Directions: from historical sources

Artist Statements

Dorothy Caldwell

Traditional textiles have played the most important part in influencing my work. Several years ago I saw the batiks in the Museum for Textiles' exhibition The Fabled Cloth of Java, and these textiles made a great impression on me. I was especially interested in the dense, grainy background of many of these batiks and it made me want to draw and pattern using the tjanting tool. In my recent work, I have used the tjantingalong with brushes, stamps and other found objects to apply wax to the fabric. A detailed background is built using a series of lines, calligraphic motions and scratches. These collect over time into a dense, interlacing texture which, for me, reflects the patterns of the rural area where I live. This forms the foundation of the piece, which is then further embellished with wax resist, paint, stitching and appliqué.

The imagery in my work has been inspired by tribal cultures and by the objects and symbols that accompany their ritual practices. These objects and symbols, while mysterious and evasive, emanate a powerful energy. I incorporate fragments of these ongoing symbols into my fabrics.

In addition, I admire African textiles and the attitude with which they have been made. This attitude accepts the physical qualities of the materials coupled with the physicality of human beings and it carries the vitality of each in the cloth. Spots, blobs and irregularities become integrated parts of the fabric adding rhythm and an element of surprise to the surface. This seems a logical approach to life and work.

I approach my work intuitively, as a moment-to-moment activity that grows and fills its own space.

Lyn Carter

The works in this exhibition started simply as a desire to rediscover what "making" is. Through undoing - or unmaking - what was a wire fence or cardboard box, cutting it apart and thereby getting to know the material, then remaking it in a new form, I am allowing a dialogue to exist between the old object and myself, then letting that dialogue determine the making of the new object.

The works, bowl, thumb and beads might be read not so much as sculptures, but rather as a record of a certain interaction and a certain gentle understanding.

The latest two works, for both of you, come from much different needs. Materials and scale are still important, but the image of the figure dominates. In these works I am thinking more of the connections between the human body and the surrounding animal and plant world. Expressing both fragility and strength, these works are dedicated to Gram and Caroline.

Kai Chan

I remember when I was a child, our class went out to the river and we blew holes with a bamboo tube into the cracked ice, and carried it back to our classroom with straws. I also remember going to the circus, and seeing a lady with an umbrella wearing a funny skirt and walking on the high wire. I remember watching water spiders gliding on the water surface. I remember holding a thread tied to the tail of a dragonfly. I do not remember when I first discovered the spider web, but I remember my grandmother sewing, pulling the thread with a needle, tugging it tight. I remember the first time I saw a roomful of cotton puff on the floor, a man beating a string held by a huge bow and moving around the room trying to loosen the cotton for bedding. I had never seen a loom until I was in the Ontario College of Art and decided not to get near such a complicated machine, but I liked watching kids in the streets of Cuzco in Peru, spinning yarns or working on the string looms attached to their toes and their waists. I also remember a woman sitting on the ground on the top of a hill, weaving with a backstrap loom. All that action, that tension, tugging, and pulling have been gradually deposited in the back of my mind. In examining a loom, I am always fascinated by the position of the warp, how all the strings are tied together, separated into a fan-like shape, tension tightened, ready to go.

At this moment, all this is in my mind, at its most potent state.

Lee Dickson

One might assume that the major historical influence on my work is the bead weaving of the North American Indian. This is apparent because of the nature of the materials and method of weaving used. In my early pieces this was strongly evident: the influence seen in the simple craft of weaving beads, the use of patterns, spacing and colour.

The work represented in this exhibition, executed between 1985 and 1988, is more consciously associated with the Russian Constructivist period. This influence is emphasized in the overall construction of the pieces and the preoccupation with the display structure as an integral part of the final presentation. The other aspect is the necessity for the work to be functional, although the element of practicality does not play a key role.

Susan Warner Keene

A regard for the value of the textile as a primary art form is fundamental to my approach to making art. While European "art" textiles of the 18th and 19th centuries became mere decadent facsimiles of painterly concerns, the fabrics of tribal societies and, indeed, the European peasant cloths, retained an authentic expression.

The qualities I value in this work, besides the often brilliant resolution of formal matters, are the implicit sense of the making process, and therefore the maker and the direct way in which textile objects approach the body. Although there is much about this work that is intellectually intriguing, it makes the additional connection with the nerve endings in the skin. This phenomenon has to do with the character of materials, certainly, but perhaps also with our long history of close association with textiles as clothing and shelter. We "read" these objects with more than our eyes alone. Consequently, objects possessing these qualities may be able to engage a viewer on many different levels of knowing, subverting the privileged position of the art object as cultural icon.

As an artist working with fibre materials and a certain knowledge of the history and context of textiles, I find myself continuously intrigued by the matter of constructing surfaces in which imagery is inherent. In my work I am interested in making objects that exist on the basis of their own material integrity, using language that arises from the substance and structure of each piece.

Beginning with the very old and mostly overlooked process of felt making, I have incorporated several aspects of papermaking in order to arrive at a method of animating surfaces with particular qualities. Although the pieces are generally mounted on a wall, it is significant to me that they occupy real space and do not just imply it.

The works in this exhibition all have to do with a sense of the overwhelming importance of the world of nature to the existence of art. From the beginning, nature has provided us with symbols for the external world and natural laws that govern us all, and our clues to complex patterns. In more general terms, our relationship with the natural world is, however, ambiguous: we are a part of it yet we are apart from it.

Sarah Quinton

I see these works as a lyric response to the language of the textile. The supple, mobile nature of cloth is expressed through darted, pleated, draped, and folded configurations, making specific reference to the garment. I look to the human body, taking cues from that elegant form and its characteristic stature, shape, proportion and scale.

But the work is meant to remain allusive. I pursue a push-pull that accompanies the known and the unknown, the familiar and the unfamiliar, the concrete and the imagined. I hope the work offers image after image, an exhilarating blend of what we do and do not know.

© 2007 Textile Museum of Canada

Directions: from historical sources

By Helen Duffy, 1989

A new gallery is like a blank canvas; it is free from the lingering traces of previous occupiers' concerns and untouched by evocative associations with the past; it allows the first occupant to put a distinct mark of identity on the place straight away.

The many aspects and features of the new Contemporary Gallery of the Museum for Textiles will be much commented upon. But it is the opening show that is bound to be remembered long after the flame of publicity has died away and successive exhibitions have taken their turn. Hence the very first event, the inaugural presentation, is in many ways as important as the bold "premier coup" - an artist's first inspired stroke on primed canvas of exceptional quality.

Fibre art, in the sense in which we understand it at the present time, constitutes a free-spirited form of artistic expression. It is an art of discovery, imagination and flexibility, an art addressed as much to the mind as to the eye.

By its very nature, fibre art permits an intense fusion of image and process, a juxtaposition of textures as well as an interplay of technical effects. Material and its inherent form-creating abilities, the interaction of colour, and the potential of three-dimensional and spatial possibilities, provide an area of infinite exploration suggesting a wide range of techniques by which new ideas can be tested and realized. Working with pliable, malleable and tactile materials permits an enormous diversity of expression, and sets artists free to make works of widely differing dimensions, which are no longer bound by the convention that the importance of content depends on size.

In the early stages of its development during the 1970s, this kind of exploration was often conducted with a freewheeling, self-indulgent play of imagination that renewed the very notion of creative restlessness. But substantial changes have taken place gradually during the course of the past few years. Fibre art has become more coherent, thought-provoking and expressive; that is, reflective of the artist's experience, insight and awareness.

The theme of this exhibition serves admirably to introduce works by artists who investigate historical sources outside their immediate environment, and who draw inspiration from rich and varied world traditions. Few of the exhibits have a direct link to specific historical materials. Indeed, the "source" is not always easy to detect because it might be merely suggested, implied or reformulated. We may detect stylistic affinity with given patterns, textures, manipulative processes (rooted in native craft repertoires), and in indigenous art and tribal symbolism, or we may simply risk an informed guess on the basis of our own sensibility and knowledge.

In my view, the appeal of most successful fibre or textile works lies in their ambiguity; in the rare, exquisite detail; in the intrinsic quality of the surface, and; in the layers of meaning that are compacted into one object.

This exhibition includes many works that are intensely personal, indicating that research into the historical past can lead an artist to a search for self and to using memories as raw material. A willingness to restate certain ideas and feelings means entering into a dialogue with the past via the work of the imagination.

For example, although Kai Chan's work is not clearly autobiographical, certain elements rooted in the artist's childhood experiences and perceptions have given rise to a highly stylized art, which combines delicate forms and shapes in a unique and unpredictable manner.

Indeed, what might look deceptively free and easy in his three-dimensional constructions is rarely mere improvisation. Chan works with the resources that most artists have, but do not always use: memory, imagination, curiosity and access to an accumulated store of knowledge gained by study and observation. His mature style has always been remarkable for its clarity, simplicity and economy - a quality especially evident in his delicate constructions with paper, bamboo and string.

In Lyn Carter's sculptural work, materials are ready-made, unassuming and malleable. "The idea of recycling is intrinsic to textiles;" Carter writes, "and, as it seems to be a strong desire in my own work, I think it is my most basic connection to the field of fibre art."

Carter appears to want to restore dignity to useless discarded odds and ends, from chicken wire and cardboard, to scraps of fabric. She uses this stuff imaginatively and sympathetically, and the dialogue between artist and material, as well as the intimacy created by the act of unravelling and remaking, lend a suggestive direction to her work.

After several years of concentrated studies of 16th century Elizabethan costume and the shaping of female identity, Carter now explores more abstract ideas that are harmonious with her current concerns.

Dickson's art has become synonymous with the exacting technique of fine bead weaving, a skill practiced universally from remote antiquity. The long history of beads and their manifold uses in tribal art, ornamentation, personal adornment and decoration is fascinating in itself, but Dickson's work is firmly anchored in our time. Her thoroughly contemporary objects come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, always consistent with a very personal mode of expression. They speak of a geometric orderliness that is perfectly managed and controlled, where flat random patterns are enriched by sparing use of decisive colours.

Dickson now constructs unpretentious metal armatures to hold and support her decorative "wearables" and "usables." These welded steel and braised copper structures lend context and specificity to her stylish, inventive works.

Sarah Quinton does not title her work, leaving it up to the viewer to recognize her sources of inspiration. In her constructed, shaped pieces, the compelling relationship between content and raw material is as vital as the system of proportions that inform them. She brings her materials into such careful balance that we are not aware of their weight - only of their structural harmony. A sophisticated, formal precision is quietly evident in all her work.

Glowing, sensuous red used to be the declared favourite in fibre and textile art well into the late 1970s, but it gradually faded out and is rarely encountered these days. Susan Warner Keene's wall-mounted works reinforce our appreciation of the sheer visual appeal of clear, vibrant colour, handled with sensitivity and conviction. The artist's acute understanding of her medium allows her to pull out those jewelled shades and hues, making us consider them in a new light.

The spirit of her radiant, expressive works seems at once exclamatory and subtle, evoking experiences of the natural world and its complexity of spiky textures, overlapping planes, shadows, patterns and tonal nuances.

Dorothy Caldwell's investigations of colour, shape, space and surface, evolve mainly through intuitive decision making, and abstractly encompass autobiographical and personal qualities. In her work, spontaneity and improvisation is evident and extensive; intricate patterns form a varied rhythm intermeshed in such a way as to suggest both background and image. Caldwell's technically competent and aesthetically pleasing pieces in this exhibition are subdued in colour and lean toward a quiet mysteriousness and eloquence.

Directions: from historical sources brings together six artists who work in a variety of disparate modes, indicating that what they have to say can be expressed in any number of ways, or can take a variety of forms at one time. This multiplicity and diversity can be both confusing and exciting, yet it gives Canadian fibre art its intensity and energy.

© 2007 Textile Museum of Canada