Happy Winter Solstice!

Get out your candles and holly boughs, it's the winter solstice! Instead of knocking back eggnogs and celebrating the death/rebirth of the year, I'm going to be at work, scurrying through stockroom mazes and barely tolerating the body aches that accompany a 10 hour shift. 


In three days though, I'll be back in NB. Three days.

Library

A list of some of the movies I've seen in the past month and change:


Capote
Milk
La Vie En Rose
the Darjeeling Limited
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Bright Star
Run Silent, Run Deep
The Russian Ark (fell asleep halfway through. Must re-watch)
The Life of Birds, narrated by the fabulous David Attenborough
The Wire, season 2 
and Golden Girls, season 1.


I really like movies. I don't much like sitting still for an hour or two at a time, but the movies (and TV shows) I've seen captivated and inspired me in a variety of ways. Five of the movies on the list brought me to tears, and I'm not a sob-in-the-theatre kind of woman. 




To balance that screen-staring, I read a great deal. Everything from Egyptian mythology to surveys of modern Pagan witchcraft to stories about Newfoundland, and yoga manuals. I need a good dose of fiction next, and thankfully the Central library here has a fantastic selection of everything. Browsing through those tidy shelves, finding gems, and chatting with the librarians is well worth the risk of being harassed by one of the free-internet using creeps that hangs out near the CD racks... 

What Have I Been Doing?

My nail is ugly but healed, and I should have been writing by now. A lot has changed and a lot hasn't changed around here. Moods fluctuate, the temperature has been mild, and the holidays are right around the corner. Let's make a nice tidy list to make sure nothing gets left out:


1. It's been difficult to get to the studio, what with my precarious financial situation requiring more hours at the shoe shop than at the workbench. I'm okay with how that's worked. It's not ideal (really, winning the lotto or marrying rich would be ideal), but it's temporary and I can handle temporary. 


2. What have I been making? Not a whole lot, to be honest. I've prepared the loom for weaving after Christmas, dyed a few skeins of yarn, and began working on a present for my grandparents. I've started drawing again. I've made mind maps. Overall, December has not been a productive month for me. 


Which leads me to a redefinition of the word "productive". I feel guilty when I don't put in enough studio hours, when I spend more evenings watching movies or reading than making tangible things, when I work on little things instead of the Big Important Objects. People like to see Big Important Objects, and I do too. The problem with being obsessed with making Large Things, or expending large amounts of energy on one thing, is that when I shift gears and spend more time and energy on the smaller projects and inspiration-gathering, it becomes more difficult to measure what it is you're doing. 


I've got a week in Burlington before heading home for the holidays. A 34 hour work week, a visit-friends-in-the-city week, a pack/clean/write/mail/eat week. I'm going to spend time this week making goals for the next year. Here's how they're shaping up:


1. Love more: Accept the natural creative highs and lows of artlife, worry less about being in a town that doesn't suit me, learn about heritage, cultivate a strong voice. 


2. Wear silk undergarments, or pretend all my undergarments are silk.


3. My life, at times, is a lot like a Wes Anderson movie. Run with it. 


4. Land at least 3 exhibitions this year. 






These Resolutions are still in progress, but I like them. I like heading home for the holidays even more though. SEVEN DAYS! SEVEN! 

I wrecked a fingernail in an accident with a ladder, and it's pretty hard to type efficiently right now. 


More art updates soon!

A Lot of Words

I always intend on writing a quick post, but ideas happen and then I've got too many things that I want to say and not enough patience. 


First up: the Burlington Art Centre's Christmas sale and soup bowl fundraiser is happening tomorrow through to Sunday. There's some wicked work being sold, some of which is mine! BUY MY STUFF BECAUSE I NEED TO PAY OFF THE PLANE TICKET HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS!


In a roundabout way it connects to my next thought, which is the Improved Mental State I'm experiencing. In the days following my last post (I know, it hasn't been long) I've started to feel better. Better about my relationship with the studio/this town/this program. I'm making an effort to set boundaries in the studio to preserve my time and energy, and I'm reaching out to family, friends, and mentors back home.  


I've also booked my flight home for Christmas. 


Monday night precipitated a massive shift in how I address some of pent-up studio anxiety and I felt good enough to work all day Tuesday and return in the evening. There was a weaving night class, and I was taken aback by how nice it felt to be working near a school-type setting. I chatted with a few students (madame, c'etait une plaisir de vous parler, meme si mon Francais est pitoyable compare a la votre) and settled in to work. It felt a little like being back home :)


I've been dreaming up a new direction for the project, and I'm playing with a couple of ideas. A piece relating to my experiences here feels right, but until last night the details were slippery. I wanted to incorporate dye experiments, some sort of imagery... plants and elephants and other things, weaving, the failed blanket story project, maybe rug hooking, handspun yarn, surface embellishment, some reference to personal growth, etc. Ideally the piece(s) would be easy to ship. 


So... Gifts. That's all I'm going to say for now.  


Now I'm facing the reality of having charges for a plane ticket home for the holidays on my credit card. It's painful to look at, but it doesn't matter because later in December I get to see the most handsome cat in the world, spend much needed time with my kooky and wonderful siblings and parents and friends, and I get to eat a stupid amount of fantastic food that I neither have to make nor pay for. I'm going to need new pants. I do need new pants anyway, but these ones will have to be larger. 


I came across a notion in a book I'm reading, regarding double-lives. The paragraph in question speaks specifically about the tendency of some Witches/pagans/folks of alternative religious leaning/etc. to hide that aspect of their life, whether to ensure job security or avoid being ostracized or ridiculed. The argument was that this fragmentation/segregation of the whole was detrimental and that only by fighting for a whole acceptance of the self could a person truly have a free, strong identity. Or something like that. 


It seemed like an affirmation of the Big Life Lesson I struggle with (speaking about what is important to me). I shouldn't have to stifle my voice for fear of negative confrontation. In the past couple of days I've seen just how much life and general outlook can change when you make your feelings known. 


I can't wait to incorporate this into my work. 


One last thing: I found ingredients in the cupboard and made veggie sushi tonight. It's amazing. 

Obstacles and Elephants

I try to focus on the positive in my blog, but lately it's been damned difficult to do. I feel isolated, I sorely lack the dynamic critical dialogue and creative sharing of my old community, I'm uninterested in this project, and uninspired among other things. 


It came to a head on Thursday or Friday and I just didn't know what to do. I'd spent the last couple of weeks dragging my sorry ass from the studio to work, moping around, working up the energy to get out of bed, and living in a bad state. I knew what was wrong, and I knew there were more things out of place that I couldn't define, but I couldn't see a way out this whole mess. 


Lesson #1: Calm the fuck down and call someone.
I called my dad and cried a lot. Again. This has been happening frequently since I've moved here. My dad put the situation in simple terms: either pack up and leave, or find some way to get what I need from other sources and make it to the end. I also spoke with two other friends in the following days.


Lesson #2: Your friends are there for you. Just call them. 
The day after I skyped with my amazing friend and mentor, WhiteFeather. It had been a while since we spoke. Seeing a friendly face and hearing a friendly voice made me feel so, so much better. Hearing about her own experiences with residencies and creative/emotional/huge life challenges put my experiences in perspective and gave me maybe not courage, but at least a little bit of hope. Hope that I could change my attitude towards this place and get through this residency with some modicum of sanity.


I called another friend today and after we hit disconnect I knew that phone calls, skype, emails, and letters were going to be my salvation in this suburban hermitage. I simply do not have a community here, so I'll just have to maintain long-distance relationships, and visit Toronto whenever finances permit. 


Lesson #3: I can change my mind! 
An ongoing lesson for me has been giving myself permission. Permission to change my mind, to do what I want, to be inspired or uninspired by an idea, to let go of what doesn't work for me, to not hold myself to imaginary obligations. Yesterday evening I was feeling okay with this re-revelation, probably a little more empowered than usual, and began shouting in the kitchen. Not angry shouting, but empowered, soul-affirming, backbone-building mantras at gradually increasing amplitudes.  


Development of the Will and Voice is liberating and important.


Dropping a dead idea is too.


Lesson #4: Ganesha.
I took it as a sign of easy times to come when I found a little statue of Ganesha in the house I'm living in. I knew him then solely as the Remover of Obstacles. I vividly remember finding the statue and thinking that I'd come to the end all the SHIT I had to push through in the past year. "Fuck yeah! Finally caught a break!" Now I know that there is still healing to be done, confidence and vision to hone, and my current situation is simply an intense and finite space in which to fix that shit. 

That being said, I anticipate the next three and a half months to be no less difficult than the past two and a half. I expect to feel isolated here, lonely, angry (occasionally without warrant), depressed, uninspired, and frustrated. 

Knowing when to shift gears, changing my project parameters, and talking more often to good artists and friends back home and in Toronto is what's going to make the aforementioned suffering worthwhile for me. 

Christmas Stock

I've been consumed by dye experiments lately. Ah, someday this will all be part of a grand thesis, but for now it'll be incorporated into this year's holiday product line. 

The results of pounding plants into cloth to see what happens are very pleasing. Since they're not going to be worn or handled a great deal, I'm not terribly concerned with the colour being wash fast. Steaming and pressing them with a hot iron has made some of the pigments able to stand up to a light spritzing with water, and most are fairly lightfast. The samples below have been made into cards for the upcoming BAC Christmas sale! 

And the background carpet is pretty sweet. 

A few little samples were turned into ornaments. I don't have a sewing machine here, so they're all hand-sewn and stuffed with wool. 

I WILL SELL ALL OF THEM!

Brief Update

Ahoy there! I've been in the studio for the past two days and forgot a camera both times. I've been prepping cloth for Christmas sale products, spinning yarn, writing, and moping around because yes, it's SAD season again. 


I'll try and remember my camera tomorrow to show you the dyed cloth and fluffy yarns. 


A fantastic package of seasoned birch bark from ReBecca came in the mail today and it'll go into the dye pot next week, schedule permitting.  

Surprise!

Apologies for the lack of updates lately. It's been hectic here, but I have good news! I found a part-time job and I've stumbled upon an amazing new dye!

Take a gander at this:

Oh yes. That stunning pink, purple, and turquoise is from beans! I noticed the water my beans were soaking in was becoming coloured, so I tossed in a few pieces of unmordanted cheesecloth and silk. Some samples were later treated with dish soap, others, with vinegar. I wrapped a sample around my favourite rusty anchor and the colours shifted to grey purples.

Ah, lovely. I'm not sure how colourfast beans are as a dye, but I can't wait to test it! This method uses no heat and the beans are safe to boil and eat since I'm not using a mordant.  

OS

Last Friday I started weaving a bit of overshot. Love the structure and challenge, hated the string of Friday tour groups.  

The warp and plain weave weft are dyed with rose hips, and the pattern weft is natural Harrisville wool. 

I also took a trip out to Gemini Fibres, a charming fibre arts shop packed to the gunwales with books and spinning wheels and soft things, to (in theory) window shop, but... my strict budgeting regimen goes out the window when I see hand-turned wooden earrings and silk carrier rods. I managed to walk out only 9$ poorer. 

You'll eventually see photos of what those junky little silk bits are being turned into. Right now content yourself with knowing that it'll be neat. 

Reflections

I certainly can't claim to speak for all weavers, but I do believe that some of us find meditation in weaving and a perhaps even a type of spirituality in the repetitious processes. 


During my first two years, maybe three, of college, the deep concentration and stillness of weaving came close to the awe of looking up at a night sky free from light pollution, or the brilliant life in the vast spruce forests of my childhood. Weaving, spinning, felting, sewing and dyeing became my mental anchors when other aspects of my life were in chaos. Over these few years my hands have learned new skills and I've stretched into the territory of fine art, but my practice always returns to the deceptively simple manipulation of fibre. 


There is balance in weaving. A balance between physical effort and acute focus, a constant rechecking of position and pattern and tension and beat. It is outrageously complex and completely mesmerizing. There are epiphanies. There are heartbreaks. All the while you are allowing the thread to speak to you, and you, in a quiet trance, listen and respond with your whole body. You are a part of the loom and your essence is in the cloth. 

You May Address Me As "Colour Wizard"

Will you look at that? The Bird of Paradise is blooming in the solarium, right in front of my loom! 

With such lush and beautiful plants growing on the other side of the glass, I don't think the winter blues will hit as hard this year. 

Today's been a wonderful and productive dye day. I realized this afternoon that all of this play is developing the palette for the entire residency project! I feel good about mucking around in the kitchen and taking my time. 

The quest for colour continues on hand in hand with plant dye education. One sweet lady took me out to the back yard last week to collect maple (acer saccharum) leaves "to make red dye". Sometimes it's easier (and kinder) to show people why their assumptions don't work rather than shoot down their good intentions, so I dashed around the yard like an idiot, bundled up the leaves in some tannin-mordanted muslin, and steamed the hell out of it. 

Ta Da! Not red, but still interesting. The black marks on the right are from where the bundle rested on a bent wire for steaming.

I haven't used the steam technique extensively until now, and it's very exciting. I dyed this plain weave cotton scarf with a mix of peony (Paeonia sp.), rose (Rosa sp.), pin cherry (Prunus pensylvanica), and purple laceleaf Japanese maple (Acer palmatum dis. atrop) leaves and a quick tannin mordant and I wrapped it around a rusty anchor for a post-mordant. I thought it was quite hideous at first. It wasn't until I pressed it and stood back to get a good look did I start to notice the depth, subtle colour shifts, and all those good things you hope for in a one-off dye experiment. 

Magic! Weird, weird plant magic!

I've been saving leaves from the Japanese maple in my front yard (acer palmatum var. atropurpureum) and fallen flowers from a Bougainvillea (sp.) living in the solarium for some sort of wacky experiment. This morning I hammered some into tannin-mordanted muslin a la India Flint. 

And the experiment turned out MARVELOUSLY! To the left is a garlic chive seed head, centre is the maple, and on the right are delicate Bougainvillea bracts. 

I tried steam setting the Bougainvillea with a few other things in a pot, and the colour diffused. It looks more like a dreamy watercolour rendition of the flower, so perhaps a quick steam set with an iron would work better. 


In any case, it's all very exciting! Tomorrow I'm going to plaster the town with posters for my story collection event, and if this rain ever lets up, I'll go out and collect plant matter for the eventual production of big dyebaths. 

Walking on Four Legs

Happy Thanksgiving! I feel energized and content after a weekend with my extended family, so I've started job hunting in earnest today. I really, really want a job at Starbucks or another coffee shop. Less stress than a waitress gig and you still get tips! Keep your fingers crossed for me. 


The big thing on my mind lately has been identity. How do I define myself as an artist, as a woman, in a new town, in a stranger's home, away from friends, without school? 


During the weekend I talked with my family and I listened to their stories. Speech is so powerful, and I'm beginning to believe that being able to speak (up, out, or quietly yourself) can only propel your growth forward. What I heard this weekend were stories of healing, of growth, understanding, happiness, and strife. In turn, I felt safe enough to speak frankly about the changes I've been experiencing and it FELT AWESOME to be surrounded by people who connected with those words and emotions.  


I am thankful for this wacky family, for the chance to discover myself in this strange town, for dry humour, for wine and women. 

And here is a gorgeous green room courtesy of the internet. 

Surprising Results

While my noggin is taking a beating from this fierce head cold, I figured you should look at some things I've done! 

Above: pre-mordanting some wools and silk in an alum and tartar solution (note: the dye kitchen doesn't have a proper scale, so I had to eyeball the amounts), and in the pot on the right, a rose-hip dye extraction. This was from that demo...

I banged off a scarf in record time! All of these cotton scarves are blank canvases for dye experiments. If they turn out well, I'll sell 'em.

Below: dye experiments! Gorgeous, fascinating dye experiments! These two were coloured by horse chestnut hulls. The top photo, though out of focus, shows the samples after an iron post-mordant. LOOK AT THAT BLUE! 

And without iron, you get lovely champagne and nude tones. It's incredible that the colour shifted so drastically AND only on the cotton and silk! The cotton was pre-mordanted with milk and an ammonia solution. I am also testing cotton with a tannin solution, so we'll have to wait and see how effective it is. 

These next two photos show the rose hip bath. Similar nudes and champagnes, but wait till you see the results of the iron post-mordant...

TADA! BLUE! Logwood blue on cotton and silk! Amazing!

And here are all of those little samples lined up in my book. The colour's a bit off in the photo, but you get the idea. The horse chestnut blues are far more yellow than the purple blues from the rose hips. 

I need to spend some time in the BAC driveway collecting walnuts and horse chestnuts before they get carted off by squirrels or shredded by lawnmowers. 

Semi-Conscious

rain driving Allosaurus cinnamon hugs light-up suits fashion dancing Nuit Blanche train rides I love you bike rave truck metal heart art art art frozen fingers cold core




Need I say more? Word soup is about the only thing my sick brain can produce right now. It's actually my tonsils that are afflicted, but the chills and general malaise that accompanies a sore throat are a body-wide phenomenon. Where are you, nyquil martini recipe...


Aside from feeling sick, I have two overwhelming concerns (three, if you count my lack of warm clothing and the onset of winter). I have yet to land a job. Cash is a finite resource and I need a job very soon if I am to survive and repay loans. 


The second thing I worry about is... well, it's October, and this weaving project needs to GET GOING. Laying in bed for hours has given me some time to reflect upon my actions and goals, and I think I've spent the first month of this residency unwinding from summer and school and all of that jazz. I've been setting my own pace and trying to figure out how to live in this new territory.  


And that train of thought just ceased to exist. I'm going back to bed to sleep for another 12 hours. 

Updates and Life Lessons

A lot has happened since my last post about migraines and red bugs. I:


- Went to Toronto for a day. It feels so much more like home than Burlington. I drank great coffee, toured through the textile museum, bought fine paper, and had fun picking out goatskin for a little side project. 


- Learned that food colouring is food-grade aniline dye. That's coal tar, baby. Coal tar in your food. That chat was actually the second-most vexing conversation I've been forced into in some time. Forced into, like when your grandmother made you talk to her friends at the supermarket when all you wanted to do was buy jam.


- Realized that a lot of people here don't take me seriously, probably because I am young. We'll come back to this in a minute.


- Made beautiful, beautiful grey from walnuts. 


- Went on a hectic one day road trip to Montreal to see the Gaultier retrospective. High fashion and chocolate mousse were well worth 14 hours in a car.    


- Got a bike! It's an old 5-speed cruiser. Heavy and gorgeous as any cruiser can be. Handles like a dream. 


- Organized a natural dye demo for this Wednesday and was subsequently embroiled in the most vexing conversation I've been forced into in some time. It was actually an email exchange that I had to step away from, even though that meant letting someone else win...




I've been feeling for a while now that I'm treated differently because of my age. To be specific, I'm treated like a kid instead of a fully capable, educated adult. It's a weird thing to think about and maddening to experience, and in almost every iteration of defining it to others I sound like an unappreciative jackass. I do value the help and guidance I'm receiving! I DO! But there's a difference between support and hand-holding, and these hands do not want or need to be held.    


I was very much looking forward to being creatively challenged during this residency, but I didn't foresee every other punch thrown my way. Being an AIR here is trying my patience, my emotional strength, my grace, my ability to adapt, my common sense, my ideas of what I want to do with my life and whom I want to do it with, my budgeting skills, my faith in the universe, my bonds with the people I love, and so much more. 


I imagine, after six months of being irked and goaded and babied, there will be nothing left to bother me. I will be as tranquil as the moon. Direct as an arrow. More resilient than stone. Slower to anger than a glacier. 

A Big Sack of Bugs

I haven't written much in the past couple of days, both for the blog and to friends and family, because I've been terribly homesick and lonely. Every time I tried to sit down and peck out anything the tears would start and then it would all go downhill from there. 


Having a migraine kind of stops you from feeling sorry for yourself and just makes you wish you were dead, so while it may only be a lateral move, I can at least say I'm not sobbing. 


Today was actually okay. Instead of sleeping in until the glorious late morning hours and prancing around dusting things and drinking tea at home, I hauled my cold and miserable ass out of bed and went in to the studio for a colour theory workshop taught by the fabulous William Hodge. 


You can never take too many colour theory classes. It's fascinating and invaluable and you always learn something new. William is, in a way, responsible for my residency. He's also blunt and hilarious and knows colour inside and out. TAKE ANY COURSE HE OFFERS BECAUSE HE IS AMAZING. Did I mention I like him? 


So I got a brutal migraine about an hour and a half into the class. Someone gave me some advil and it helped take the edge off, but it's pretty hard to work with colour when light itself is trying to kill you. There were some upsides:


1. William Hodge is awesome for a lot of reasons. One of them being he gave me a god damned bag of cochineal. Just picked it up on a trip to a cochineal plantation during a vacation, heard I liked natural dyes and thought I might like half a pound. No big deal. 


2. Spending at least half an hour in the solarium's tropical plant-filtered air does a body a world of good. Two goldfish live there whom I will name, befriend, and consider pets for the duration of my time here. 


3. Due to my raging migraine, three people took pity on me and offered to drive me home. 


Let's get back to the cochineal. I had planned on using natural dyestuffs from the neighbourhood for my colour duing this residency, but let's be honest here. When life gives you free cochineal, you grind up those bugs and dye things red. I've got unlimited access to cochineal, walnuts, horse chestnuts, rose hips, osage orange, and a number of other potential dye plants. Obviously cochineal isn't a plant, but it'll satisfy my need for red and flesh (ha!) out my palette. 


Again, I wish this was a dyeing residency and not a weaving one! I made up a couple of fine cotton warps yesterday to get the ball rolling with the weaving thing. The Christmas sale is coming up and I want to weave some scarves and colour them with natural dyes and eco-printing. I've barely done anything on cotton, so I'm very much looking forward to testing it out. 


William mentioned one of his students made a ten-step colour triangle using natural dyes. Insane? Yes. I want to do that too. 

Camilla Valley Dream

Yesterday Nancy and I took a day trip to Collingwood and the surrounding area. I popped into a tiny bookstore called the Crow's Nest and chatted up the ladies who run it (there's an art gallery on the second floor, a delightful children's section in the basement, and two beautiful afghan hounds snoozing behind the counter), and grabbed a fantastic americano from a cafe down the street. 

Don't let looks fool you, the decrepit Crow's Nest is a hidden gem.

And then we drove to Camilla Valley Farm, a famous yarn supplier and picturesque farm. It's gorgeous. We spent over two hours perusing their stock and fondling yarn. I had to put down so many lovely things. Sigh. 

This little grey building houses all your dreams. 

The most adventurous hen making sure everything's okay. 

Between my family (over the weekend I traipsed all over London and St. Thomas, saw Elton John live, ate at an incredible Italian place (Spagos. GO THERE.), and was surrounded by hectic love for three days) and the Guild members, I will see all of Ontario before Christmas. 

Hm.

The elderly women of the Burlington Art Centre are hilarious. They are masters of dry humour, thinly-veiled dirty jokes, thinly-veiled contempt, and a barely perceptible code of winks and nods that can switch the direction of conversation in a flash. They've had a lifetime to hone the perfect piercing glare and cackling laugh. They are fascinating women. 


A very high percentage of the members of both the spinning and weaving, and rug hooking guilds are elderly women. I'm the youngest in the former by at least 45 years, the latter by about 15, but the majority are in their mid 70's to late 80's. That doesn't really matter, I just thought you'd like to hear about these firecrackers. This article is actually about my first Rug Hooking Guild meeting, and some of the ideas it generated.  


During the meeting there was a brief discussion about whether or not work should be judged before being allowed into... something. Craft show or the like. A portion of the guild said yea, the other, nay. Before that though was a lengthy slide show of rugs featured at some large exhibition or tradeshow. 


The slideshow was a mix of all types of hooked delights: exquisite oriental-inspired area rugs, smaller wall hangings, and everything from kitchy Santa Clauses to the lady and the unicorn. There was a lot that made me cringe, and there was some that left me with mouth agape. The ladies of the room were all commenting on which ones they liked and didn't, and talked about technique to the newcomers (I wasn't the only one!).


In this guild, participation and community trumps aesthetic perfection. They're all perfectly great hookers, but the range in taste and ability to design is staggering. I'm torn: obviously I'm not going to say a generic row of cottages is great (unless we're talking technique, or colour choice, or something other than subject matter), but how can I bitch someone out for making a ghastly homage to their beloved golden lab when I know that rug hooking is this person's creative outlet? 


There's something very honest about the way craftspeople treat each other, here at least. They are people, getting together and sharing technique and ideas and support, who do not judge harshly what doesn't need to be judged. I struggle with that, forgetting all too often that not everyone studied colour theory or design or art history or even took a drawing class in school. I definitely grimaced at most of the rugs I saw tonight. Some people just have profoundly terrible taste. But as a fellow craftswoman and guild member, I need to support their endeavours and be happy that they've found something they love to do. 


Humbling oneself and shushing the internal design critic is tough. It actually makes me feel like I'm going crazy and I hate doing it. Certainly there are situations where thoughtful criticism is appropriate, but it can't be let loose all of the time, not in a guild where intense workshopping isn't the mandate, not when you're coming to a guild and asking for guidance and support. 


A friend of mine said something along the lines of, "I don't care what the hell they're making. They're doing something new and expressive and that's great." and it seems those words are true. 

First Day on the Job

In a couple of hours I'll have been a resident of Ontario for one whole week, and today was my first real (short) day as the Artist In Residence. Here's a little tour of the facilities:

The textiles studio and its army of 4 shaft counterbalance looms. To the left is the bank of windows looking out into the solarium, and off camera to the right is a 120" loom. Behind the camera is a large work table and a pantry. 

Some spinning wheels and a tapestry in progress. Also, the octado dobby. 

The dye kitchen! It's an oddly shaped room with tons of counter space and glass jars, and about 100 tea cups. I don't like the idea of tea cups being in a dye kitchen, but the rug hookers upstairs have a dye kitchen too and I'm hoping that's where they all go to mix their acid dyes.

The sink! Those buckets and bric-a-brac to the left need to be tidied up. 

It's a lovely space, but a wee bit lonely when there's nobody there and nothing to do. Today was a strange mix of boredom and paranoia that comes from sleep deprivation, mostly due to the fact that I have no materials and I stay up late thinking about that. I have a shuttle, some bobbins, a very small stack of silk hankies, and that's about it. You can't weave anything with that! And I forgot my notebook.


So I did what I usually do when left alone: I cleaned. Emptying the loom benches, returning the contents to their proper places, making new places for homeless items, and putting most of the harnesses back on the 16 shaft Macomber took up a good three hours. The supply room is still a wreck, but it's looking better. Another couple of hours and it'll be a pleasant thing to encounter. 

The supply room before I arrived...

That kept my hands busy for a short time, but not my mind. People keep telling me it'll take time to adjust to the new space and new people, and I hope it comes quickly. Feeling uprooted and naked (lack of supplies, folks, not clothing) is really, really uncomfortable, especially when there is no fluffy cat to greet you at the end of the day. 


The effects of last year too are resonating in this place and I feel slightly anxious about digging into the project. Not that it'll stop me, but the fear is something that simply must be worked through. 


Regardless of emotional state, there IS a rug hooking guild meeting tonight, which should mean tea, cake, new things to learn and a greatly needed project to dig into. 

Get To Know It

Yesterday I was introduced to the BAC and the weaving and spinning (and rug hooking) guilds, shown around the studios, conference rooms, the shop and the solarium, introduced to many people and finally given a box of weaving books and sent on my way. 


The BAC is a beautiful place. That being said, it's always a little difficult to reconcile what you've read and imagined in your head with what's actually in front of you. The weaving studio is huge, and the dye kitchen similar in size to the one at the college (albeit without the felting table in the way), but I thought I'd be getting bigger looms... Most of the ones in the studio are 4-harness (for teaching classes and such), but the largest I saw was a 12-harness macomber. There are a couple of 8-harness jacks and an octado dobby too. 


All this means is I'll have to be okay with toning down the pattern development a little (and figure out how to make the physical labour of running a big macomber less intense). It won't matter too much for the final outcome. And as for the project itself, I've made a list of materials and have already ordered a few mordants for dyeing. I'm going to be doing a lot of experimental dyeing with the plants found in my new house's spectacular garden, and Ontario's ridiculous summer (seriously? I did NOT sign up for more summer) means the dyestuff stays fresh for longer. There were a few neato dye books in the box of things I was given, and with very little money I can put together a great dye book and DYE ALL OF THE YARNS FOR THIS PROJECT WITH THINGS FROM THE YARD! 


That'll be fun. 


Also, I mentioned in an earlier post, possibly the last one, that Burlington feels very familiar. It's gotten a little sinister since I started watching the Wire, but I know that's all in my head. I've noticed something strange though, and what I've noticed in the past couple of days is this: there is nobody my age in Burlington. Where are all the young, hip twenty-somethings? Nobody said there were any to begin with, but you'd expect there to be someone kicking around. Has everyone already emigrated to Toronto for the year? Is this really just a town of middle-aged couples and retirees with dogs? Maybe my future friends are all waiting for me at Ribfest. UGH.

Handwoven

Christina Garton from Handwoven mag is saying nice things about me: 


http://www.weavingtoday.com/blogs/weaving-today/archive/2011/08/31/behind-the-scenes-at-handwoven.aspx

And if you're near a newsstand, grab (purchase) a copy of handwoven because there's a little article about me in it. 

Burlington, day 2

After a shitstorm of packing and unpacking and moving boxes from upstairs to the car to my parents house to the sun porch to the attic and back down again and then into my suitcases and then back out, I said goodbye to my family and hopped on a plane. 


The plane landed in Hamilton and my amazing friend Allison greeted me with hugs and a mini banana loaf. We drove around Burlington, blah blah blah wild garden dream house thai food chatting, and I went to bed early. 


After one day of wandering, Burlington feels pretty comfortable already. It's still very much summer here but everything looks friendly and... well... a lot like Fredericton. Minus the friends, favourite tea shops, and 8 minute walk to the downtown area of course, but familiar just the same. It feels like I'm in some strange dream where the landmarks are the same but in new places. Old routines almost fit, but not quite. 


Maybe I expected a jarring culture shock, something to really be rocked by, and maybe it hasn't come yet. Or maybe I'm supposed to be confounded by how easy it is to pick up your life and transplant it into a new city. We'll see. It's only the end of the second day and tomorrow will bring my first trip to the BAC. 

Packrat

Landing an artist residency right after graduating is a pretty nice way to transition from student to working professional. And landing one that'll take up six months of your life is exciting for a lot of reasons. With that kind of time you can really spend the effort developing new routines and skills, getting to know the artists around you, and you can plan a massive project (or several).

That's what I imagine it'll be like. I'm going to be spending six months at an art centre in ON. In my head it'll be fabulous, but I have to move, and that's guaranteed to throw a big old rusty wrench into everything.

Moving sucks. It really, really does. By nature we hoard little bits of inspiration, art supplies, tools, whatever. Stuff. Our studios (I've yet to see a clutter-free studio) become an extension of our racing minds and then we end up with boxes of nearly-empty paint tubes, or teeny balls of yarn, or stacks of paper and feathers and other oddments. I've been in this city for four years, and this particular apartment for two. There's a lot of stuff in there.

It's not the sorting out of basic personal belongings like clothes and dishes, but it's denuding the studio that really bothers me. Taking everything is obviously out of the question. Taking nothing seems irresponsible.

Artist residencies are perfect, scary opportunities to start fresh and see what you can actually make. A wilderness survival test of sorts. I've been asking friends what they brought with them for their residencies, and the responses were mixed. One, doing a two week residency, brought her camera and watercolour set and some paper, another, doing her MFA in Chicago, brought nothing. Both learned a great deal about their creative processes and it transformed the way they worked.

When I stare at the supplies in the "to bring" pile, I have no idea if I'm on the right track or completely insane, and that "to bring" pile will probably go through innumerable iterations before the final cut has to be made. 

Man Down

One tremendous perk of my job (job #3- Canadian Crafts Federation) is being up to date on cultural happenings in our country. I gather all of this information and then distill it into a bi-weekly newsletter distributed to the provincial Crafts Councils and others. A pretty grim piece of news crossed my desk yesterday, and while I'm not usually one to rant online, this situation certainly merits some drama. 

A few days ago the Cultural Human Resources Council quietly had it's throat slit.

The CHRC supported cultural sector workers (you, me, the Executive Directors of the galleries and councils we are members of, our fellow board members, broadcasters, educators, entrepreneurs, and makers...) through training, career development and management, education, and advocacy. Their Youth Internship program paved the way for our entrance into arts organizations when we were students. Their studies helped us plan budgets and explore new markets. They developed material for teachers and businesspeople alike.

Now they are scrambling to put into place systems and people to safeguard their invaluable information and programs and help cultural workers access these resources after their end date, March 2013.

The organization who pulled the trigger on CHRC, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, has not publicly announced their actions, nor can any information about this be found on their website. 

Please send your support to the CHRC, and if you can help in any way, contact Sue Annis at sannis@culturalhrc.ca or by phone at 613-562-1535.

If you feel so inclined, please send your rage over to HRSDC (c/o. the Honourable Diane Finley), every stinking newspaper editorial column in the country, and Prime Minister Harper's inbox (pm@pm.gc.ca, or address real mail to the Office of the Prime Minister, 80 Wellington Street, Ottawa, On, K1A 0A2). Scream about this from the top of your roof, post the info on your facebook wall, and send loving vibes to your fellow cultural sector workers. And then tighten your belt, because the next four years will be lean times indeed.  

This Town is Small

My birthday recently passed and my heart is still full of happiness and somehow, little seeds of ambition are once again stirring. A parcel arrived in the mail today that I had completely forgotten about:

Yeah! My sketchbook for the 2012 Sketchbook project! That barcoded brown book is so full of promise. The more I look at it, the more excited I get about putting ink on paper and getting some of this junky pent-up lethargy out to make room for good, creative, happy maker vibes. 

And speaking of good vibes, I spent some time today reading up on the PEI artist collective, This Town is Small. They're a group of dynamic people dedicated to starting up an artist run centre on the island and creating a support network for artists, musicians, thinkers, and the like. The image below is just one of the many neat things they think about, and it made me realize how much I need to reconnect with my community.