Weaving a tale of two cities in Craft Ontario

Aarjavee Raaj: Culture Editor

Two artists from different corners of the world connected online in 2019 during the COVID-19 pandemic and planted seeds of collaboration.

The product of this collaboration was Knotwork, on display at Craft Ontario from March 9 to April 21.

Montreal-based Sandy Lamb and Stockholm-based Miriam Parkman may not share the same time zone, but their creations are an amalgamation of both their styles.

Lamb’s work is focused on weft-faced tapestry weaving. He said in an email to Humber News that art is a mode of expression, a way of living and a habit for him. Making it can be invigorating and exhausting.

“By establishing a dialogue with art, either through expression or appreciation, I think everyone can become more deeply connected with themself and others,” he said.

“The time spent during the lockdowns definitely spurred a lot of creative energy and motivation to finally mount an exhibition and doing a show with Miriam [Parkman] felt like a good and nat- ural direction to go.”

Parkman uses a traditional Swedish hand-knotted rug technique in her pieces.

She graduated from the Stockholm-based Handarbetets Vänner school, which translates to Friends of Handicraft, in 2016 after three years of weaving and needlework studies.

“My relationship to art is very much formed by this: history, textiles, tradition, revaluing what someone else threw/gave away,” Parkman said in an email to Humber News.

She said she and Lamb chatted and connected over many topics, from technique, yarn qualities, dating and food. The traces of this can be seen in their pieces.

Knotwork came to life because of the support from the staff of Craft Ontario and they were a pleasure to work with, Lamb said.

Craft Ontario, based in Toronto, supports craft artists by showing them how to develop their careers and profit from it.

It also helps to promote their work through exhibitions, retail, print and online publications.

Scott Coish, a Craft Ontario sales and marketing associate, said Lamb and Parkman met for the first time in Toronto at the Knot- work exhibition.

“One of them works mostly in a traditional technique from where she’s from called rya, where you’re working on a loom and your hand knotting pieces through to kind of give that the rug or textured, carpet look, whereas the other one works more primarily on flat looms, a flat tapestry,” Coish said.

Janna Heimstra, the executive director at Craft Ontario, said Lamb and Parkman applied for the exhibit with Craft Ontario in 2023 and were accepted once the curator, Robyn Wilcox, who works with the DesignTO Festival primarily, organized and set every- thing in motion.

“This piece here is actually based on a photo of her grandmother and it’s her grandmother dyeing yarn which is a practice that Miriam does as well,” she said.

“So when you look at her pieces, she’s the one who’s actually applied the colour to the fibres and decided how that’s all going to come together.”

Heimstra said the artists were inspired by and experimented with each other’s techniques.

“Some of these knotwork pieces are Sandy’s [Lamb’s] and what he’s learned from Miriam [Parkman] and vice versa,” she said.

Heimstra said the exhibit opened on Saturday, March 9, and many textile fans showed up to meet the artists, some of them hardcore fans of Lamb’s work online.

“Without abandoning our individual impulses, we allowed ourselves to be influenced by each other during the course of the collaboration,” Lamb and Parkman said in a joint statement on Craft Ontario’s website.

“The works that make up this exhibition trace the trajectory of our cross-pollination, the knotting together of two artists from different places.”