Major retrospective for Lee Krasner

This week the New York Times brought news of a solo show of Lee Krasner, featuring almost 100 works by the American abstract expressionist.

The show currently runs at the Barbican Gallery in London, and will travel in October to the Schirn Kunstalle Frankfurt, and continue next year to the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, Switzerland, and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

Long overshadowed by the paintings of her husband Jackson Pollock, Krasner's work shows great range.  She is one of the few women painters to receive a full retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, a show that opened a few months after her death in 1984. In recent years her work has received more attention. In May, a panoramic Krasner from 1960 was sold at auction for $11.7 million, a record for the artist.

To learn more about Krasner and about the current show, access Jason Farago's article in the New York Times here.

Peter Sacks

I recently read a profile of the artist Peter Sacks in The New Yorker, March 25, 2019 issue. The caption under his full-page photo reads, "Late in life and seemingly overnight, Peter Sacks became a visual artist with a fully formed and dauntingly complex aesthetic."

The article is titled "What Lies Beneath", written by Joshua Rothman, and I would highly recommend it.

Sacks is a fascinating subject. He seems to have excelled at whatever he has put his hand to. Born in South Africa in 1950 of Lithuanian Jewish descent, he became active in the anti-apartheid movement at an early age, befriending Steve Biko. Sacks was at various times an Olympic-level swimmer, a Rhodes scholar, an English professor whose text on the English elegy form is without rival, an acclaimed poet, and now "one of the most exciting painters in America".

Necessity 7, 2007-09, "incorporates Rainer Maria Rilke's 'Duino Elegies'
in English and German. Like many of Sacks' triptychs, it is more than 12 feet long."

Sacks made his first painting twenty years ago, and hasn't written a single line of poetry since. Known to work 14-hour days, he has laboured over almost a thousand paintings, mounting ten solo shows in increasingly prestigious galleries. His paintings are large and "sedimentary". They consist of as many as seven or eight layers, and are painstakingly built over a period of years. The layers sometimes include linen, onto which he has laboriously typed entire texts. They might also include twisted cloth, sometimes singed, and corrugated cardboard. Writes Rothman,

"Sacks needed to invent a ritualized form of art-making – creating, burying, burning, uncovering."

“Township 17,” from 2017-18.
The painting combines fabrics from India, Europe, West Africa, and the Arab world.

Said Christopher Bedford, the director of the Baltimore Museum of Art,

"The paintings are deeply labor-intensive, almost painful in their execution. And the physical awareness that you're in the presence of something that was wrought over time, and that contains depth and layers that aren't visually perceivable, is very important. The feeling that the end point was reached through a process that you can sense but not perceive – that feels like history to me."

Farewell to an Idea 6, from 2010-12,
includes poems by Federico Garcia Lorca

Rothman creates a very compelling portrait of the artist, who currently works out of his studio on Martha's Vineyard. It makes me eager to find opportunities to see Sacks' work.

The article also prompted me to reflect on Rothman's classification of Peter Sacks' work. Not once was the term "collage", "textile art" or "fibre art" used in the New Yorker article. These are considered to be "paintings."

Tina Struthers

Tina Struthers is a fibre artist, costume designer and cultural mediator. Living not too far from me,  I have recently met her and become more familiar with her work.

Untamed, 2017, 80" x 122"
part of the Flow exhibit, Festival of Threads, Oakville 2018

I saw one of Tina's large pieces in the Flow exhibit when I visited the World of Threads Festival in Oakville earlier this month. I studied it carefully, intrigued because it exhibited the same variety/unity dynamic that I have been exploring in my painting. For example, I could see that denim was used in the piece, in various places: sometimes crumpled, sometimes pleated, sometimes dark, sometimes faded and sometimes frayed. But each instance of its use related to the others visually. The gold velveteen was used in a similarly inventive way, manifesting itself in different forms throughout the work.

Untamed is an example of the artist’s preoccupation with movement and migration. The movement may be like that of water, or mud, or lava: ebb and flow, fluid matter finding its path and navigating around obstacles. An extension of this concept is migration: the movement of animals and people. The artist statement on Struthers’ website articulates the "undercurrents" in her work.

from Beauharnois show

Tina was born in South Africa, and has spent the last ten years in Canada. Emigration is part of her life experience. She has a fine arts education, and was also trained in dressmaking. Sometimes her large sculptural pieces resemble pattern pieces that might be used to fashion a garment, with openings for armholes or necks.

from Beauharnois show

from Beauharnois show

from Beauharnois show, detail

Since my visit to Oakville, I was fortunate to take in a solo show of Tina's work at a civic centre in Beauharnois. Tina graciously met with our group there, and talked to us about her work and her influences. 

from Beauharnois show

from Beauharnois show

from Beauharnois show, detail

back row: Dianne Robinson, me, Michele Meredith
front row: Lauma Cenne, Tina Struthers, Colleen Paul
absent: Helena Scheffer, who organized the visit

and my thanks to all of you for so kindly sharing your photos of the show

Tina is often involved in theatrical productions. Recently she designed the costumes for a play at our local theatre, Fessenden Follies: A Steampunk Revue, by David Fennario.

Another important aspect of Tina's work is "cultural mediation". One such project is currently underway in my town of Hudson, Quebec, as we look back on the devastating flood of May 2017. Tina is serving as a facilitator for a project that allows residents to respond to a crisis that not only physically threatened many of our homes, but that brought us together in new ways as we came to the assistance of our neighbours. Leading projects like this often requires Tina to collaborate with municipal officials, designers and engineers.  She has developed expertise in applying for government grants to support these efforts.

And still more recently, Tina spoke to the local Hudson Artists group. Our members were fascinated to see her works in fibre up close and to learn about her themes and projects. I will be following her career with great interest!

For more information, please visit the artist's website.

Visual Design: my interview with SAQA

Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA) is an international group I have belonged to for many years. One of many posts that I've shared about SAQA was written last year, outlining some of the benefits of membership.

So I am delighted now to share with you a web-interview I did recently with Deborah Boschert as part of a Seminar Series on Visual Design, available exclusively to SAQA members. The Seminar Series is part of a whole collection of videos, articles and other resources on Visual Design for SAQA members. It's one of the projects developed in recent years that adds enormous benefit to membership.

If you decide that SAQA is a group you'd like to be part of, use the code SEMINAR to get a $10 discount for new members. 

Mary Pratt, 1935 - 2018

Salmon on Saran, 1974

Mary Pratt once said she didn't think of anything as "ordinary". "I think everything is complex and worthy of conjecture and worthy of a look, worthy of a close look", she said in an interview with the National Gallery of Canada in 2015.

Well-known in her own country, less known internationally, artist Mary Pratt was born in New Brunswick, and made her life in Newfoundland. She died earlier this month, and glowing tributes have been published widely in the Canadian media.

Fish Head in Steel Sink, 1983

Pratt is known for finding the beauty (and sometimes the horror) in the everyday. In her earlier years, she was best known as the wife of Canadian painter Christopher Pratt, whom she met in art school and with whom she had four children. As a student at Mount Alison University, she was told by her instructor, Lawren Harris Jr., that there could only be one artist in a family, and she was not it. When she traveled to the Glasgow School of Art with her husband, Mary was denied entry on the grounds that she was pregnant, but Christopher was admitted.

Eggs in an Egg Crate, 1975

Pratt was honoured by a number of solo shows in Canada, beginning in 1967 and most recently at the National Gallery in 2015-16. She was made a Companion of the Order of Canada and was named as a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Pratt is best known for her hyper-realist oil paintings of still life; in later years she also chose to paint portraits of women. In both, there is often a suggestion of wrapping, or containment.

Cold Cream, 1983

I have loved her work since I first discovered it many years ago, and saw the 2015 solo show at the National Gallery.  As Lisa Moore wrote so eloquently in Canadian Art,

"The light in these paintings is a stark reminder of passing time, of the significance of brief moments, strained toward and carried off. The paintings are rife with contradiction. They are beautiful/disturbing, graceful/violent, arousing/sated, gifts/sacrifices, confronting/comforting, objective/personal.  Something has just happened, or is about to happen. Immanence/menace.
"And in these contradictions lies the interrogation of the idea of beauty, how it must unsettle us, how it must be uncovered from the cloth of the quotidian. How it is radical in its state of flux, subject always to decay; uncontainable."

Jelly Shelf, 1999

The Women Who Sew for NASA

Have you seen the movie Hidden Figures? Here's a similar story.

Lien Pham arrived in America as a child refugee, fleeing South Vietnam as Saigon fell. She and her family survived by doing piece work in the fashion industry. Working in a lingerie factory by day, she attended engineering classes in the evening. And since 1994 she has brought her talents to the aerospace industry.

You can read her fascinating story here. 

The link will bring you to a text that is part of BBC 100 Women, an annual focus on 100 influential and inspirational women around the world. This year's series celebrates women in science.

Profiled! in Art Quilting Studio magazine

Getting my name on the cover of a magazine? Pretty special! I am thrilled to have been profiled in the American magazine, Art Quilting Studio, Winter 2017 edition. The eight-page spread includes 8 photos of my work, and the quality of the reproduction is spot-on.

The article itself is beautifully written by Ricë Freeman-Zachery. I have scanned the article, below, so you can see for yourself what all the fuss is about. Just keep scrolling down until you come to the enlarged text.

In Print! x 3

Just delighted to have my work featured in three magazines this season.

An art quilt that I made specifically for SAQA's "Tranquility" call for entry was accepted to the show and also chosen as part of a two-page spread in the SAQA Journal, Volume 26 No. 3. I was pleased to be accepted as it was the first time I had entered an all-member SAQA show. I participated in a regional show a few years ago, "Synthesis 2".

Page 2 of 2-page spread on "Tranquility" show, SAQA Journal, Vol. 26 No. 3

SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) is an American-based international group that promotes the medium and supports artists who work with fibre. Among their many initiatives, they regularly organize thematic exhibitions that travel worldwide to be shown in museums and at quilt shows. "Tranquility" will open at the upcoming International Quilt Festival in Houston, the IQF in Chicago (April 2017) and will likely be shown at other venues over the next couple of years.

The current October/November issue of Quilting Arts magazine also features an 8-page sampling from the "Tranquility" show, devoting a full page to my "Come Sit with Me, Patrick Caulfield". My artist statement reads,

"Patrick Caulfield (1936 - 2005) was a British artist known for his paintings of interiors, with their strong black lines and flat colours. This is my invitation to him, to join me in my cozy reading corner and have a cup of tea."

Page 4 of an 8-page spread in Quilting Arts magazine (Oct-Nov 2016) is given over to my work!

Even more exciting is the upcoming edition of Stampington's Art Quilting Studio, which will showcase ten of my cityscapes and include a beautifully-written article by Ricë Freeman-Zachary, based on her interview with me in August. I will post more details as they become available.

Deidre Adams

When I first began to make "art quilts", I was inspired by the work of Deidre Adams. I continue to find her work a revelation, and I am especially impressed by her crossover between stitch and paint. Perhaps it was ten years ago that I observed how Adams would dry-brush paint over her stitched and quilted surfaces, and I began to use that technique in some of my own work.

Deidre Adams, A System of Phonological Parameters, 30" x 40"
acrylic and mixed media on panel

Adams is no minimalist. She achieves rich textures and transparencies by building layer upon layer, to create a kind of "primordial soup". In the last few years, she has begun to work very large, sometimes achieving dimensions of 100" or more by combining several canvases, often a triptych of equal-sized panels.

Deidre Adams, By Chance and Necessity, 48" x 72"
acrylic and mixed media on panel

Adams, based in the American Southwest and a member of SAQA, is currently showing her work in a solo show, "Metaphors & Mysteries" at the Point Gallery in Denver, August 5 - 31, 2016 and in a group show, "Colorado Women in Abstraction" at Denver's Centre for Visual Art, July 15 - October 1, 2016.

Talking about my work

Thank you to Gabriel Landriault of the Arbor Gallery, who gave me this opportunity to talk about my work after the hanging of the Cityscapes show.

Profiled!

I feel like I have achieved rock star status in the art quilt world, with a profile on TextileArtist.org.

This British-based site, produced by Sam and Joseph Pitcher, has a serious, international following.

Not only do they feature in-depth profiles of artists working in the full spectrum of textile art, but they also offer very helpful articles on subjects like choosing venues for your work, photographing your work, and selecting attractive templates for your website.

You can check me out at:
http://www.textileartist.org/heather-dubreuil-interview-contemporary-art-quilts/

This is a real career highlight for me. I'm afraid it may be all downhill from here.

Anne Brisson at Recouture

Tucked away behind this intriguing facade at 73A Cameron in Hudson is a most magical place, where discontinued clothing is "upcycled" into something truly unique.










Anne Brisson, sculptor, painter and collage artist, is the creative force behind "Recouture". Anne delights in using found materials, like curtains, scarves, blankets and recycled fur, to add panache to jackets, dresses, coats and more.












Anne has a special relationship with some local shops, who provide her with their end-of-line and end-of-season items.  Using her wonderful sense of colour, whimsy and fun, Anne transforms them into "vintage chic".











Many of her clients are women in their 40's and older, who are looking for something a little funky, a little different. While not everyone is game for the novelty of an upcycled dress, almost everyone can enjoy a fanciful handbag, appliquéd with lace and finished off with a large rhinestone bumblebee. Anne's handbags, or "Anne-bags" are one of her most popular items.

Anne is pleased to be presenting ten of her ensembles at the annual fashion show at the Hudson Yacht Club on Wednesday, May 22. She is also active on Etsy, under the name Reecouture. A year and a half after opening her shop door, Anne has found her own niche in a niche market.

Michele Meredith

My friend Michele Meredith will be participating with me in the upcoming Hudson StudioTour. Michele is a member of the local groupText’art, of the Hudson Artists, of the international group SAQA (Studio Art Quilts Associates), of  Ottawa's Out-of-the-Box Fibre Artists and of the international blogging group 12bythedozen.

Michele is shown here, working in her garden. Behind her are some hand-dyed silk squares she plans to incorporate into future projects. Michele’s art background includes ceramics and landscape design. She currently works with both fibre and collage, often incorporating both in a single piece.

Michele often works with images taken from her own photos, whether of open fields or of a bustling street scene. She has developed a technique of transfering ink from photocopied images to tissue paper, which she then collages onto canvas.

In the photo above, she has layered a piece of white tissue paper over a black-and-white photocopy.

She then applies acetone to the tissue and quickly lifts the paper off the photocopy.

The ink transfers to the tissue, which can then be collaged into a composition.

Colour photocopies sometimes yield unpredictable results.

 Michele plays with the composition until she is pleased, and then collages the tissue to canvas. Paint, text and cloth can be layered in at any time to balance the elements, or to add colour or textural interest. The photocopy that provided the original image may also be incorporated into the collage.

Red Scarf

 Michele will be showing some of her recent pieces on the Hudson Studio Tour, September 29 and 30, and at the Hudson Artists fall show, October 19 - 21.

Spring Dreamers II