The Oakville Beaver, May 18, 2005
By Craig MacBride, Oakville Beaver Staff
Womanhood is Common Thread at World of Threads juried art show
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The Oakville Beaver, May 18, 2005
By Craig MacBride, Oakville Beaver Staff
Womanhood is Common Thread at World of Threads juried art show
WORLD OF THREADS: Ward 5 Councillor Marc Grant looks at Mother and Daughter by Kristen J. Boehm, of Montreal on display at the Sheridan College Institute of technology and Advanced Learning.
Fibre arts festival attracts artists from across Canada. The World of Threads Festival kicked off last week with a large juried exhibition – Common Thread - at the Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning. Nearly all regions of Canada were represented at the show, and that small representation illustrated that the fibre arts are more than just quilts, rugs and baby booties.
Many of the artists were concerned with what it means to be a woman. A nearly exclusively female slate of artists make up the exhibition, and the theme was explored in many ways. In Mitochondrial Eve II and Matron with Former Self, Kingston's Pamela Allen celebrates womanhood in her colourful fabric collages. Matron is a cubist woman in white gloves and red shoes who "celebrates her ripe maturity while still carrying the meaning of her former sylphlike self." Mitochondrian (sic) Eve II, in a similar vein, "is a tribute to the African matriarch of all of us," the person from whom all mankind descended.
Martina Edmondson's Manuscript series, which are woven cheesecloth sculptures of a woman's torso with indecipherable words written across. The female torso, the artist's statement says, "is a metaphor for a book, where both have a spine and are containers." With Pink Baby, Embryo I and Embryo II, Li Chai of Toronto was also dealing with containers.Three of Chai's pieces were hanging from the ceiling in the Sheridan ITAL Gallery.
The strapless double-woven dresses were sheaths to fit over a woman, holding in womanhood."They contain a pain and productivity associated with women's lives and embody the conflict women feel between career and childrearing," her artist's statement read.
Childrearing was visited again in a more direct way with Kirsten Boehm's Mother and Daughter. That piece was the most striking in the show, as well as the largest. It was made up of two large hanging squares of red fabric, facing one another, with a transparent portrait on each piece, one of the artist, and the other of her mother. The two large panels are connected by red yarn at the bottom of the piece. It was that piece, Mother and Daughter, that ended up winning the best in show award and the $1000 that went along with it.
Best tradition went to Li Chai for her hanging dresses, and Karen Thiessen went home with the prize for best contemporary piece in the show.
The Common Thread exhibition at Sheridan, 1430 Trafalgar Rd., continues until May 29. The World of Threads Festival, which is hosted by the Oakville Arts Council and Oakville's Fibre Guilds, also continues in several other venues throughout town.
Illuminated Threads, Vol.2, is at The Silver Thimble Needlepoint, 64 Rebecca St. until May 28. Guilded Threads is at the Oakville Municipal Building, 1225 Trafalgar Rd. until Thursday, Remnants of History: Quilts from the Oakville Museum Collection will be at Oakville Museum, 8 Navy St., until May 29. New Work by Lorraine Roy will be on display until May 26 at Ristorante Julia, 312 Lakeshore Rd. E. Traveling Threads continues until May 21 at Abbozzo Gallery, 179 Lakeshore Rd. E., and Fibre Warriors is up until May 29 at Cicada Gallery, 344 Kerr St.