February 2024

Two favourite things: learning and sticks

In this newsletter you’ll find…

• Studio Views

• Textile Explorations - a new class I am offering

• Gathering Place, Brighton Park, Waterloo

• Things to watch and see

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Studio Views

In between my last newsletter and now, I have been full of work for upcoming projects, and I spoke at the Etobicoke Handweavers and Spinners Guild about Generation via Zoom.

These tea textiles went with my friend Secret Tea Time to the Toronto Tea Festival at the end of January to find new homes. I’m looking forward to sharing more about another little project Helen and I are working on in March’s newsletter, which you can see a bit of on the right below…

The sun reappears! / Some work in progress

Having fun scribbling - see more below…

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Textile Explorations

I’m teaching a course at the Art Gallery of Ontario this spring! I’ve been an educator there for over a decade, leading tours and programs for children, youth, and adults, but this is my first time teaching in the gallery school.

I’m offering a 5-week course called Textile Explorations:

Explore Making her Mark: A History of Women Artists in Europe 1400-1800 through a slow and mindful stitching experience. Using basic embroidery techniques, participants will create an abstract textile work over five weeks, developing their own visual language through gestural mark making while exploring themes of symbolism, connection, and sustainability in the exhibition.

This is a bit different than my usual work (there’s no weaving!) but it’s going to be a fun and creative opportunity to slow down and think through textiles in a new way. The class will incorporate ideas of mindfulness, slow stitching/making, and use both drawing, gesture and basic embroidery to create an artwork inspired by the exhibition Making her Mark, which opens at the end of March. There is no need to have previous embroidery experience to take this course, and a full materials list will be available next month.

In my decade of experience at the AGO, I have spent a lot of time talking about art in the galleries but not as much time making it, so I’m excited to bring the two together in this course. Each week we’ll be visiting the exhibition and looking at the paintings, sculptures, textile work and other visual art through several different historic and modern lenses, making connections and bringing the history to life. Then we’ll translate our observations into marks and those marks into stitch — it’s going to be very fun and I’m looking forward to seeing what people create. I’ve always wanted to develop a textile-based tour of the permanent collection, so this course is going to be my excuse and stepping stone to making it a reality.

If you’re interested in taking this class, there are three sessions happening this spring:

• Saturdays, March 23 - April 27, 10:30am -1:30pm

• Fridays, April 25 - May 23, 2:30 - 5:30pm

• Saturdays, May 4 - June 8, 10:30am - 1:30pm

To learn more or sign up, please visit the AGO’s website at the link here. (I will note that there seems to be a tech error for the first session and there is no ability to sign up at the moment - if that’s the one you can do, please use the phone number on the page to get in touch with the Contact Centre and they’ll sort you out).

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Gathering Place

At the beginning of February I attended the opening ceremony for my friend Agnes Niewiadomski’s public artwork Gathering Place. Situated in Brighton Park in Waterloo, Ontario, this piece uses natural foraged sticks, branches, and other materials to create an open basket-like shape around public chess boards in the park.

Located at 139 Brighton St, Waterloo (in case you’d like to visit), Agnes’s piece came together over a few weeks with the help of community volunteers. I was struck by the contrast the organic shape of her weaving created tucked between the sort of bland new-build homes and cookie-cutter big-box stores. It’s made with ditch willow, dogwood, and other foraged materials; some come from the ditch right next to the park itself. For me, seeing the community come together to celebrate this living, changing piece of public art made from sticks was really encouraging.

You can listen to Agnes herself speak about the project on Facebook here.

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Things to Watch and See

Some things that I have done or have come across lately…

• London Drawing Group: I did a lovely class with Jo Blaker and the London Drawing Group recently (see images above!). Drawing isn’t really part of my practice, but I went to art school (so I did lots of it in my first year, at least) and I’ve always admired it very much. So I signed up for Jo’s Scribble Landscapes class on Zoom and had a great time. LDG always has a handful of workshops on the go and offers a flexible pay-what-you-can model to make sure art is accessible for all. You can see their class offerings here.

• Sustainable Fibre Arts Conference, Newfoundland and Labrador: Registration is open for this conference, taking place September 19-23, 2024 in Gros Morne, Newfoundland. There are some wonderful speakers and workshops, including my friend Megan Samms on the Wool Processing and Appreciation in Our Shared Future panel on the Thursday, and too many good workshops, like foraged plant weaving, papermaking, and tanning.

• I loved this episode of Zero Waste Life on the NHK’s Youtube channel*. The whole Zero Waste Life series is a favourite of mine, especially if you, like me, enjoy the interiors and gardens of old Japanese homes… *I will note that this episode includes imagery of a boar being skinned, which does not trouble this vegetarian, but may not be for you.

• I haven’t yet watched this short Guardian documentary (available free on Youtube), but I really want to!! Rowdy Flock: A daughter, her dreams, and a sheep flock in Norway.

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March is coming up quickly - I am looking forward to my friends Sandy and Miriam visiting and plenty of other small things that I should be working on instead of this newsletter!

amanda