, and one of the ones I led was on how to use found objects as the basis for a design. This was the piece I demonstrated with, and it started with the watch bits, and washers and things from Dad's workshop. It took four years or so to finally finish it, as I picked away and added things. The title comes from the fact that it's made of watch parts and things from my fathers' shop (my 'relative'), and is about the passing of time. The little numbers and angels are party sequins, that normally get spread on tables as sparkling confetti. There was one cow in my package, so I put it on the leather, as a symbol of Dad's farm background.
Goldwork and Boxes
One of our guild members is an ecclesiastical embroiderer, and she works with gold and silks. Gold has fascinated me as a medium since I was given that box of gold leaf supplies, so I naturally was drawn to it for embroidery, too, and just had to try it myself. It's very finicky to work with. (But I don't think that the materials that I work with here are actually real gold). In the summer of 2002 I started covering tuna cans, with fabric and stitched lids. Then I went to a leather outlet and decided that the leather would be great for covering the boxes, but what would I do on the lids? Time to get my feet wet and go for the gold! These are my first two attempts. I kind of like them, myself. They also have beads and gold kid leather in the design. (Other boxes that I've done have bargello embroidery on the lids, or quilted fabric.)