Tag Archives: surface design

ACAD Fibre Graduates 2011 | 1 of 3

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Seathra Bell | Birdcage Dress | merino wool, silk metal

This week, I attended the opening reception for the annual Graduating Student Show at the Alberta College of Art and Design.

Seathra Bell | Birdcage Dress (detail) | merino wool, silk metal

The exhibition in ACAD’s Main Mall, 3rd Floor and Illingworth Kerr Gallery continues until May 28 2011 and features the work of graduating students from ACAD’s Ceramics, Fibre, Glass, Jewellery + Metals, Drawing, Media Arts + Digital Technologies, Painting, Photography, Print Media, Sculpture, and Visual Communication Design programs.

Ashley Quan | Her Innocence Lost | silk screen printing on silk organza and woven silk and bamboo, embroidery, mixed media

The exhibition, organized by the Illingworth Kerr Gallery is impressive in both its scope and scale demonstrating the diversity of student production at ACAD.

Ashley Quan | Her Innocence Lost | silk screen printing on silk organza and woven silk and bamboo, embroidery, mixed media

As an instructor in the Fibre Department I am especially proud of the accomplishments of our recent graduates. In this, the first of three posts I want to share with you the work of Seathra Bell, Ashley Quan and Tracy Sutherland.

Tracy Sutherland | on•tog•e•ny | fibre, mixed media

Tracy Sutherland | on•tog•e•ny (detail) | fibre, mixed media

Tracy Sutherland | on•tog•e•ny (detail) | fibre, mixed media

More to come…

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Q the Arts | This Saturday only!

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Fairy Tales Presentation Society and Swallow-a-Bicycle Theatre are thrilled to present Q the Arts, Calgary’s inaugural Queer Arts & Cultural Festival! The festival will feature a broad spectrum of artistic genres, including visual art, theatre, music, dance and spoken word, with artists from Calgary and across Canada.

As Calgary’s Queer Arts & Culture Festival, Q the Arts will embrace artists who are LGBTTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, two-spirit and questioning), and also those who subscribe to culturally, politically, artistically and otherwise alternative and innovative ways of contributing to society. Queer is a vista, a way of looking at the world differently, with an eye towards diversity, critical thinking and inclusion.

Don’t miss this landmark event! This one-day festival is a celebration of Calgary’s LGBTTQ community and of our city’s diversity and inclusivity. Mark your calendars for March 5 and prepare yourselves for a decidedly queer evening of art & culture.

Featuring: Light Fires , Backyard Betties, Lindsay Brandon, Emanuel Ilagan, Laurie MacFayden, Travis McEwen, Jessica McMann, Jennie & Julie Orton, Brianna Strong, Jamie Tea, Chantal Vitalis

Q the Arts will also be turning into a dance party after the show featuring DJ Michelle C

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Katagami Lesson

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This morning Bill Morton gave a presentation to my Cloth Dyeing and Painting class on the Japanese art of katagami, the intricate, hand-cut stencils used in resist dyeing or katazome. He shared with the students a selection of his own stencils, taping them onto the windows where their beauty was revealed.

A native Albertan, Mr. Morton spent many years studying and then practicing refined Japanese techniques for surface design in a traditional textile studio in Kyoto. His dyed work including exquisite kimono and hangings utilizing the Rozome (wax resist) technique have been exhibited around the world.

I first met Bill in the mid-nineties when I was his student, taking the very class I am teaching this semester. Since then he has become a great mentor and friend. I remember the first time I saw some of these stencils more than fifteen years ago, and cannot forget how they made me feel – like I had discovered a world I wanted to immerse myself in.

Of course it wasn’t just the stencils, or Mr. Morton’s influence alone, that has brought me to my career as a teacher and textile-based artist. There were obviously many more. I suppose today I was just lucky to recognize and remember one of many discrete moments that has nudged me along to where I am now.

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Out of Context | Contextural at ACAD

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Just a reminder that the End of Residency Group Show, Out of Context is wrapping up this weekend.The show takes place at the Marion Nicoll Gallery, in the Alberta College of Art + Design.

The show is a culmination of the third annual summer residency held at the Alberta College of Art and Design where fibre artists from across Canada are able to work and create.
The closing reception tomorrow @ 5pm with many of the artists in attendance. Hope to see you there.

For more information about the group, the residency or the show please contact contextural@gmail.com

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Joanna Staniszkis to visit ACAD April 2

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Prominent Canadian textile artist Joanna Staniszkis will be speaking about her recent work themed around linen and silk at the Alberta College of Art + Design April 2 at 7 pm in the Stanford Perrot Lecture Theatre. All are welcome!

(The artist talk coincides with the closing of Fibre Fort-Night Exhibition and the Miniature Silent Auction proudly presented by ACAD’s Fibre Department.)

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Nancy Price, Hopeless… Romantic

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Go on… 2008


Hopeless… Romantic: Nancy Price at Stride Gallery
January 9 to February 14, 2009

With these works that traverse the boundaries of art, couture and craft, Price considers what is implied with the notion of “fitting” or its alternative, to not “fit.” Her conjunction of meticulous crafting and attention to varieties of detail are revealed in a work such as “Go On…” (2008). She has incorporated a series of expressionistic phrases or slogans appropriately spelled in the fabric by burning out letters from the dress’s material. The imperatives she proposes (living, loving, dying) are all processes of dispersal, of ways in which a self is fractured, multiplied, lost, or displaced. These are Nancy Price’s alternatives when faced with the constraints of “fitting.” At the same time, she uses processes and techniques that recollect aspects of tradition. Thinking through making and thinking in materiality, Price reshapes the body and its capacities such as movement and gesture, while crossing from moments of comic absurdity to expressions of genuine reverence, between the materials and forms of popular or folk culture and high modernist couture.

(excerpt from catalogue essay by Stephen Horne)

Palace of Illusions, 2008

When a Woman Smiles Her Dress Should Smille with Her, 2008

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Contextural has a new website!

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Melinda Topilko, Deer Pillow, 20 in. x 20 in. x 3 in. screen print on fabric

Contextural is pleased to announce the opening of their new website, http://www.contextural.ca/!!!

Started in 2007, Contextural is a community of textile artists fostering a cooperative creative environment in support of the production of new artistic works. The group recently held their first gallery exhibition in September at the Alberta College of Art and Design which was a culmination of their first summer residency in the fibre studios of the same institution.

The website will allow Contextural to continue growing their community and showcase the works of their members.

Find out how we started on our about page. Want to see what our members make, view our gallery section with member galleries. If you are interested in becoming a member of Contextural, check out the members section. We are currently looking for members at large and members to sit on the board. If you would like to support our group in our NEW T-SHIRT SUBSCRIPTION FUNDRAISER, click on support. We hope you will enjoy the site and visit often.

Submitted by Tara Griffiths

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Contextural Summer Residency Exhibit

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Contextural: A Fibre Arts Co-operative is a group of fibre artists looking to form a community and a working studio primarily for printing and dyeing on cloth.This summer our group took it’s first steps towards our goals by hosting the first Contextural Summer Residency. The residency took place in the fibre studios of the Alberta College of Art and Design with 13 local artists and lasted 10 weeks. As the end of the residency approaches, the group is holding an exhibition of their work created during this summer.

Residency participants are: Julie Baratta, Charis Birchall, NancyCalis, Anne Fetterly, Tara Griffiths, Yvonne Kustec, Erinn Logee, SiriMcCormick, Heather Murray, Lyn Pflueger, Samantha Reed, MelindaTopilko, Rosanne Visser

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Saigon – Frances Dorsey at MSVU Art Gallery

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13 Oct 2007 – 25 Nov 2007, curated by Ingrid Jenkner
MSVU Art Gallery Ground Floor, Seton Academic Centre
166 Bedford Highway, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Free Admission, Hours: Tues Fri: 11 to 5, Sat, Sun: 1 to 5, Closed Mondays

Saigon 2007 (detail)
dyed, printed, discharged, and stitched layers of linen and cotton, panels of silver leaved cotton, 11.5 x 30 feet

Water and Sky 2007 (detail)
10 woven panels: dyed (natural indigo, indigo extract, and fiberreactive dyes) woven linen, some silk, 20 x 20 inches each

Nostalgia Series 2007 (detail)
6 woven panels: dyed (natural indigo, indigo extract, and fiber reactive dyes) woven linen, some silk; overdyed and over-printed,embroidered

Rice Paddies 2005 (detail)
28 panels of various dimensions: dyed, printed, discharged, silverleaved linen, cotton and rayon fabric. 28 small pieces of varying sizesassembled to cover 11 x 31 feet (installed)

IMAGE CREDIT: All images are by Steve Farmer, and are used with permission. Any unauthorized reproduction, storage, transmittal or distribution, in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited.

MSVU Art Gallery has produced a catalogue for the exhibition with essays contributed by two authors and several stories by Frances Dorsey. The following is an excerpt from “The Soldier’s Daughter” by Pat Hickman


“Where is the soldier’s daughter?” Bhakti Ziek, an artist colleague and friend, asked Frances Dorsey this critical question after looking at her sophisticated, computer- assisted, Jacquard-woven e-textiles, Soldiers and Gun and Gun and Diagram (1999). Dorsey has answered by producing a body of work in which she gives herself a central place.

Until 1954 Saigon was the capital city of the French colony. Thereafter, until 1976, it was the capital of South Vietnam. The name, the place, instantly takes most of us to the Vietnam War, which the Vietnamese call the American War. Three decades after its divisive, messy, costly end, we in the United States still ask, What has healed, what have we learned?

Saigon, from 1955-1959, was home for Fran Dorsey. Drawing on her childhood memories, both word and image, her work asks us to imagine, to think differently about a place so loaded, so burdened with historic reference. Her words
provide a narrative for the exhibition. Typed on an old Olivetti typewriter and printed on Mylar, they are displayed in the gallery and available in the catalogue.

While nostalgia is probably inevitable, Dorsey is doing much more. She is attempting to understand, to question, to make sense of this early period in her life, to put it in place and authentically claim her place—what’s real for her. Like the characters in Tim O’Brien’s, The Things They Carried, we see by looking at her cloth, what Dorsey holds close, what she carries. As for Dorsey, so for all of us. Early surroundings mark us; write on us, surface again and again in word and image.” READ MORE…

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