Gallery Vertigo Call For Entry

Open Call Fibre Exhibit "X's and O's"

Gallery Vertigo is inviting fibre artists to submit to a scheduled exhibit entitled X’s and O’s. Have you played this childhood game? What about “X marks the spot”? Do you sign letters with kisses and hugs (XO XO XO)? Old treasure maps often had an X marking the spot of the treasure. Those unable to read and/or write often signed with an “X”. Perhaps your thoughts of X’s and O’s relate to yin and yang, crosses and losses. How would you portray X’s and O’s? We are challenging fibre artists to interpret the theme of X’s and O’s in whichever direction your creative muse takes you.

Dec. 15, 2020 Online submission of entry opens

 Feb.1, 2021  Entry deadline at 3:00 pm PST 

All registrations must be in by this date

For details visit this link. The submission form can be found here.

Colour with a U Too Update & Artist Features

Both of these wonderful regional exhibits are continuing their journeys across Canada over the next two years. Artists Michele Craigen and Rosalind Sims have their work in Colour with a U Too now on display at the Signal Hill Arts Centre in Weyburn Saskatchewan until October 31st.

Michele writes about her piece:

How did Through My Eyes  develop? It’s based on views from the car while on the road travelling from southeast Saskatchewan where it’s quite flat to areas where it’s more rolling hills. 

One day in my studio I needed something to do so I gathered fabric, commercial and hand-dyed. I got so far with it and got stuck, so I put it away.The Colour With a U exhibit call was a perfect theme to go back and try to finish. I went back to my photos for inspiration. Techniques used were machine and hand stitching, and free motion quilting. The dead trees were created with free motion on dissolvable Solvey and tacked in place.

Through My Eyes - Michele Craigen

Rosalind Sims writes about her piece:

This winter scene with a silhouetted Polar Bear & the bright Colours of the Aurora Borealis speaks of ‘Colour with a ‘U” in Canada’s skies. After living in the Northwest Territories for 20 years I am still infatuated with Northern Lights!  Can’t you just imagine a polar bear standing in awe of such beauty?
Materials:  Carded merino mix sheep wool, fine merino sheep roving; wool cloth;
wool/polyester cloth; cotton threads and beads.
Techniques:  Wet felting;  needle felting; applique; thread painting; raw edge stitching, free motion quilting with a variety of stiches to give texture; beading and finished with a facing to add structure.

Oh, What a Night - Rosalind Sims
More artist features from Colour with a U & Colour with a U Too are forthcoming. Please contact the blog editor if you have SAQA Western Canada news to share!

The Making of Surging Tides of Consequences

Clare Attwell lives in Victoria British Columbia and shares with us the process behind her piece Surging Tides of Consequences that is on display in the Shifting Tides Regional Exhibit. Shifting Tides is showing at the Pratt Museum in Kachemak Bay Alaska from October 9 to November 28, 2020.

To view the Shifting Tides catalogue online click here.

Here is Clare's artist statement:

Milton Freidman famously used the manufacture of a classic yellow pencil as an illustration for free market economics. Yet Friedman's pencil metaphor  meant many important but difficult to measure variables were not considered. The social and environmental consequences of this approach are now everywhere, from climate chaos to mass human migration and species extinctions. As though we are facing The Great Wave Off Kanagawa. Hokusai's iconic wood cut print, there is a growing sense that life on earth is on an ominous precipice, driven by a system incapable of valuing what really matters.

The result of playing with a wheat paste texturing process – initially I was just interested in creating texture, water – and then added some salmon drawing studies.

Creating & assembling the parts.

-    I got a box of yellow pencils, broke them into pieces and then photographed them, before printing those photos onto cloth.  I then overpainted those photo images.

 

A design mock-up with several overlays stuck onto transparency sheets

Designing my over-quilting pattern: the inspiration came from The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai (1829-33).

Loaded onto my longarm for the over-stitching (quilting).

Surging Tides of Consequences Detail - Clare Attwell