June 2024

In this newsletter you’ll find:

• Studio Views

• Lace blog series

• Things to Read & Watch & Make

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Studio Views

What have I been up to?

I helped my friend Green Edna Basketry at the London Studio Arts Tour; I made a basket from garden waste.

I have been picking flowers for natural dyeing: dyer’s camomile (from my garden) and dandelions from the park.

I was on strike at work and sewed a banner for the picket line. I also visited the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre here in Hamilton — they have an excellent online exhibition about labour banners titled All Together Now, as well as a community-made banners exhibition called Stronger Together, on until July 27th. The above banner (right) was made by Tania Denyer.

I saw this handwoven coverlet at the thrift store for $20! It was made out of acrylic and it weighed a thousand (exaggerated) pounds. I did not bring it home, but left it for another treasure hunter.

This summer I am spending time doing some much needed sampling!

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Indigenous Fashion Arts Festival

I went to this year’s Indigenous Fashion Arts Festival from May 31-June 3. It’s not to be missed - they host panels, fashion shows, a marketplace, and workshops. In 2018, I was fortunate to take a workshop with Navajo weavers Lynda Teller Pete and Barbara Teller Ornelas, at the very first IFA Festival (then known as Indigenous Fashion Week Toronto). Learning from the sisters was a formative experience and I’ve been following the festival ever since.

This year the marketplace, shows and events were centred around the Eaton’s Centre, a giant mall/shopping centre in the heart of Toronto’s downtown. A mall is not the type of place I generally visit on a Saturday afternoon, but it was an excellent venue to showcase the incredible work of participating Indigenous artists and craftspeople from across the continent. 

Hosting the runways and marketplace in the mall highlighted the contrast between craft practices and the mass consumption promoted and perpetuated by mall brands, many of which are deeply complicit in the climate emergency, let alone colonialism, cultural appropriation and the creation of textile waste. The more I thought about the location, the better I liked it as an intervention into the business-as-usual consumption that usually takes place there.

I always deeply appreciate when hand-centered crafts can intervene and disrupt the dominance of mass-produced objects. People make things — I believe it’s a deeply important and ingrained part of humanity, but it’s easy to lose sight of this in all the ways our contemporary world asks and demands our attention, let alone how our hands have been reduced to clicking, swiping and pushing buttons.

Craft work is not a hobby — and for many people, it’s a critical connection to culture, history and community. Catching the smoky tang of moose hide and seeing all the glittering beads, quills, and more in the mall was a deep pleasure (if also personally a bit overstimulating-!). 

I bought the above porcupine quill and bead brooch from Theresa Burning; I look forward to wearing it! My suggestion is to sign up for their newsletter so you don’t miss the next festival. Read Vogue’s coverage here!

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Lace Weaving

This spring I’ve returned to the Gist Yarn blog with a series of articles about loom-controlled lace weaving. The first was on Canvas weave, the second Bronson and Swedish lace, and the third is on Huck and Spot Bronson.

Like all of the articles about weaving structures I’ve written for Gist, these just scratch the surface of what each structure is and what it can do; it’s a 101 lesson, not advanced! That being said, I enjoyed writing them all, sampling the laces, and digging through my weaving books for more information.

Read:
Part One: Canvas Weave
Part Two: Bronson Lace and Swedish Lace
Part Three: Huck & Spot Bronson

Samples all lined up in a tidy row

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Things to Read & Watch & Make

• I attended a wonderful designer’s talk with Hiroyuki Horihata and Makiko Sekiguchi of Japanese fashion company Matohu. They shared their vision and approach to fashion (a word they had a unique definition and approach to), especially through the lens of locality and environment.
  
  “matohu (まとふ pronounced ma-tou) has two meanings. One is the Japanese word matou, which refers to clothes softly draping or wrapping the body.
  The other is matou, the volitional form of the Japanese verb for wait (matsu) with the meaning of “let’s wait.” Instead of consuming and discarding things, matohu calls on people to wait until their own sense of aesthetics has matured.
  
  With the concept of creating new clothes that sustain the Japanese sense of aesthetics, matohu offers designs born from the history, culture, and terroir of Japan in original styles authentic to the Japanese experience.” (link)
  
  They especially value and promote traditional craft practices and I really enjoyed hearing about their pivot from fashion shows to short films about people and craft, which you can see on their Youtube channel here.

• I read My Grandma’s Doilies Are Not a Joke by Elena Kanagy-Loux. As she asks in the article, “As a lacemaker who is frequently perceived as a youthful anomaly, I wonder: How many gray hairs am I allotted before my work begins to be perceived as the natural extension of my age and gender, rather than as a meaningful creative pursuit?”

• More reading: Why textiles are all the rage in the art world right now, by Sebastian Smee. I was particularly pleased to see Igshaan Adams mentioned in this article; I only recently learned of his work through the most recent issue of Crafts Magazine and it’s incredible! I particularly love the cloud-like sculptures he makes of wire, thread and beads; you can see a short video and images of these clouds, his weaving, and more here.

• I listened to the recent episode of Material Matters with Ptolemy Mann on colour, weaving, and painting. It was a great discussion about her work, her love and use of colour, and the recent shift in her practice to painting on her weaving. As she notes in the episode, there is no painting without fabric (canvas), so perhaps the disciplines aren’t so removed as we may think.

• Gather Textiles in Edmonton, AB has released a free pattern to celebrate Pride this month. The Pride Tea Towels pattern is available here; Gather has all you need to make them, as well as lots of other great patterns. If you’re eager to weave lace after reading my articles, Gather has the Shadow Huck Towels pattern by pal Megan Samms for sale on their website.

A final notes: I’ve turned off Instagram for the summer - so please reach me here if you’d like to share anything, otherwise I won’t see it!

Amanda