Estonian exchange artists are here!

The artists normally come in October, but this year’s artists Kärt Ojavee and Johanna Ulfsak are working now in the Mill Gallery space at the Cotton Factory to create a test piece for the main hall at the new International Estonian Centre. Merike Koger has kindly lent them her loom and bought a warping board for them.

By combining a variety of yarns with optical fibres, Kärt and Johanna are working on a new piece that will react in real time to the weather on the Baltic Sea. In their words: “We were interested in creating a fabric capable of surpassing its own physical presence; to somehow connect the object with an outside world. Thus, the wavy textile is designed to gather information about events and changes happening on sea hundreds of kilometers away and to respond to them. When a stronger gust of wind sweeps over the sea – the fabric reacts. When a wave rises with the storm, the fabric changes too.”

(https://www.k-o-i.ee/livestreams)

Johanna and Kärt will also be working out of the Daniels Artscape Launchpad in Toronto for almost a week. They will be giving artists talks in Toronto and at the Art Gallery of Burlington.