Musée des maîtres et artisans du Québec

On Friday I visited the Musée des maîtres et artisans du Québec, located in a beautiful old church at 615 Ste. Croix in St. Laurent, on the campus of Collège St-Laurent. The permanent collection includes wood carvings, ceramics, and lovely antique furniture. It is well-lit and well-displayed, with informative explanations in both English and French. The small but interesting textile section features a crazy quilt, a woven blanket, several hooked rugs, a braided carpet, a finger-woven sash, and several implements used in their manufacture.

An exhibition of eight woven tapestries will run until May 20. The show is titled "Le Sacre du printemps," (The Rite of Spring) and the work is by Thoma Ewen, the founder of the Moon Rain Centre for textile arts in the Outaouais. Also on display during my visit were fourteen paper dresses made by young women who are recent immigrants from Haiti, Morocco, Algeria, Afghanistan, India and Iran. Each dress has a special, personal meaning to the maker, detailed in a short text posted nearby. This display of life-sized dresses continues until April 1.

For more information about the museum, go to www.mmaq.qc.ca.There you can access a 3-D visual tour of the facility by clicking on the image of the interior.

Galerie Diagonale

From March 17 - 24, Galerie Diagonale hosts an exhibition of work by twelve students in the undergraduate fibers program at Concordia University. Today I visited the show, called "Don't Call It a Comeback". Below is a photo of "Drawing Down the Moon," by April Martin. It features a web that incorporates vintage bits of lace, held in position like a cat's cradle by seven modelled hands, and suspended about one foot above the floor.

Another piece in the show that caught my eye is titled "Villages," by Lori Malépart-Traversy.

It consists of crocheted house-like shapes, connected by strands of yarn.

Galerie Diagonale is located at 5455 de Gaspé, suite 203, in Montreal. Its hours are Wednesday to Saturday, noon to 5 p.m. www.artdiagonale.org

Did you know that April is Fibre month in Quebec? For more information about lectures and exhibitions, visit enavril.com.

Old Montreal

Here is the fourth in my little series on Montreal and Quebec architecture. It's based on a photo taken last weekend in Old Montreal, and shows some of the different styles of buildings seen there: the 17th-century French Canadian style, the Victorian, the early mid-rises and the modern skyscraper, off in the distance.

I made a line-drawing based on the photo, and then translated that into black stitching on hand-dyed gray cotton. It's mounted on a 12"-square gallery canvas.

I now have four pieces in this series so they can be grouped together in upcoming shows.

PosteRazor...

... is a really useful tool that can be downloaded for free. It enlarges any of your images to the desired size, and then allows you to print it out on your desktop printer, using multiple sheets of paper. You can then reassemble the papers with scissors and tape into a "poster". I find it useful for my 12 by the dozen challenges, because often I want to work with a 12" square image, and I've also used it to make images of, say, 20" x 24". I'm using it today to evaluate a couple of my photos taken in Old Montreal this weekend.

Because my printer won't print to the borders, I have to add 1" for every sheet of paper used. If I want a final result to be 12" wide, I specify 14" instead. A little trial and error may be needed depending on your printer.

The software is available at www.posterazor.sourceforge.net.

Montreal Skyline

Here is the latest in my Cityscapes series.

This one is based on the photo above, taken from the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Montreal. I chose a close-up from the middle-right of the main image, and made a line drawing from it.

I then translated it into hand-dyed and commercial cotton and stitch. It measures 20" x 16" and has been mounted onto a gray painted canvas. It will be shown at the spring show of the Hudson Artists, April 27 - 29.