I am beyond proud that my poem and artwork, both entitled Finding the Words, have been published in the Spring 2024 literary magazine, one in which the pleasures of being subscribed to has been edifying. For my work to be included among so many esteemed writers and poets has been more than I thought possible and I thank the editors for thinking that my work was worthy of inclusion.
Finding the Words was conceived while doing the John Willard residency at the Art Gallery of Burlington, Ontario, Canada 2018-2019, possible because of the support of James Hart. From this experience I produced a body of work called Worn Worlds, a unique exhibition in that it did not only feature my work, but also invited the community to participate in its presentation. You can read more about it on my website HERE. The parameters of the residency required I employ recycled textiles and garments, and from these creations and garments, poems, essays and prose emerged. The ideas that bubbled up for this work was in turn ignited by a friend, Pennina Barnett, who I had visited in London, UK about a year earlier. She had directed me to a few texts that focused on the effects of cloth and textiles on our lives which I found not only immensely inspiring but moving.
The various roles society demands that women assume create fragmentation and division of self. In women’s roles as mother, sister, aunt, daughter, friend, professional, employee, employer, it often seems that too many people want pieces of you, demand more of you than you can give. All this creates a disconnect with the self and threatens well-being and wholeness, hence the reason my self portrait is fragmented, barely discernable below the text printed and embroidered on it.
Each art work created is an entry point into myself, uncovering me and making me visible to others. This is especially true of Finding the Words, where my full-length portrait is curtained by the text and painting, nebulous and numinous. My silent voice makes itself heard.
Text plays a more prominent role in my life, at times appearing to eclipse the visual art I am creating. The textile collage mirrors how words and images shape my thinking process. Slowly they emerge to form strands of words that are then stitched into a cohesive whole. My artistic process parallels my awkward, tedious and meticulous writing journey. Each word is carefully examined for flaws and tested for its quality and authenticity.
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| Threadbare, printed and embroidered canvas, used silk dolls dress. |
Our personal narratives are pieced together by fragments of our past including the textiles that have accompanied us along the journey, imbuing them with memory and feelings. Embedded in cloth are our stories, our histories, our identities and our cultures. Cloth arouses thoughts of warmth, comfort, protection and intimacy but also paradoxically, confinement, containment, fragility, and impermanence. So much of women’s labour is invisible, impermanent and unseen. Domestic work is consumed, disintegrates, dissolves, disappears, is forgotten, is invisible...so many of these hours regarded as insignificant and inconsequential.
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| Branded. 51cm x 47cm. cotton canvas, garment and domestic textile tags. machine stitched, embroidered. 2019 |
Textiles are witnesses and recorders of our daily lives. Our skin, the food we eat and other particles become imbedded within the intersections of the threads. They absorb scents from our immediate environment and those that emanate from our bodies. Our fingers recall their feel, surfaces, textures, and materiality. The sensors in our fingers like threads dressed on the loom of our mind, unspool our feelings and our re-memorying of a person or events.
