Part of Forage, York Quay Gallery, Bill Boyle Artport, Harbourfront Centre, September 2015. Natural dyes and hand-cut wool felt. 

Foraged Palette

Plants are full of chemicals – healing and harmful, edible and poisonous, stable and volatile – which make them endlessly useful to us.  Some species of plants, particularly those that are edible, herbal or medicinal, possess pigment compounds – sources of colourants to dye cloth, make paints or food colouring.  These compounds – anthracenes, carotenoids, flavonoids and tannins, found in plants such as onions, carrots, and cabbage – are nutrient rich, and often anti-oxidant. They are also sources of extraordinary colour, manipulable by the simplest schoolroom chemistry experiments.  Foraged Palette is created using dyes sourced from food waste such as carrot, cabbage and rhubarb leaf, onion and pomegranate skin, and avocado pits.

Part of 1812-2012: A Contemporary Perspective, at York Quay Gallery, Harbourfront Centre, 2012.

Field Dress, c. 1812.

The artefacts comprise the costume famously worn during one lady's perilous and circuitous journey made the 22nd of June, 1813, under the heat of the summer sun, over some twelve miles of wood, swamp and miry road between the village of Queenston, and Beaver Dam, etc.

FIELD • [noun ] an area on which a battle is fought : a field of battle.

DRESS • [as adj. ] denoting military uniform or other clothing used on formal or ceremonial occasions : a dress suit.

History is a study subject to interpretation, in which narratives become scattered and muddied, skewed and biased, altered and embellished, strewn and gathered, unpicked, and patch-worked back together.

The bicentennial of the War of 1812 is in many ways, the bicentennial of an immigration that shaped my own family’s history. My English and American ancestors settled in this land, Southern Ontario, and here, we have remained, for the last two centuries. Some were soldiers during the war, given land in exchange for their service in the war; others were Englishmen granted land after the war in order to strengthen and expand the geographical reach of the Upper Canada.  In the early days of settlement, often wholly unprepared for living in the near wilderness conditions, settlers endured back-breaking work and laboured to survive in a harsh climate, with few conveniences at their disposal. Landscape shapes the character of the people that inhabit it; the land leaves traces upon us as we traverse it, through fields, woods and rivers.

Originally exhibited in the Project Window, Harbourfront Centre, 2011.

Cotton organdie, cotton velvet, linen, silk, wool, discharge and earth pigment screen-print, cochineal, goldenrod, lac, Lady’s Bedstraw, logwood, madder, pomegranate, quebracho, Queen Anne’s Lace, and weld dyes, gold leaf, stitch, vintage Crown, Atlas, Beaver, Corona, Gem, Jewel, Mason, Perfect Seal and Safety Seal jars. 2011-12.

The Fruit Cellar of Miss H…

Preserving. Formerly, this household task occupied much of summer and autumn, in order to conserve fresh food for consumption during winter, when it was a scarce. The filled shelves of a cold cellar afforded a sense of accomplishment, virtue and security. This pursuit, so representative of ‘old fashioned values’, is lately experiencing resurgence as we place more importance on the provenance of our food.

Each year, I can fruits, pickles and jellies. This is an inherited habit. A few jars put down by my grandmother still remain after a quarter century.  In particular, one treasured jar of her pickles has become like a votive from her to me. This seemingly mundane object acts as a time capsule of seasons and places past, preserving her memory.

This body of work imagines the fruit cellar as a storehouse of memories. From season to season, the contents of each jar are imbued with vestiges of the past, triumphs and regrets, joys and sorrows. The vessels are an investment in the future as much as they are reliquaries of the past.  The fruit cellar acts as a hope chest of both realised and unrequited aspiration.

Originally exhibited as part of Historiographic, at Harbourfront Centre, 2014.

Hand embroidered with naturally dyed DMC pearl cotton #12

Home Territory

History is a study subject to interpretation, in which narratives become scattered and muddied, skewed and biased, altered and embellished, strewn and gathered, unpicked, and patch-worked back together. Maps form a part of the writing of this history, tracing our intimacy with the pathways and geographies they seek to explain. In my daily life I travel the same corridor along the shores of Lake Ontario; the waste places along the highways and rail routes are my accompanying panorama. All the scenes are fleeting because of the speed of travel, but as blurred images sweep past, I absorb the scenery and I wonder how the landscape might look without the last two centuries of human touch. I imagine myself lady geographer, traversing the landscape of this country, recording the terrain and documenting gathered specimens with needle and thread, the land shaping my character and leaving traces upon me as I traverse it.

Hand embroidered on naturally dyed linen with naturally dyed DMC pearl cotton #12. 

This research undertaken during and since my MA in Textile Design at Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, UK.