Doily Residues

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Wendy Tokaryk, "Utopia," no date, relief print with embossing, 44” x 30”

Wendy Tokaryk’s prints are like the sunrise. They glow with warm, uplifting colours and light up Edmonton’s SNAP gallery, where her show, Doilies the meaning of life, is on view until Sept. 8.

Tokaryk's depictions of household items like cakes and lamps were configured using her vast collection of vintage doilies. Exuberant curlicues culled from humble lace mats that she scavenged from antique shops and dusty attics add a note of nostalgia for a time when household objects were lovingly made by hand, not anonymously manufactured and shipped in crates across the ocean.

With a degree in art history from the University of Saskatchewan and another in printmaking from the University of Calgary, Tokaryk is keenly aware of the social histories underpinning her work. Laborious crafts, once nearly ubiquitous, consolidated communities and offered daily routines of quiet introspection; their near extinction in contemporary life is an inexorable loss. Tokaryk not only reminds us of the value of such traditions but also reenacts them through the patient, repetitive act of making prints.

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Wendy Tokaryk, "Cake Too," no date, relief print with embossing, 44” x 30”

While this show touches on broad social issues, it also tackles deeply personal memories. For example, several prints depict fancy cakes and other Ukrainian traditions that Tokaryk learned from her grandmother, a professional baker.

Such stories find an echo in the artist book Tokaryk created specifically for this exhibition. With funding from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, she commissioned two writers to respond to specific prints. Both Caitlynn Cummings and Angela Marie Schenstead explore the intimacy of women’s labour. 

Schenstead, for example, bases her text on Afghan, which evokes the wool throws once common in the homes of East European immigrants. She recalls visiting her Ukrainian grandmother’s home in Saskatchewan and sharing family rituals, like making tea from plants in the garden, activities that have largely vanished with the passing of that generation.

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Wendy Tokaryk, "Afghan," no date, relief print with embossing, 44” x 30”

Yet the essence of this show is not loss or nostalgia for times past. The buoyantly fresh colours and the baroque decorative energy in Toraryk’s prints don’t allow much melancholy. Like the artist’s extravagant cakes, this show is celebratory. It makes me want to grab a crochet needle and try my hand at a meditative craft that gave countless other women joy and comfort. As the show’s title humorously suggests, perhaps doilies do make life more meaningful. ■

Wendy Tokaryk’s exhibition, Doilies the meaning of life, is on view at the Society of Northern Print Artists in Edmonton from Aug. 3 to Sept. 8, 2018.