Today Cathie Ugrin is sharing how her piece The Dancer came to be. Enjoy!
The Dancer was made as part of a dual Fibre Art/ Photography exhibit entitled ‘VIEWPOINTS: a unique photo-fabric journey’ featuring photographer Dmitry Kirshner and myself. The idea was that the exhibit would feature artwork created by the two of us as we played off of each other’s work. In context of The Dancer, Dmitry took an incredible photograph of a beguiling tree in winter which he called Dancer and I created my piece based on this.
I blew up a
photocopied image of Dancer to its actual size of 36” x 24” and traced over all
the lines with a fine sharpie to ‘get the image’ in my hands. Through the hours
of this meditative work, the plan for the finished piece became clear to me.
I would use
Sulky Solvy Water-Soluble Stabilizer as tracing paper and recreate the
background on fibre exactly as it appears on Dmitry’s photograph. This would be
the element that most accurately connected the photograph and fibre art piece.
From there I trapuntoed, topstitched and appliqued the fabric tree – this element still resembles Dmitry’s tree in the photograph.
Then came
the delicate winter-bare branches which always reminded me of a tutu as I was
doing my tracing. So much so, I decided to completely break away from the
photograph and actually make them into a tutu lending a fantastical element to my
fibre art piece. Sewing directly onto the Water-Soluble Stabilizer, I created
this filmy, delicate, dark mesh of thread using four different colours and two
different types of thread. After immersing the whole thing in water, I was left
with just the graceful lace-like thread piece that I then appliqued on to the
tree.
Of all the artwork I created for our exhibit VIEWPOINTS, The Dancer was always my favourite. I learned so much as far as technique, inspiration and generally moving outside of my comfort zone. Through the crazy time-consuming process of tracing the photograph, I had an inspired idea, say an image in my head and recreated it into a piece of art I am so proud of. Dmitry and I are very good friends and it was such an honour and a delight to work together with him. Entering The Dancer and being accepted into SAQA Colour with a U Too was the perfect ending to this story.
In the dead of a Manitoban winter, the ground is
covered in a frosty blanket of snow. A tree stands alone … and comes
alive. The frost falls away as her limbs
arch gracefully. Dead twigs and branches stitch together to create the illusion
of a delicate skirt effortlessly floating. Hovering with the movement imagined,
we gaze onto Mother Nature’s Dancer. Resilience, unity, creativity and strength
are the unique qualities required to live in one of Canada’s Northern climate
cities. We understand and embrace our abounding and unabashed love of what some
may call the Canadian Spirit.
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