Comfort Zones: textiles in the Canadian landscape

About the Artists

By Sarah Quinton, 2001

David Hannan

Autobiography can be a route to understanding one's self in family or cultural environments. And there are many ways of telling one's story. Métis artist David Hannan's family histories are told through his collages and are made of melton cloth, ribbon, traditional design motifs, photography, sewing, painting and canvas. These materials, of course, carry with them their own tales.

Melton cloth is a woolen fabric used for overcoats and blankets; Hannan's incorporation of it as a painting surface acknowledges this European cloth as a symbol of European and First Nations contact - the very contact that the Métis Nation springs from. The ribbon border in Mathilda Arsenault is a motif that makes further reference to these woolen trade blankets (wide ribbon such as this is used as an edging treatment). The collaged horizontal stripe that the ribbon creates is a formal horizon line as much as it anchors the artwork in the materiality of Métis culture. The curved red and blue design in Double Curve is derived from traditional Mi'Kmaq ribbon work (an appliqué craft technique). And Hannan has painted four horizontal lines into the bottom right corner - a cheeky indication of the "value" of his artistic endeavor.¹

Who is Mathilda Arsenault? The photographic image in the collage of the same name is of the artist's great-grandmother posing in front of the family home in a picture taken between 1890 and 1900, most likely in Richibucto, New Brunswick where she is from. In Double Curve, Hannan depicts his grandparents and his great-aunt and great-uncle in a relaxed group portrait taken at the family cottage - a classic Canadian souvenir.

David Hannan's pictures spin stories. He frequently incorporates a prominent "X" motif, which is a mark he has claimed to represent the teepee, or sweat lodge - a site of conciliation and spiritual connection. His "X" marks the spot of home, family and heritage, and connects places of belonging and self-knowledge that he has discovered in his family history and cultural legacy.

Note:

1. First offered for trade in 1670, Hudson's Bay point blankets became important articles of trade - each short line or "point" woven into the edge of the blanket indicated the number of beaver pelts to be exchanged for the blanket. Today, points are still woven in as a historical reference and to indicate the size of the blanket.

Dorothy Caldwell

Dorothy Caldwell is a cartographer - a person who makes maps. She delineates the contours and the colours of the earth and sky of her southern Ontario home in abstract patterns that exemplify her physical surroundings. Her dyed and stitched textile, Thaw, is a tribute to pioneer botanist Catherine Parr Traill (1802-1899) and her writer sister Susanna Moodie (1803-1885), who emigrated from England to the Kawartha Lakes district - a place Caldwell herself (a transplanted American) adopted 30 years ago. "The Wintergreen plant was the first green thing to refresh the eye, long wearied by gazing on the dazzling snow for many consecutive months of winter," wrote Traill.

Caldwell unfolds the sisters' relationship to the land: "Struggling with dislocation, cold and hunger, the landscape overtook and transported them from their rugged and lonely lives in the wilderness." And Moodie wrote about a place (Stony Lake), "where not a vestige of man or his works is in evidence, and filled with a love of nature my heart forgot for a moment the love of home." "Reading their descriptions of the land as it was then spurs my imagination," continues Caldwell. "I walk in some of the same places explored by Catherine as she collected and recorded the ferns, flowers, lichens, bushes and trees of her new home. Through gathering, touching, and naming the contents of her landscape, she created a sense of place for herself which became a source of comfort and inspiration."

Historically, quilts that are meant to be slept under are pieced together in familiar patterns and made from many layers of fabrics. We know - just by looking - that they provide warmth and comfort, and we are drawn to them for that reason. Similarly, Caldwell's Polestar is a vortex of a night sky, a guiding light with a central focal point that creates an alluring atmosphere of safety. It represents the kind of certitude that navigators demand from the constellations while seeking guidance in mapping their route. The polestar is the brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere, and its unerring directional force centres the traveller. There is a certain security in knowing where you are.

Joyce Wieland

"The land cries out to be discovered through art… to be claimed humanly.¹"

Joyce Wieland's two textile works of the same title, O Canada, demand the empathy of the viewer. Her bed-sized O Canada quilt, with the first stanza of Canada's national anthem playfully spelled out across its red and white surface in five-inch-high stuffed letters, reiterates Stanley Weir's 1908 patriotic English lyrics of our national anthem.

In Comfort Zones, her 1970 lithograph on organza is positioned as a companion to the quilt. Printed with a series of 68 life-sized "lipstick" prints mouthing the words of the same song, we cannot keep from shaping our lips to utter the same words that the quilt presents. The lip prints are a music sheet: half musical notation, half lyrics. These artworks are two humorous versions of a solemn song lauding nationalism and servitude. O Canada was proclaimed Canada's national anthem in 1980.

In her films, her textiles, her paintings and her constructions, Wieland has opened up Canadian mythologies, politics and artistic practices. Images of beavers, mountains, prairies, political adages and self portraits are accessed equally and seamlessly from one medium to the next. For example, portions of her experimental film, Hand-Tinting are coloured with fabric dyes, and she used her quilting needles to make the perforations in the celluloid itself. And in 1968, she transformed Pierre Trudeau's message to the nation, "Reason Over Passion" into a quilt (complete with hearts around its border) that conflated domestic textile practices with mass media.

Wieland has spoken of her idea of craft as an activity that embodies the coming together of people for the sake of a common goal. Her O Canada quilt encapsulates this objective. The history of quilting is, indeed, one of collaboration, and Wieland's art production is a legacy of the efforts of seamstresses, knitters and embroiderers.

Note:

1. Joyce Wieland in an interview with Pierre Théberge on the occasion of her 1971 exhibition, True Patriot Love / Véritable amour patriotique, at the National Gallery of Canada.

Albert Lohnes

Since his death in 1977, Albert Lohnes has gained notoriety as a highly esteemed Nova Scotian folk artist. Lohnes's work encapsulates a particular, eccentric regionalism that has strong associations with the rural Maritimes. In the 1960s and 70s he made a small group (no more than 20) of fabric-covered wooden chairs, along with some small tables and stools. He often incorporated his name, the date, or the name of his town embroidered into the piece in a prominent location. This text is so frequently in the foreground that it becomes the subject of the design: "Albert H. Lohnes" and "West Berlin," the name of the place he lived when he made it. Other motifs in his polychrome furnishings include sailboats, ocean views, pairs of oxen, houses and colourful geometric checkerboards, stripes and diamond patterns.

Lohnes did not make the furniture for which these coverings were created. Likely, these were wooden chairs that had been in his household for some time. During an extended fishing trip off the coast of Nova Scotia, he creatively adapted a method of working that on first glance looks like knitting or crochet, but in fact is a "looping" technique - a cross between net making and simple needle lace. Lohnes learned netting and knotting while working in local net lofts. Stories are often attached to the early stages of an artist's practice. Lohnes's story is this: in the 1920s, his ship's captain was unhappy about sliding around in his seat during rough weather. Lohnes's solution was to make him a knotted slip-proof seat cover; indeed, his is a skill that allows for exquisite form-fitting.

The furniture's vernacular framework is not concealed; rather, his "twig table" that is covered in vibrant yellows and oranges is invigorated, and the openwork chair back in his Covered Side Chair (1965) issues invitations of welcoming comfort. Like many folk artists, Lohnes turned to what was at hand for his art-making materials and subject matter, with just a little tension between function and form.

Lyla Rye

Echo is the sound of two women's voices telling the same stories of growing up in rural Ontario. They resound from one side of the mauve fabric-clad elevator to the other. This intimate space is home to conversations both spoken and unspoken, a space that is as much a private confessional as it is a public receptacle for the exchanges between strangers. Either way, one risks being overheard when speaking out loud in this public-private enclave. The younger woman's voice precedes the elder's; they are syncopated so that she whose voice is leading at one time is then following. Now they are talking to one another - or are they? They have a story to tell and it's as though the urgency is so great that it takes the force of both of them to tell it.

But are these the memoirs of an old woman speaking about incidents that occurred years ago, or the young woman's future anecdotes? They tell of driving without a license, wreaking havoc at dance clubs, and the adventures of wearing a mauve bias-cut dress so tight the seam splits. The dress itself is the conduit for the memories in this story: "he came over from Orono and picked me up in Oshawa… I made a new dress, snug as possible, and cut on the bias… We were dancing and had a whale of a time, and the darn seam split down the side! …That was embarrassing but it didn't matter. After paying the price to go in, we weren't going home for love nor money."

Behind a split in the seam of the elevator's fabric is a mirror. A glimpse of one's own reflection might provoke a moment of introspection: Who do you look like? Who do you sound like? Who will your children be like? Family resemblance is never far away. The elderly woman in Echo is the artist's grand-aunt, Emma, whose wardrobe clearly played a significant role in her life: the clothes in her closet were painstakingly organized according to decade. Emma passed on several articles of clothing to her great niece - an inheritance that is neither more nor less significant than the tales that may well accompany them.

We know one another through the stories that we tell and retell - never recounted quite the same way twice, but always with familiarity and ease. Echo is a technological version of oral traditions.

Emily Carr

Emily Carr's name is synonymous with British Columbia's coastal landscape. Her paintings are predominantly stylized, representational portraits of the land. While they are arguably observational impressions, Carr's real pursuit was the spiritual juncture of the land and its inhabitants. Her picturesque, even sublime painterly representations of the coastal rainforest, First Nations villages, totem poles and portraiture are characteristic of her painterly production.

From the artist's journals, it is known that she studiously examined artifacts in Victoria's Provincial Museum. In her 1979 book, Emily Carr: A Biography, Maria Tippett writes that Carr "took a great interest in the meaning and precise forms of the [First Nations] crest symbols… From about 1915 she used the crest symbols as motifs for rag and hooked rugs, which she made from old clothes and, later, from discarded army blankets. She claimed that the inspiration for rug-making had come from seeing the women squatted on the floor, weaving cedar fibre or tatters of old cloth into a mat." These crests are highly symbolic, graphic identifiers. The killer whale, for example, is traditionally viewed by the Haida Nation as a revered ancestor who lives in an underwater realm, and is representative of many clans within the Northwest Coast First Nations.

The symmetrical design of Carr's killer whale rug in this exhibition is organized into quadrangles, and bears resemblance to the organizational principles of Chilkat blankets and carved bent-wood boxes whose designs are typically divided bilaterally on a vertical axis. Carr's rug is organized on two axes (vertical and horizontal), a decision that may well have been based on the orientation of this piece on the floor, where it would have been approached from every direction.

Emily Carr made a great many hooked mats from as early as 1915 and throughout the 1930s, yet many are not extant because they were intended for use on the floor - and textiles wear out. Others were produced in traditional abstract and geometric designs, and as they did not carry any distinctive motifs, they may well have been lost along with other vernacular, functional domestic textiles of the time. Carr's oeuvre (she exhibited pottery and hooked rugs alongside her paintings) is an amalgam of cultural and personal impressions of her environment that are transferable from one medium to another. In each form, and within each context, they shift meaning to produce a transcendent view of the world.

© 2007 Textile Museum of Canada

Comfort Zones: textiles in the Canadian landscape

By Marijke Kerkhoven, 2001

Comfort Zones: textiles in the Canadian landscape is an exploration of the responses of Canadians to their country - of the dialogue between the challenges of the Canadian weather and landscape, and the ingenuity and traditions of its people. The objects in the exhibition reflect not only the search for personal comfort in a country that can be at once generous and harsh, but also the need for beauty and spiritual comfort. At the same time, the exhibition explores the dialogues between the many different traditions that have contributed to Canada's development.

Many different people have made this land their home. The First Nations successfully developed ways to enjoy the abundance of the various regions and to overcome the shortcomings. People from overseas were attracted by the bounty of fish and furs, and the land became, for a while, a battleground for the struggle of two European colonial powers - the French and the English. One of the results of this conflict was the creation of Canada as a nation.

Thus, Canada today is more diverse than ever; its population includes the First Nations and their descendants, the descendants of pioneering settlers as well those seeking stability from the global upheavals of the 20th century. Each group brings its own set of strategies to cope with (and make the most of) the challenges of the land.

An obvious example is the clothing of the Inuit. To thrive in one of the world's harshest climates, the Inuit have developed a clothing system based on the principle of containing warm air. The garments are loose, allowing warm air to flow upward along the body, and they have few openings to let warm air escape. The excellent insulating qualities of caribou fur is used to its full extent when worn in double layers; with the fur facing inward next to the skin, under another layer with the fur facing outward.

European pioneers who settled in places such as the Maritimes, on the borders of the St. Lawrence River, and in the forests of Ontario responded to the demands of the climate and the shortage of yard goods by carefully recycling every piece of fabric. In Newfoundland, each bed in a home without central heating needed at least six, if not eight blankets or quilts in the midst of the winter.¹ And this need for warmth was equally necessary along the shores of the St. Lawrence River as it was in the forests of Ontario and on the prairies. Each area developed its own set of techniques to create mats to place on bare floors and beautiful bed coverings for warmth at night.

Many responses to the landscape and the climate of each region are recognized as symbols of the nation, and we have come to respect and even love them. We admire the aumautik, the roomy woman's parka with the large hood, which accommodates the needs of a baby as well as its mother. We love the soft comfortable deerskin moccasins made by natives across the continent. We like snowshoes, the handy alternative to skis for navigating deep snow. And the tradition of hand-woven home furnishings from Quebec has inspired our own home decorations.

While it is fascinating to observe these things made by others, it is more interesting to see what happens in the zones where people with one set of traditions interact with people from other cultures. Just as the boundary space between two ecological areas is filled with the flora and fauna of both, there is an abundance of ideas and technology in the area where people from different cultures meet and interact; here, new hybrids are created as prototypes for new artifacts. It is from such interactions that in 1987, a mother on Belcher Island, Nunavut made kamiks from a combination of commercially marketed rubber boots, recycled denim and seal fur. Although these boots were not guaranteed waterproof above the ankles (at the seam line), they kept her son's feet dry in slushy, melting ice.

Another product of cultural interaction is a fundraising duvet cover made by Mennonites in Yarrow, British Columbia. At a quick glance it seems to be a quilt top. The cloth consists of blocks with cheerfully embroidered flowers around Germanic names. The style of the decorated blocks reflects the offerings of popular needlecraft magazines of the 1940s. Yet a close look reveals that the edges are finished and that there are six buttons along the bottom corresponding to six neat buttonholes in the backing. Unlike the fundraising quilts made by women's auxiliaries of Anglo-Saxon groups, this duvet cover is made for, and by people, who traditionally kept themselves warm using down bedding instead of quilts. An object like this can only be the result of Mennonite women in a small town visiting the bazaars of other churches and meeting members of other auxiliary groups.

Some of these "hybrids" have become so well established they are iconographic. The dress uniform of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) is a good example. The red jacket shows the influence of the British military while the hats are a direct descendant of the Montana peaked hats that were made available to the RCMP from the U.S. Cavalry. Our "Mountie" uniform is an allegory of Canada itself as a transitory zone between British and American cultures.

The early fur trade provided some of the most productive interactions. The exchange of ideas and technology was established before any European set foot on this continent, as were trade routes and exchange ceremonies. Trade was not merely an exchange of goods: it was an exchange of gifts with which the parties honoured each other. The traded goods enhanced status, such as a tobacco pouch given as a token of honour to a member of another tribe. European traders conformed to these trading customs; during the early fur trade, they decorated garments and moccasins with brightly coloured wool, satin ribbons and shiny beads to enhance their status.

The ceinture fléchée is another hybrid that has the quality of an icon. These multi-coloured braided sashes from Quebec have finely worked precursors in similar items from the late 18th century, which the Ojibwa, Iroquois and others in the Great Lakes area made, most likely from unravelled trade cloth. It is suggested that female relatives of Quebec fur traders saw the native sashes (often incorporating fine beads) and were shown how they were made.² The voyageurs needed the sturdy long sashes not only to tie their coats snug against the cold, but also to support their lower torso when carrying heavy loads on a portage. Soon, the colourful sashes woven in L'Assomption and other places around Montreal became the badge of a voyageur. Braiding these ceintures fléchées for the Hudson's Bay Company was a thriving cottage industry until the company found a less expensive supplier in England.

At the turn of the new millennium, Canadians have more opportunities than ever to interact with people of different cultural backgrounds. The number of "transfer zones" has multiplied, especially in the larger cities. Much has been made of the recent inclusion of the blue turban in the uniform of the RCMP. But there are other, much quieter interactions: the face veil of a Muslim woman on the Toronto subway is kept securely in place with a strip of Velcro, and Hutterite brides shopping for perfect navy blue or dark purple polyester damask dress fabric in the little sari shops of northeast Calgary. The potential for the creation of new hybrids increases continually; these in turn will become icons of Canada.

Notes:

1. G.L. Pocius: Textile Traditions of East Newfoundland, National Museum of Man Mercury Series, Canadian Centre of Folk Culture Study Paper #29, Ottawa: National Museum of Canada, 1976; pp. 33.
2. Dorothy K. Burnham: The Comfortable Arts: Traditional Spinning and Weaving in Canada, Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, 1981; pp 36.

© 2007 Textile Museum of Canada