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    Rainy drive home from Country Hills.

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cropped wee mummer hat

Getting back to business.

May 16, 2013

Last night I was complaining to my brother about how I only get 17.5 hours at work and rarely get extra hours to fatten my paycheque. As someone who works 50+ hours a week, my brother replied, “Doesn’t that just give you more time to work on your craft?” and fuck me if he isn’t right. I have the best job for doing art stuff on the side – I only work 17.5 hours a week and get paid a decent wage which means I should have the free time and financial support to have a super active studio practice. Unfortunately, art stuff usually goes neglected as I get caught up in life things (money-making things). Oh, Alberta, sometimes you can really trick a person into thinking money is where the heart is.

So, I feel like I need to become more engaged in my work. Stop worrying about having a “reason” to make art and just start making. I shouldn’t need an exhibition or deadline to prompt me into being productive. How can I have exhibitions if I don’t have any work to show? And I know this is the dilema of every working artist so I should really quit feeling sorry for myself in thinking that this is my problem alone.

The buck stops here!

With that, here are some snapshots of something I’m working on: a wee mummer soft sculpture knit in Jamieson’s Shetland Spindrift that will be about 24″ in height.

mummer drawing

Way back in my art college days I went through a creature-making-phase, a precursor to all the wearables and sculptures I make now. I’ve always been an object-based, tactile person. There is something really satisfying about creating something that exists in space on it’s own – a feeling I never really got from drawing and always have a hard time feeling when I look at wall-based 2-d work.

Ever since I started working with mummer imagery, I’ve been wanting to make my large sculptures at a much smaller scale. I love the challenge of trying to knit something from a loose sketch, visualizing the math involved and seeing things come together through my hands in the exact way I imagine them in my head. I knit like I drive: thinking twelve steps ahead while anticipating the possibility of hiccups along the way. There can be a great confidence that comes from working in this manner, a certainty that allows for sustained motivation. Though, I’d be lying if I said this way of working doesn’t play tricks with my patience.

I am hoping that these little sculptures will be moveable to a point. I will be creating a skeleton frame that will give it more structure rather than just creating a stuffed toy. With any luck I will be able to figure out how to make this thing stand and then I can start making more. A little mummer army that is way more realistic to accomplish at this scale than it is to create life-size right now. Who knows – maybe this is will be just the base I need to apply for grants to make them as big as I want.

Oh, to dream!

Here are some detail shots of the knitting in progress.

wee mummer start

wip wee mummer detail

wip wee mummer detail

wip wee mummer detail

I am currently knitting with a gauge of about 7 stitches to the inch on 3.00mm needles. The yarn I’m using is some older stash I received from a friend who had the intention to knit a fair isle sweater but never really got around to casting on. Jamieson’s Shetland Spindrift is a dreamy 100% wool yarn that is a loosely spun two-ply. The colours are full of depth, something you rarely get from most commercial yarns. It’s the perfect gauge for this project because it will allow me to know with a great amount of detail, especially when I start knitting the arms, legs and ruffled trim at the bottom of the figure. I’m pretty stoked!

My only wish is that I knew a supplier for the stuff in the city because I’d love to get some more colours – like pinks and brighter greens.

jamieson's shetland spindrift

jamieson's spindrift

Anyway, seeing as I have the entire day to myself before I have to head to the far northwest of the city for work, I’m going to spend my time knitting some more while listening to some tunes.

TNG JSH

We saw it. We felt it. We crave it.

May 13, 2013

Post-Wreck City life has been, for the most part, emotionally and creatively up lifting. It is because of Wreck City that I am now a part of vibrant and critically engaged community of Calgary visual artists, a feeling of community I personally haven’t felt since finishing grad school two years ago. This crazy arts event has proven to me that the visual artists and curators of Calgary are varied and many, and like the public, we are all hungry for more. And I’m not just talking about exhibitions and performances and residencies and studios – we are hungry for the community engagement that supports creative practice because we know it exists here. We saw it. We felt it.

Along with forty members of the arts and culture sector, I spent an afternoon last week at an open house meeting with the folks from Calgary Arts Development (CADA) discussing arts space in the city. While a lot of the statistics and city-planning jargon kind of threw me for a loop, what I did get from this two-hour meeting was the overwhelming desire to make arts and culture a key factor in the way we live, grow and operate within our city. For all the complaining myself and colleagues have done about lack of affordable studio and gallery space and definite lack of funding, knowing that there is an entire department within the city that is actively thinking and attempting to problem solve these issues is a great validation of our concerns. Being able to be a part of the discussion, however minor, is vital for community building. To be invited to this discussion definitely made me feel less isolated as an individual artist struggling to work in Calgary. I only hope that more of these open house, round table types of events happen in the future so more artists can connect not only with each other but with arts organizations and administrators in the city. It is not enough to bitch about the current state of affairs, or to wish that there was more of a cohesive communication between all the micro-communities within the greater arts and culture culture umbrella – we have to make this shit happen.

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I keep thinking about community building and how important it is to the quality of life for artists and non-artists alike. We can’t work in a vacuum, which is what my tiny excuse for a studio often feels like. We need people around to challenge, surprise, inspire and support us. And when you don’t have a shared studio space or an academic environment to facilitate this kind of mutual creative inquiry, it is far too easy to slip into a void. And that is the main driving force behind my creation of the JHS Craft Night – a biweekly informal drop-in craft night at TNG John Snow House with the primary aim to connect old friends with new ones over the act of making/doing.

We had our first meet on May 7 and had just over twenty people in attendance, each with a specific creative project in the works. Everything from baby blankets to collage to small scale sculptures to improvisational embroidery. It was an amazing night fuelled by handwork, beer and lots of lively conversation. It was equal parts stitch-n-bitch, studio discourse and social meet & greet. It was unpretentious and inclusive to artists, crafters, writers, hobbyists and coders alike. Clearly, there is a need for this kind of community event in Calgary, we are starved for it, and I can only hope that others feel the same way I do. And if the first night is any indication, I know I’m not the only one thinking this way.

If you are interested in being a part of the JSH Craft Night, take a gander over at our Facebook page. The next meet up will be May 21.

WRECK CITY remnants.

April 30, 2013

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With the pillow top weavings cut from their architectural frames, I am left with calloused hands and a happy heart. WRECK CITY has been amazing. Over ten days there were 10,000 visitors to our little block of houses and I had the opportunity to share stories with so many people as I continued to weave throughout the duration of the project. Despite worn nerves and lack of sleep, we got through it and left that lovely block in Sunnyside with just a few more stories to add to it’s already 100 year old history.

Now it’s time to digest the whole experience. I’ve been spending the last few days in front of the television, napping and not thinking too intensely. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by a project of this magnitude, especially when so many other things have fallen to the wayside because of it. This week I’m focusing on non-art things like cleaning out my closets and vacuuming the car, bringing six months of recyclables to the depot, and taking baths whenever I can. The next projects will come soon enough.

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Encased in pink.

April 10, 2013

So far this month has been all about time management around the weather. No matter where you are in Canada, April tends to be such a fickle month as spring tries to shake the hold of winter. I’ve been working outside on The Lady House for the past ten days, managing my efforts between snow storms and freezing rain. Unfortunately, all the time I’ve spent outside in less than ideal circumstances has given me a wee bit of a head cold. Which is part of the reason I’m not at work this morning, choosing to sleep in and write a blog post instead.

I am incredibly grateful to have my job at the library during times like this because of the flexibility it affords my art practice. During my off-program weeks, I can really tailor my work schedule to best support all the other things in my life, like exhibitions or teaching or settling in on a big art project. Today, for instance, I had originally intended to go into work for a few hours but after checking the weather report for the next few days, it looks like this is the best day to work at The Lady House since it’s supposed to rain and snow all weekend. And as much as I hate working on the weekend, I’m going to make an exception this week just so I can accommodate everything else.

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Anyhow, my weaving project on the house is coming along. I was telling Jennifer, the curator for We’re Hysterical at WRECK CITY, that I’ve been treating the house and the project as a whole like it’s my studio. I went into the space not really knowing what I was doing to do and truth be told, I’m still flying by the seat of my pants. It’s really invigorating to approach a large scale project in this manner, especially since I’m the type of artist that has to plan and plan and plan in order to get all my labour intensive projects done. I find myself standing on the sidewalk a lot, looking at the house the same way I’d look at a hooked mat I’m working on, thinking about composition and colour and pattern. It’s not so much a house anymore but a surface to work on.

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Which is why I’ve started another pillow top weaving on the main picture window of the house, to create a symmetry with the porch weaving. It’s been a little tricky getting the weaving done on the window because of it’s height from the ground. I’ve been precariously standing on a 4-foot ladder above a mound of leaves, stretching to and fro. When I initially placed the nails on the window frame, I mistakenly added two extra nails which threw the entire weaving off but I didn’t notice until I had a few layers of yarn already laid. I had to cut the whole thing off yesterday and start again, which is why the above weaving is a little on the crooked side.

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The difficult part of this weaving will be tying all the crosses in preparation for cutting the pompoms because I have absolutely no access to the back of the weaving (it’s set against the window pane). If I drop the shuttle, I’m going to have to inch worm it back up the weaving, poking my fingers through the open spaces. I’m not really looking forward to this process but whatever. It will be worth it!

After this weaving is complete, I’ll be thinking about what to do in the little window of the attic. I want to have the entire front of the house encased in pink but I don’t want to do another pillow top weaving in that window. Maybe some crochet and a bright pink net cascading the roof? Hmmmm….

WRECK CITY YYC – The installation starts!

April 4, 2013

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With the beautiful weather we had yesterday (+19ºC), I packed up my bike and made my way to our little lady house in Sunnyside to start the installation of my massive pillow top frames. With hammer, nails and bright pink yarn, I started working on the front porch using the natural frame of the railing to create a huge pillow top frame. Thank goodness it was warm out because all that hammering would have been crazy annoying to do in the cold weather we had today.

Here are some shots of the work in progress. It’s definitely trial by error at this point but I think this is going to work!

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The weather turned completely today but that didn’t stop me from heading over to the house to continue what I initially started the day before. I made sure to wear two pairs of leggings, my winter boots, two jackets with hoods and my trusty merino-possum gloves to make sure I was toasty enough to do the labour-intensive work while it snowed and snowed and snowed outside. I worked until my hands got too cold to tie anymore knots – I kept snapping the cotton twine when I tried to pull things tight and that’s a sure sign that I’m done for the day.

I’ll be heading back after work tomorrow to continue the work. I’m hoping to have this initial pillow top weaving tied and cut by tomorrow evening so I can start working on another one that’s much more dense that will eventually stay mounted on the porch during the entirety of the WRECK CITY YYC exhibition, like a flag for our wee little lady house :)

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And if you haven’t checked out the WRECK CITY website, GO THERE NOW! Things are being posted all the time and it gives excellent insight to the other houses and what the participating artists are working on. It’s pretty neat :)

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