FABRIC ARTS
1 of 6
"Afghan Woman"
Barbara Heller, "Afghan Woman," Cover Up Series.
2 of 6
"K2tog video knitting coven"
Wednesday Lupypciw, "K2tog video knitting coven"
3 of 6
Felted Object
Luanne Martineau, Felted Object
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"Size Matters"
Orly Cogan, "Size Matters"
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"Smother"
Suzanne Franks, "Smother"
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"Afghan Woman"
Barbara Heller, "Afghan Woman," Cover Up Series.
FABRIC ARTS
Textiles have become a surprisingly fertile social and political medium for artists (mostly female - plus a very few men). Like Judy Chicago found 30 years ago, it becomes particularly effective to subvert the traditional "womanly arts." Here are a few contemporary practitioners.
BY Mary-Beth Laviolette
In Calgary artist Suzanne Franks’ installation Smother, shown this summer at the Kelowna Art Gallery, a raft of inflated, orange fabric babies floats helplessly in the space, just out of reach of a life preserver of limply hanging orange fabric mothers’ arms.
In Orly Cogan’s thoroughly modern samplers and wall hangings like this one, Size Matters, figures in quaint cross-stitch and chain-stitch, love knots, and blanket stitch cross gender lines, mix fantasy and reality, flirt and subvert. Cogan’s work is included in the Judy Chicago companion exhibition She Will Always Be Younger Than Us.
Shortlisted this year for the Sobey Art Award, Luanne Martineau’s felted objects have a half-alien / half-anatomical cast. Immense wall hangings blur the boundary between craft and contemporary art, often with the added humour of a spare felt toe or length of wool intestine. Based in Victoria, Martineau will show at Calgary’s Trépanier Baer Gallery in September.
Barbara Heller’s Cover Up Series, which includes this tapestry,Afghan Woman, illustrates its concept in lush, detailed stitchery. Based in Vancouver, and represented by the Elliott Louis Gallery, her work explores non-traditional themes in a traditional artform — skeletal birds, war scenes, fanatic believers.
Calgary artist Wednesday Lupypciw, whose work K2tog video knitting coven is also included in She Will Always Be Younger Than Us, moved on from what she has called “futzy little projects” and expanded the world of craft, bringing into it video, performance, and whatever else she can get her hands on.