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THREADING BLACK PAGE 26
this page top to bottom: Simone Saunders, She emerges (selfie), 2020 Hand-tufted tapestry, 63” x 53” eva birhanu, wear my hair, 2019 jacquard woven self-portrait, 23” x 39”
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This page (top to bottom): Calgary install shot We Are Rising – #NoDAPL – Wet’Suwet’en Territory, 2020 Please Stand By - #NoDAPL – Standing Rock Reservation, 2020 Beaded Tipi Bags, glass beads, thread, deerhide, cotton, metal cones and buttons Handsewn beadwork on deerhide, button and hide tie closure, sections laced together with leather cord and cotton tape, 15’ x 19” x 2” each Opposite page: Net Zero / Leave No Trace, 2018 Boy’s Beaded Moccasins, glass beads, thread, deerhide, metal sequins 4” x 3.5” x 9”, Heel Fringe 4 “ Photos: Jeff Yee
Manitohkewin
// Sacred Power Made Visible
Alberta Craft Gallery - Edmonton July 4- August 22, 2020 Alberta Craft Gallery - Calgary June 10-26, 2021 (exhibition dates affected by mandated closures of galleries)
Eternally present, geometric form occurs throughout our cosmos and the natural world. Precise in measurement - the art, science and mathematics of geometry form a cohesive conversation of shape, size, relationships and space. Throughout history and into the current age, the concepts of geometry are applied across artistic disciplines, influencing artists with creative vision and varied technique. Sharon Rose Kootenay, a Metis artist working within traditional materials, is one of Alberta’s principal interpreters of geometric beadwork design. Influenced by her Indigenous family connections, and living and material history, Kootenay’s studio practice reflects both personal and community perspectives, rendered with an expert use of colour, symmetry and form. Manitohkewin // Sacred Power Made Visible The original purpose of beadwork was to petition and protect the sacred. As the world’s values change, can traditional artistic practice still communicate with the sentient Cosmos? Conceived as a visual narrative and social commentary, Kootenay’s Manitohkewin series explores the artist’s relationship between cultural practices, spiritual beliefs and global concerns. Designed to explore a complex concept, Manitohkewin endeavours to link esoteric artistic practices (symbolic and sacred meaning encoded in historic beadwork design) with the technological processes and relentless progress that signifies our modern age. Through thematic structure, corresponding design motifs and pattern recognition, Manitohkewin demonstrates an elegant discourse between the traditional beliefs of the Northern Plains and contemporary issues, including our current sources of energy, industrial advancement, and our stewardship of the land and water, and the world beyond. Evocative and redemptive, Kootenay’s work reveals a universe connected by faith and hope, and a longing for a less-complicated age. As both an elegy, and a call to action, Manitohkewin affirms Indigenous worldviews, and expresses a heart-felt desire for a world in balance, environmental renewal, and solidarity within our human family. Incorporating both historical replica and contemporary objects, Manitohkewin is inspired by the material culture of the Northern Plains. Presented through an array of forms, the exhibition includes: beaded clothing and moccasins; tipi bags and dispatch cases; pipe bags; bandolier bags; horse gear, and a blanket strip; among others. Through a testament of visual art, Manitohkewin brings an increased awareness of contemporary Indigenous fine craft, as well as a glimpse into the identity of the Indigenous Northern Plains.
A life-long maker of traditional art forms, Alberta-based artist Sharon Rose Kootenay finds her inspiration in the forests and prairie landscapes she calls home. Through honoring tradition and expressing a deep connection to the land, Sharon’s vibrant pieces tell a story of cultural identity and place. Utilizing hide, beads, thread and needle, she creates fine craft that illustrates regional history, significant family events, and personal perspectives.
Rural Roots
A place of connectivity and conservation
Alberta Craft Discovery Gallery - Edmonton September 19 - October 31, 2020
The framework of Rural Roots is an expression of both the creative connectivity and individual autonomy of a group of five women makers. Connie Pike, Katrina Chaytor, Jessica Danbrook, Katriona Drijber, and Brenda Danbrook are emerging, and established artists formally introduced through programs at the University of Alberta, Red Deer College and the Alberta University of the Arts, in Alberta. The artists in this exhibition engage in traditional craft practices, share a powerful connection to clay, and acknowledge and celebrate the collegiality and mentorship between them. One element of Rural Roots examines the intricacies of the relationship between women working together through developing a collaborative series of ceramic works. These collaborations are concrete expressions of the potential for empowerment through shared knowledge of craft practices. The artists’ tactile engagements in labour-intensive methods with clay materials, skill, time and labour are expressed through imagery and pattern, inspiration for which they draw from the natural landscape or technological world. Creating a show around the theme of collegial mentorship is at once an inspiration and challenge. However, with each member’s commitment to support and guide a form of a ceramic collaboration with at least one member from the group of five, the artists navigated working together in numerous ways over the course of a one-year period. In the spring of 2019, two members attended the workshop of Katrina Chaytor’s, Pots, Purpose and Place, Lunenburg School of Arts, NS. Other members, such as Katriona Drijber and Jessica and Brenda Danbrook met and shared in creating ceramic collaborations in small groups in member’s studios, before the COVID-19 pandemic. Mother and daughter, Jessica and Brenda had several organic collaborations due to their familial relationship. Snail mail, email and social media platforms were used by all the artists as they strove to connect as “Isolation” was imposed. For example, Connie Pike’s goal to “INSPIRE” the group of women led her to send a handwritten note and linoleum cutting of a leaf image to each woman.
One of Katrina Chaytor and Brenda Danbrook’s collaborative pieces merges Chaytor’s digital icon, used to navigate virtual modes of communication and mentorship, with Danbrook’s motif of an Alberta prairie plant. Chaytor says it references “the importance of nature as a unifying force of our physical, mental and spiritual sustenance.” It is the artists’ hope that their collaboration will signify their shared experiences which negotiate nature and technology. The digital motif used incorporates circuits from a motherboard combined with five speech bubbles to represent the five artists, alluding to a “digital wheat shape.” This is merged with the prairie wheat with the implied intention of connectivity and conversation we negotiate every day. The work in this exhibition reflects a strong craft community while expressing kinship and collective growth through both collaborative and solitary pursuits.
This page (top to bottom): Jessica Danbrook in collaboration with Connie Pike, Crow on a Vase Plate, 2020 23x23x3cm Connie Pike in collaboration with Brenda Danbrook and Jessica Danbrook, Platter, 2020 31x31x10cm
Opposite page: Katriona Drijber in collaboration with Katrina Chaytor, Moose Plate, 2020 low fire earthenware, china paint fired to cone 018 18x27x2.5cm
Cloth in Context
Alberta Craft Discovery Gallery - Edmonton November 7 - December 24, 2020
CURATOR: Natalie Gerber
Cloth in Context – Unravelling Curatorial Intentions
JENNIFER SALAHUB, Professor Emeritus, AUArts
Unlike fine artists, rarely can ‘fine’ craftspeople command the appropriate recognition or monetary reward justified by the creation of a unique piece of work. In consideration of the full value of materials and skilled workmanship involved, even an
“appropriate” price can seem questionable to the vast majority, including those who can afford to pay it. In this respect it seems appropriate to encourage a positive appreciation of the practice in accordance with contemporary perception of time as a commodity in modern society.1 It has been two decades since Leigh Mole wrote “Chronomanual Craft: Time Investment as a Value in Contemporary Western Craft” and the term chronomanual entered the craft conversation; nevertheless, the popular undervaluing of time investment continues to plague the craft community. Arguably this is even more apparent in the case of hand crafted yardage (meterage) where end use often trumps craftsmanship in the mind of the consumer.2 While the works in the exhibition are indeed oneoffs, this translates into metres of hand-crafted woven, dyed, or repeat-printed cloth. Significantly, most are destined to be cut, reworked, and ultimately displayed in another form. In an interview with Natalie Gerber, the curator of Cloth in Context she confessed that given her practice focuses on creating printed yardage for the home she would often find herself being regarded as a supplier rather than a creative maker. And yet, for those ‘in the know,’ fine craft demands of its maker that they are the artist, the designer, the craftsman and the technician. Where then, does such hand-crafted work live within a culture that celebrates convenience coming from ‘fast’ design and ‘fast’ making. A culture where traditional craft knowledge and skills have been marginalized by mass production and mass consumption? Gerber conceived of this exhibition of contemporary surface and textile design by Calgary artists soon after she moved into a new studio, a former classroom located in the old King Edward School [cSpace]. This was a well-considered decision signalling her commitment to her practice. I should explain that her practice began during her art-school-days as a home-based workshop relying on craft shows, word of mouth, and finally an on-line gallery for sales. Her new space is dominated by a very large
surface upon which she prints yardage. As one enters the room there are shelves with bolts of printed fabrics, samples, and some finished accessories. The opposite wall houses the sink and shelves containing her tools – this is a working studio. The location, an art-hub, invites not only walk-in traffic but encourages those searching out her work to visit the atelier. To her amazement this space brought with it a perceptible change in attitude regarding her work. For the first time visitors came face-to-face with the complexities of the process and began to appreciate the skill-sets required to create repetitive design. They were suddenly thrilled to discuss the conceptual nature of her work and, to cut a long story short, became discerning collectors rather than demanding shoppers. With this insight the rationale behind the exhibition came into focus - Cloth in Context would create an opportunity to open the dialogue around process and making to a broader audience.
As curator and a maker, Gerber wanted to show not only spectacular examples of contemporary surface and textile design but to highlight the often discounted aspect – the value added to fine craft by the slower aspects of fine craft making. Although working with different techniques, what these makers have in common is that the materials and processes that they have chosen to use exact their own rhythm – indifferent to the speed, technology, and efficiency that defines so much of our modern age. To this end, she decided that the artists, Charis Birchall, Jolie Bird, Bill Morton, Irene Rasetti and herself would keep journals recording their processes – including time investment. Through these notations one becomes privy to not only the maker’s commitment to their medium but their high regard for rituality and the repetitive gesture that defines craft. It is hoped that these journals will inspire a greater appreciation of authenticity and the legacy of fine craft as distinct from the ‘fast’ consumer-driven production that promises instant, if fleeting, gratification. For in these works of fine craft we see that “Each mark made and each word spoken are born of a gesture or utterance through which a fabric of history unfolds, simultaneously both very old and very young, marking a passage of lived time and remembered rhythms.”3 Upon proposing this exhibition Gerber deliberated for some time over the title, finally settling on the word cloth, perhaps the most mundane of labels for what curators have spent decades re-framing as unique conceptual works of textile-art, art-fabric, or fibre-art. There is no doubt that the textiles that make up Cloth in Context fulfill the art criteria; nonetheless, by their very nature, they are destined to move beyond the frame and away from the pedestal, for these works have a role to play in the art of everyday life.
Bibliography
1 Leigh, Mole. “Chronomanual Craft: Time Investment as Value in
Contemporary Western Craft.” Journal of Design History. 15/1(2002): 33-45 2 The word consumer is highly charged – while few would describe a visit to a gallery or craft show as “shopping” excursion those on the lookout for functional craft do just that – a form of lifestyle shopping. 3 Mitchell, Victoria. Between Sense and Place. Winchester, GB: Winchester
School of Art Gallery, 1997, 5
Les Manning
in memoriam
Les Manning in his studio at Medalta, Medicine Hat, AB
As a testament to his selflessness as an artist and internationally renown ceramics advocate and facilitator, I wanted to collect a few first personal stories from some of the literally thousands of people that Manning coached, coaxed, mentored, taught, worked alongside, befriended, and with whom he generally shared his life. I spoke first with Ann Mortimer, Manning’s contemporary – the two often-cited as the “king and queen” of Canadian ceramics. Mortimer had many shared initiatives and extensive international travel with Manning over the decades in efforts to move the ceramics movement forward. What stood out was their reciprocal respect for one another’s craft. Mortimer told me that when she heard about Manning’s opening in the spring of 2011 in Medicine Hat, Alberta, she didn’t hesitate to jump on a plane from Ontario to be there. According to Mortimer, Manning’s exhibition Common/Opposites was a complete departure from the thrown abstract multi-clay mountain vessels that had emerged as his signature work from his time at Banff. The colourful hand-built low-fire work stemmed from Manning’s deep sense of dismay at the world’s devastation of its forests and ecosystems. The next year, Les made a surprise appearance at the opening night reception of Ann’s 80th birthday retrospective at Jonathan Bancroft-Snell Gallery in London. He flew in from Calgary for the night, escorted by friends and collectors, to be there for her big moment. In 2007, Mortimer and Manning were asked to select the ten ceramic artists who would create the work for the Canadian exhibition hall of the Fuping International Ceramic Museum Project in China. Manitoba-based ceramic artist and educator, Grace Nickel recalls Manning’s steadfast leadership and dedication. Manning created figurative works capturing the socio-economic condition of the local factory workers who surrounded the contingency. A complete departure for him. On the day the before the Canadian gallery was to open, the work already installed, the Chinese decided to create a double-door entrance with a battering ram. According to Nickel, Manning stood like a sentinel safe-guarding the work, adapting to the surreal nature of events in a heartbeat, with the art and the artists’ interests guiding his every move. Manning made a difference in people’s lives directly and indirectly. His leadership in the field within the International Academy of Ceramics led to Canada’s first hosting of their annual congress at the Banff Centre for the Arts where Les was Director of the Ceramic Studio for over two and a half decades. It was at that IAC congress that the seeds were planted for the growth and flourishing of both the Alberta Potters Association and the Alberta Craft Council, Manning being a founder of both bodies. Concurrent with the congress was a pivotal exhibition of international ceramics in Calgary. Celebrated Canadian ceramicist, Greg Payce was in high school at the time. His art teacher showed his class slides of the exhibition and its catalogue. He can still see the catalogue images in his minds eye nearly half a century later. The possibilities they presented to Payce were pivotal in cementing his future in ceramics. In the early 1980’s Payce worked two winter terms as an artist in residency at Banff under Manning’s mentorship. Payce recalls Manning organizing field trips to New York City for his residents, opening the doors to studios and possibilities that were otherwise inaccessible to a whole generation of his peers. When Payce had his major 2015 retrospective, Palimpsest at the Esplanade Gallery in Medicine Hat, Alberta, he mounted Continuum at Medalta’s gallery space, an exhibition of early works from his formative years. Payce dedicated Continuum to Les Manning. Trudy Golley has been teaching ceramics at Red Deer College since 2000. She is one of Canada’s bright lights on the international ceramic circuit, but she might not be doing what she’s doing, or creating what she’s creating were it not for one small gesture of kindness on the part of Les Manning. Golley had not even met
