🔸🔹🔸UPCOMING EXHIBITION: ARTISTS IN THE ARCHIVES🔸🔹🔸
Opening reception and book launch: Friday, September 2, 2022, 5-7PM
Exhibition Running from: Friday, September 2, 2022-January 7, 2023
Venue: The Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History in Middlebury, Vermont, USA, VT 05753
I am delighted to have been asked to participate in this fascinating project by curator, collage artist and publisher Ric Kasini Kadour.
It was great to gain access to the Archives at The Henry Sheldon Museum, Vermont, to search their images and to be tasked with creating works that responded to the topic of community care. This peice created for the exhibition is titled “Close Knit” and refers to Vermont’s rich history of sheep hearding, textiles, industry and trade as community care, as well as referencing the tradition of the American Patchwork Quilt as form of biographical and historical document.
Read my statement here:
“Textiles are deeply interwoven with community care practices in rural communities across the world. The farming of Sheep and other animals for their wools provide livelihoods for families, goods for transport and trade, in the past these trade routes fostered community connections and information sharing amongst towns and settlements within the regions that they existed, in this way opportunities arose for neighbours to interact and come to know one another.
On the more interpersonal level, individuals with particular skills in textiles and the fibre arts can weave and knit together clothing and household items like blankets, rugs and quilts. These are practical offerings of comfort, warmth and care to friends and family members.
Alongside the creation of physical items, there is the deep social good which exists in the sharing of traditional skills. Individuals who gather together in knitting circles or other forms of crafting workshop experience the privilege of working and creating with one another, knitting their communities more closely together.
The creation of patchwork quilts in particular have become a tradition which represents stability, community care, and have even served as a unique form of historical documentation, with carefully crafted panels carrying visual information about personal, familial and community stories and events down through generations.”
This project has resulted in the exhibition, the production of a folio of prints, and the publication of a book.
The folio of prints is an edition of five plus one artist proof. One folio will be housed in the Henry Sheldon Museum’s permanent collection, a second will become part of the Kolaj Institutes permanent collection. The other editions are available for touring and/or sale contact: info@kolajmagazine.com
For more on this specific project please visit here.
To purchase the book visit here.
Or for more from The Henry Sheldon Museum visit here.