LAYERS exhibition travels to Noyes Cultural Arts Center in Evanston, IL

See our traveling art cloth exhibition Layers, May 29-September 3, 2024.  Opening reception is May 31, at Noyes Cultural Arts Center, 927 Noyes St., Evanston, IL.  

Artist talk with Elise Findlay in Canmore - by Regina Marzlin

  While we met in Canmore, Alberta, for our annual in-person meeting we had the opportunity to listen to an artist talk by emerging fibre artist Elise Lavallee Findlay. We convened at the Arts Place in Canmore where her exhibition "Another Life" was on display. Elise is located in Banff, Alberta, just a short drive away from our meeting location. She is a visual artist known for her versatile, process-driven practice. Her work is centering around the themes of community, place, identity, and the intricacies of human interaction with the world. 

The exhibition we saw was motivated by Elise's experience as a wood worker and cabinet maker. The series of pieces was started during the pandemic and Elise used some materials she had at hand during the lockdown. She pulled threads from drop cloth canvas material and stiffened it with cornstarch after shaping it around objects. The objects she depicts are woodworking tools that she used in her former job.

This is her artist statement about the series:

"This body of work began with an examination and a sculptural expression of my past experiences, and by extension, the challenges faced by women working in the construction trades. Through material and process I explored memories of my previous life, resulting in a series of fibre sculptures, which, while referencing woodworking tools, have become strange canvas shells. Each sculpture is a duplication that is and is not. The installation represents a place that no longer exits for me, yet it also is a starting point. Something here goes beyond the original idea and the process. It is a beginning, a way to explore transformation, and how, while I used to be a cabinetmaker, like the sculptures themselves, I am now something new."

Larger sheets were produced in the same way and then stitched into 3D models of woodworking tools like a band saw or a work bench. The pulled threads are part of the installation, they are scattered on the floor to resemble saw dust.

 I was impressed with the concept of using the humble material to convey her thoughts about a male dominated workplace. Deconstruction, reconstruction and transformation are key processes of Elise's art making. She also brought with her a body of work that is going to be shown at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, Ontario. The exhibition is "Outside the Lines - Women Artists and War" and her pieces were made in response to some of the artifacts shown in this exhibition. It was thought provoking to see a gas mask (see photo above) or shells made from the light and transparent fibre material. 

She also showed us a birch bark piece that was stitched.

Elise was a great and inspiring speaker and we had lots of questions for her. It was wonderful to connect with a fellow fibre artist. Please look up her website at elisefindlay.ca if you're interested to see more of her work.

A Box of Good Fortune - Barbara Schneider

Last year I signed up for the Fiber Arts Take Two online course with Sally Tyrie called Visual Narratives. This was the second FATT course that I took. The course description reads:

Your training will begin with researching and examining areas of interest, before revealing ways of reimagining mark-making and collage from Sally’s considered and painterly approach. Use various print techniques without a press, including gelli plate, photo litho and collograph printing whilst learning to abstract visual narratives from any source of inspiration to create an ambitious body of work.

I was intrigued and looking, as always, for a way to expand my mark making.  She taught many different approaches and we were encouraged to make lots of samples.  I was familiar with some techniques, learned some new things, and discarded a lot of them as not being something I wanted to explore further. One of the best things about the course is that FATT provides and opportunity to submit a piece of work done during the class and then they create an online catalog (which you can also get in print through Blurb).

I had been working quite a bit on printing and copying (with my Epson printer) on pages from a vintage Japanese account book.  I built up layers of imagery on the page and pushed my printer to do things it was not meant to do.  I thought creating some small themed books (Japanese style) would be a way to create my catalog piece. But I felt like something was missing to bring the project together.

While out one day I saw an old box at a thrift store. It may have been an old painters box but any inserts were missing and it had no paint marks. I thought the box might make a great container for all of my book samples. Now all I had to do was clean it up, decide how to use the interior space, create it, finish the books, make a cover!  Step by step I worked my way through. It was really great to work on something totally different. I had done quite a bit of bookmaking and box making loooooong ago and this project brought me back to doing that kind of work again and how I like the precision of it and the play of images across pages.

 

I created a Kanji signature for my name to use on the back of the box.

 

This is the  statement that is inside of the box explaining the process, naming and techniques.

Daifuku-cho

A Box of Good Fortune

 

I was inspired to make this artwork by two disparate things- finding an old

artist’s box and a Japanese ledger titled Daifuku-cho (Good Fortune),

that I have long wanted to use in my work. Although a mundane object in Edo Japan,

the calligraphy and paper in the ledger are beautiful.  Ledgers were used to

record a merchant’s debts and payments. The box and ledger are the elements I

used to build a collection of samplers that explore the various techniques from

the Visual Narratives course.

 I used pages from the old ledger as the base to explore printing, overprinting,

painting and collaging with a variety of imagery. The samplers developed in

different directions under these themes.

Meditation

Contemplation

Introspection     

Rumination 

                        

The box was stained, and refitted with section dividers to hold the samplers.

 

I am now moving on to the other FATT workshop that I signed up for last year which is with Claire Benn using pigments and soy.  And then, someday, I will get to the 3rd one which is Sensing Place with Debbie Lyddon.  For these two I have watched all the video lessons and even if I never make a particular project I have learned something new, had time to think about it in relationship to my own work and know that I can go back to it at any time to review and try again. They fulfill my need to learn but at the same time to focus on my own work.