Seeing Through Layers

Artist Biographies, 1992

Jennifer Angus

Jennifer Angus is an artist living and working in Toronto. Her education includes BFA studies at the Nova Scotia College of Art and MFA studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Verle Harrop

In January of 1992, Verle Harrop was appointed Visiting Artist in Residence at the Dalhousie Faculty of Medicine and the Environment. In the spring of 1991, she was Artist in Residence for the National Conference of the Canadian Congress of Neurological Sciences.

Mary Ann Jordan

Mary Anne Jordan has been Assistant Professor of Design at the University of Kansas School of Fine Art since 1986. She received her MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and her BFA from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbour.

Erica Licea-Kane

Erica Licea-Kane is a fibre instructor at the Rhode Island College and the Massachusetts College of Art. She obtained a BFA from Parsons School of Design in New York and an MFA from Massachusetts College of Art in Boston.

Susan Dowman Wilchins

Since 1982, Susan Wilchins has been Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Fibers and Surface Design Program, North Carolina State University School of Design. Her educational background includes an MS in Art Education from Indiana University and an MFA in Textile Design from the University of Kansas.

© 2007 Textile Museum of Canada

Artist Statements, 1992

Jennifer Angus

My work addresses the issues and ramifications resulting from British Colonial rule. These include the subjugation of a people; condescending attitudes towards their beliefs and customs, and; the appropriation and commercialization of "exotica" for Western consumption. My interest stems from my heritage and that of my husband. As a Canadian of British descent, I have mixed feelings about my right to call this country home. In my husband's native Burma (now Myanmar), civil war between the nation's minority peoples and ethnic Burmese has continued unabated since the end of the Second World War, when the British forsook their former colony, leaving no safeguards for their tribal allies.

In my pieces, I use the seductive lure of patterned fabric and beading that contrasts sharply with the photographic images of colonials and their subjects. An uneasy tension is created between the juxtaposition of an idealized world, which the embellished surface implies, and the realism of the photo images. The relationship reflects the differing points of view of ruler and subject. As well, the use of labour-intensive stitchery is of central importance to me. As a feminist I feel that by using these methods I am drawing upon a history of traditional women's expression and reinforce its value.

Verle Harrop

The preoccupation with the juxtaposition of internal landscapes of CAT and MRI scans of the human brain, and external landscapes (specifically maps and topographic satellite images of earth) continues.

We are living in a world where the borders of our external world are continually being threatened, dissolved and redefined. East Germany, West Germany and the USSR are no longer, and in light of free trade, Canada, the U.S. and Mexico may very possibly be following suit. The mappings of these cited physical changes, and the thought processes and feelings that accompany them are simultaneously being mirrored in the brain.

In this body of work, I am fusing MRI images of where these changes take place in the brain with information recorded in outdated atlases and maps from the turn of the century. The juxtaposition of the digital display of the brain with the time-worn feelings and history of the maps results in disturbing concomitant questions and revelations about our fragility and temporality as cognizant human beings; hence the name of the current Remote Sensing series - Cortex versus Context./p>

Mary Ann Jordon

I collage fabric that I have printed, dyed or woven myself in combination with commercially manufactured or printed material. Through the use of collage, I juxtapose and superimpose seemingly unrelated patterns. I am interested in the marriage of contrasting imagery and the irony that results in the offspring of such unlikely combinations. It is through the process of connecting and contrasting different pieces of fabric (with all the messages and implications that each piece of fabric is capable of carrying) that I explore the possibilities of visual tension and the expressive potential of the work.

I am constantly inspired by the use of pattern in history and its migration and transmutation into modern time. I use the history of textiles as a resource along with the study of different cultures and their "art" traditions such as Haitian voodoo banners, Japanese screen painting and American folk art. My work is a series of responses to my study of patterns, of history, and of my own experiences in everyday life - a kind of visual diary. I do not merely look at historical works and redo them in a contemporary fashion; rather, I try to allow my knowledge of history to inform my own contemporary concerns. Therefore, although my work is quite different from its inspirational sources, through it I try to convey some of the same energy and excitement that I have drawn from these sources.

Erica Licea-Kane

For me the process of making art is one that is totally self-contained and completely intimate. Emotionally, my work represents my development as a person. As I grow and change, the grids become less rigid and the edges begin to soften. Visually, the images derive from such things as the landscape, aerial views, quilts and flags.

My intentions are to create absorbing and sensual surfaces based on the use of spatial relationships, texture and transparencies. I think these surfaces can be explored and changed depending on the viewer's distance.

My work is the result of my intellectual and physical celebration of pattern, colour, design and process.

Susan Dowman Wilchins

All of my work is an attempt to describe, with fabric, my intense visual experiences of the earth and its natural phenomena. Previous compositions used imagery derived from aerial photographs, cartography and microscopic photographs of animal and plant tissue. For several years I have been at work on a series of pieces based on the "carpet" of debris in the forest, so I use rich colours and complex textures to re-create the dichotomy I see compositions in nature that are bold enough to be visible from a distance, but which invite the viewer to come closer to discover a more intimate surface alive with texture and visual energy. My work celebrates growth and decay, order and chaos, as well as the ordinary and the sublime. I use fabric to write poems for which I have no words.

© 2007 Textile Museum of Canada

Seeing Through Layers

By Gitte Hansen and Judith Tinkl, 1992

Seeing Through Layers is an exhibition that brings together the work of five artists who share approaches to the creation of ideas in cloth.

The work of Jennifer Angus, Verle Harrop, Mary Anne Jordan, Erica Licea-Kane and Susan Dowman Wilchins presents images and physical fabrics that are structurally and metaphorically layered, superimposed, embellished and overlapped. The physical reference to the construction methods used, and the reference to the layers of meaning and personal associations embodied in the work, materializes the multi-faceted metaphor suggested by the title.

The last 20 years has seen an explosion of interest in cloth and fibre and an intense exploration of new and old ways of working with them. Traditional textile techniques of printing, dyeing and colouring from global sources have re-emerged to inspire the works in this exhibition. Batik, shibori, papermaking, basketry, feltmaking and printmaking, among other techniques, are all used by today's fibre artists.

New definitions have been invented to accommodate the diverse and varied directions that artists working in textile and fibre media have chosen to follow. A general distinction may be made between those who construct their work from "scratch," such as tapestry weavers, and those who modify already existing materials, such as dyers, fabric printers, quilt makers and embroiderers. The latter have been loosely grouped in a field called "surface design."

The abstract art movement and its dialogue and aesthetics, which culminated in the 1960s and '70s, found a natural resonance in the great fibre artists whose careers flourished at that time. More recently, thinking in the art world has turned away from pure abstraction and reduction towards the re-introduction of image and the accessibility of meaning. Artists working in every media have been part of this movement.

The cross-pollination of ideas between media, disciplines and cultures is a potent influence in changing artistic directions. Artists working in textile and fibre media look to the ideas of other contemporary artists, while also being moved by historical textile techniques and traditions. The works included in this exhibition provide the opportunity to explore such pluralism.

This phenomenon is particularly evident in the work of Jennifer Angus, who has extensive experience in Southeast Asia. Her concerns and interests are focused on the implications of colonialism and on the tensions between ruler and subject, which colonialism produces. She expresses these themes by juxtaposing richly embellished decorative surfaces with starkly realistic photographic images.

Rather than looking into the past, Verle Harrop's work is motivated by ideas from technology. She finds her images by looking into our very structure and the structure of the universe using high-tech, remote sensing devices. In an apt union of old and new, she presents these images by using the traditional techniques of appliqué and quilt making.

The work of Erica Licea-Kane and Susan Wilchins seems related to the formal visual explorations of abstract painters; however, their inspiration is drawn from natural sources. Both mention the influence of aerial views and maps as starting points in their work. Their mutual concern for structure and pattern is evidenced by Licea-Kane's interest in pieced quilts, and Wilchins's use of microscopic photographs of plant and animal tissue.

The work of Mary Anne Jordan, like that of Angus, incorporates an intense interest in history and in the art traditions of different cultures. Using collage techniques, combined with printing, dyeing and weaving, she conveys the energy and excitement that she finds in historical and ethnic textiles. She evidently shares an interest in technology with Harrop, since she is currently exploring the possibilities of computer-aided design and the implications for artists of such design possibilities.

These artists are concerned with looking beneath the surface, penetrating hidden layers of meaning, examining cultural implications and the impact of new technology and ideas. While sharing the concerns of all contemporary artists, this group can be distinguished by their connection to textile traditions. They recognize that these traditions can only remain strong when followed with courage and originality. Angus, Harrop, Jordan, Licea-Kane and Wilchins pay homage to these traditions by revitalizing and re-inventing them with intelligence, energy, imagination and respect. They are part of a creative continuum that reaches back in time to the dawn of history. In seeing through layers, their vision is clear.

© 2007 Textile Museum of Canada