Within Every Fibre

You Always Remember your First

Over the last few months I have been using what little spare time I have to work towards a collection I've entitled "Within Every Fibre".

This series began with a commission I received to create a commemorative piece for the 251st Hants County Exhibition. 

This was a great honour for me as I've become very attached to my adoptive home and consider myself an ambassador for the Avon River Valley.  

As I created this piece, inspired by my favourite part of the exhibition, the carnival, I couldn't get the image of my grandmother out of my head. 

The organizers had naturally requested that I include giant pumpkins in the composition, and for some reason I was really struggling with the thought of including them. I just couldn't picture them within the landscape I was developing in my mind.

As I tried to push past the pumpkins and focus on all of the other elements, the same vision kept coming back to me over and over again, distracting me from my work.  

After I was about 20 hours into my ambitious exhibition piece I decided to take a break and finally felt that portrait of my grandmother, who was haunting my brain. 


Clear as day I can still picture her posing on top of Willy Neily's giant pumpkin, which was bound for one of the very first pumpkin regattas. Dad made Grammy get rid of her cigarette, which at the time upset me because Jean always had a smoke in her hand. I debated putting it back into my felted piece, it would be the truth after all... but I decided that I'd rather not be distracted by her ciggy, as she was much more than her addiction.

When I decided to create this collection to display at the Flying Apron Inn & Cookery this summer, I initially knew it was going to be centred around the landscape of the Avon River valley. 

What I didn't expect was to find that that the work would also be about reflection; the perfect reflection that appears when the Avon River is ever so briefly calm during the turning of the tides; and the reflections that have arisen in my mind as I worked away recreating the local scenery I admire most, embracing the memories they bring to the surface.  

As a child I spent the majority of my summers in Nictaux Falls with my grandparents, exploring the woods, rivers and shores (and our beloved Frenchy's of course). My parents didn't have a car, so this meant a 4 hour bus ride to the "Heart of the Valley" along the long and winding highway #1.

There were a number of landmarks along the way that served as milestones for my lengthy journey. Always a relief to see was the giant orange orb way up in the sky - the signage for the Gulf gas station in Coldbrook. This meant that there was only an hour or so left to go until we reached Middleton! Just one more cassette tape to listen to - I needed to make sure it was a peppy one (usually Talking Heads "Little Creatures").


The first landmark I always anticipated seeing along that drive would be the gypsum cliffs in Saint Croix. Little did I know that one day I would discover that the edge of these cliffs actually begin in the woods just behind my house, practically in my own back yard!

Inner Reflection

Since moving to Ellershouse I have been drawn into an amazing community of creative people thanks to my involvement with the Hants County Arts Council and the Avon River Heritage Society. My position managing the museum in Avondale has led me to develop a great fondness for the Avon River and its interesting past involving the Mi'kmaq, Acadians and New England Planters. It's amazing to think that for a brief period of time ships ruled this area and the wooden ship building industry generated a great deal of wealth for certain members of the community. One day I hope to get my hands on one of these properties!


Lately I find much of my work being inspired by the shoreline that leads to the Bay of Fundy. Thanks to my job I have the luxury of watching the tides of the Avon River role in almost every day. The fact that I get to spend each and every Wednesday and Thursday afternoon taking part in Open Studio at the museum is a blessing, and just might have a little to do with my current infatuation with muddy water. I love being able to create while literally being surrounded by this phenomenal river - purely magical!

 

The Avon River Heritage Museum at High Tide. 17 Belmont Road, Newport Landing/Avondale, Hants County, Nova Scotia

This summer I will have "Within Every Fibre" on display at the Flying Apron Inn and Cookery in Summerville, throughout July and August. My intention is to add a new piece to the collection each week. 
  
Every Wednesday and Thursday afternoon, through to October, I will be creating on location at the museum in Avondale, continuing to work on new pieces for this collection, with a final showing on Tuesday, October 11th at Nova Scoitia Fibre Art's Festival in Ahmerst.

  
Please be sure to follow my progress on Facebook for updates on the next piece to arrive at the Flying Apron.

The Flying Apron Inn & Cookery, Summerville, Hwy 215, at Block Wharf Road

First Day of Spring in S'Nova Scotia

Today is the first day of spring, although you wouldn't know it in S'Nova Scotia!

I'm actually rather enjoying this extended winter, it's nice to finally have a full few months of snow. Trouble is the snow came late here in the Maritimes and the last few storms have been doozies.

The extended winter has also served as a blessing, in that I've delayed entering my annual period of denial that the spring craft season is right ahead. With it actually now being spring I can't delay any longer - I need to get to work ASAP producing! I'm afraid I've been having a hard time motivating myself to work on critters, it's not that I haven't been busy, I work on a felting almost every day... but I've mostly been working on feltscapes... I've only made one animal so far this year, a bright pink angora rabbit, which will be finding it's was to Made in the Maritimes Artisan Boutique later next month along with a few other fibre friends.

 

This past Christmas I decided to meet 2015 face on and work at what I love the most. Thankfully Argyle Fine Art gave me some extra motivation to help get me started and I created 5 miniature felted scenes for their annual Pre-Shrunk show.

 

 

Pre-Shrunk was immediately followed by another favourite show of mine, Cat Person/Dog Person. Initially I planned to finally finish off my "Rocking River Rocker" (AKA Cat Chair).... but the first of the heavy duty snow storms made it impossible to even bring the in-progress piece back in from the annex.

 

So with that pieces on hold until further notice I went ahead and nearly made myself go blind felting a teensy tiny love story between a collie and an orange tabby. You can check out the making of that piece here.

In between all of my miniatures I decided to really just let myself experiment and go with the flow to see what I might learn. This was the start of what I've since made regular practice and I begin every other piece with just a vague idea in my head of where I want it to go. By adopting this practice I've discovered many new ways of working with the wool. My control over the medium improves every day and I feel like I'm working faster with much more control. In fact I find it addictive and I need to force myself to take breaks so that I don't strain my eyes/neck/back. (In fact this blog post is me taking a break because I was on a roll and my lower back was starting to burn. Felting is not easy on the body, you need to remember to stretch!)

 

My second goal of 2015 is to make more art for myself. Because I do so many markets I tend to make certain items over and over again because they are popular with customers. For the last six years I've been producing a line of owls, foxes and dragons, that although each one is different, I sometimes find myself bored with the repetitive process. It always feels great when I let myself break things up a bit and make something to truly satisfy myself. When I was young I did this all the time and that is why I loved to constantly create. Now and then I need to stop and remind myself to create pieces that make me happy, not just everyone else. 

In February I decided to revisit one of my favourite creations, a feltscape that I made in 2010 for my dear friend, sculptor Kristie Sheehy of Avondale. The original Serious/Sirius was a response to the BP oil spill, I imagined that it's occurrences had sent out a beacon to the whales of Sirius; a warning that the earth had been poisoned and that steps needed to be taken before the earth as we knew it was beyond repair. According to legend our whales originally came to Earth from the constellation Sirius with the intent to at some point in time sacrifice themselves as a means of saving all human kind from extinction.

 

My latest Serious/Sirius piece depict sthe response to the beacon;  a council being held among the whales of Sirius, our ancestors the Northern Lights and Mother Earth, herself.

I can't tell you how good this piece makes me feel. Swoon has a group show coming up entitled, No Place Like Home - and I think that my whales couldn't be a more suitable submission!

Now that we are two thirds of the way through March my upcoming schedule is becoming a bit daunting... I think I'll be skipping denial this year and jumping head on into panic mode. In addition to prepping for 4 shows in the next 2 months, I find I continually have a hard time saying no when it come to my beloved local volunteer organizations, the Hants County Arts Council and Avon River Heritage Society... so I have a few side projects in the works for them.

Last week I rebuilt the website for the museum in Avondale and this May I'm once again organizing the Great Little Art Show as well as producing the HCAC's 2015 Arts Digest. (Sometimes I really wish you could submit volunteer hours for a tax credit or something. Oh well, a girl can dream.)

In between these projects I've been working on a few agricultural themed pieces in honour of the 250th anniversary of the Hants County Exhibition. Just before this last storm I began a piece inspired by a photo that hung in my grandmothers house of the sheep at her grandparent's property in Bloomington. While working on the piece my brain faltered and I couldn't remember my great grandmother's maiden name, so I took to Google... within seconds I entered down a rabbit hole which eventually led me to the discovery that my great- great- great- great- great- grandmother arrived in Nova Scotia upon the Sally in 1752. Now, this summer when I return to operating my quaint little café along the shore of the Avon, I can proudly respond when asked "Are you Lydia or Sally?" - no, Sally was the name of the sloop that brought my great- great- great- great- great- grandmother to Nova Scotia! How wonderful is that? I knew the moment I first arrived in Avondale that I had a strong connection, now I have the proof!

God I love being an artist, it always leads me to the most wonderful discoveries. Speaking of, this July I have been asked to display my work at the Wolfville Memorial Library. This opportunity is especially dear to me as we used to live just down the street from the library and I have many strong memories of our brief time in Wolfville, which I have decided to revisit through feltscapes.

 

My first piece for this show is entitled "Conversation with Snow White" and depicts the moments before I made the brutal discovery that some people are in fact make believe and my questions for Snow would never be answered. This piece taught me a great deal about myself and how from then I began restricting myself from truly feeling excitement when it came to anticipating a big event. I realize I formed this habit  as a way of avoiding the pain of disappointment. I think the process of rediscovering these seemingly momentous experiences during the fourth year of my life will prove itself very cathartic. I think it is time to move past limitations that I set so many moons ago and devote myself to making the absolute most of this lifetime. and if that means letting myself get excited about big events, well then I'm going to get excited!

 

Apparently making the most of things means keeping myself incredibly busy... well, I think my muscles are rest, time to get back at it!

 

 

For those of you trying to keep up, here is a list of events I'm participating in over the next few months:

April 18th & 19th - Halifax Crafters Spring Market, Olympic Centre, Halifax

May 2nd & 3rd - Dartmouth Makers, King's Wharf, Dartmouth

May 8th - 31st - The 17th Annual Great Little Art Show, Avon River Heritage Society Museum, Newport Landing

May 23rd & 24th - 250th Anniversary Hants County Ex; Art in Agriculture Festival, Exhibition Grounds, Windsor

July - Solo Show, Wolfville Memorial Library