CURATORS WRITE ABOUT
CRAFT IN CANADA
Clay Talks
The vitality and expressive quality of Canadian ceramic work today is not confined to one or merely several areas of this vast country. Indeed a wide and eclectic range of work, which covers the traditional beauty of functional objects, dynamic sculptural work, as well as pieces which promote a discussion of cultural ideals and social concerns, is prevalent today.
Conventional notions of ceramic categories blur. Expansive figurative, decorative painting is featured on functional wares. Functional wares are transformed into sculptural and conceptual pieces. Conceptual pieces comment on functional objects and the history of ceramics!
The technical and creative abilities of these artists is of the highest order. Below is just a sampling of the range of talent in Canada.
Ceramic Sculpture
Roger Aksadjuak (Nunavut), Victor Cicansky, (Saskatchewan), Neil Forrest (Nova Scotia), Jean-Pierre Laroque (Québec), Susan Low-Beer (Ontario), Laurie Rolland (British Columbia)
Functional Wares
Bruce Cochrane (Ontario), Robin Hopper (British Columbia), Harlan House (Ontario), Matthias Ostermann (Québec), Jim Smith (Nova Scotia), Sam Uhlick (Alberta).
Conceptual Work
Karen Dahl, (Saskatchewan), Léopold Foulem (Québec), Steven Heinemann (Ontario), Jeannie Mah (Saskatchewan), Richard Milette (Québec), Greg Payce (Alberta)
Enjoy!
Susan Jefferies
Assistant Curator of Contemporary Ceramics
The Gardiner Museum, Toronto
Canadian Textiles Today
Today’s textile arts span many areas of specialization within the craft , design and visual arts fields. Across Canada, regional traditions such as quilting, knitting, rug hooking, weaving, basketry and embroidery are rigorously embraced by individual makers and guilds whose goals and aspirations are to promote quality and provide education that shares centuries-old skills, techniques and lore to be passed on to future generations.
For example, Isabel Rorick is an internationally recognized Haida weaver from Haida Gwaii, British Columbia. She learned her craft of weaving traditional spruce root baskets and hats from her paternal grand mother in combination with in-depth studies of artifacts in Canadian museum collections. Judith Tinkl (Sunderland, Ontario) works with the quilt as a forum for sophisticated colour plays and geometric patterns all influenced by Canadian historical textiles. Toronto’s Japanese-born Hiroko Karuno is a master dyer who also creates shifu – paper thread spun from Mulberry paper that is then woven into cloth. (This very skilled, very old Japanese technique is rarely practiced today.) Louise Lemieux-Bérubé has rejuvenated the Jacquard loom’s picture-making capacity and attracts senior and emerging weavers from across the country and around the world to her computerized Montreal studio. These practitioners preserve and invigorate traditions with personal, contemporary meanings and experiences.
Textiles are often attached to specific cultural traditions that allow artists to explore issues of identity and heritage, and raise social and political questions. Hamilton, Ontario Anna Torma’s Hungarian legacy is invoked through the embroidered motifs and patterns of her obsessively stitched, layered and fragmented embroideries. Halifax artist Sara Hartland-Rowe’s hand-sewn drawings are influenced by her in-depth knowledge of Western art history, in parallel with images of popular culture and biblical illustrations. Vancouver’s Ruth Scheuing has developed complex weavings to express mythological, theoretical and metaphorical narratives in cloth. Experimental and traditional textile practices nourish conceptual art making and expand upon craft traditions as they blend with contemporary visual arts.
Canadian designers Monique Beauregard and Robert Lamarre manufacture technically innovative and market-savvy printed textiles for domestic and international markets from their Montreal studio, and Toronto designer Rachel Machenry designs high-end knitwear that is produced by women’s textile cooperatives in India.
In Canada, as in many other countries, textiles are frequently aligned with women in their domestic environments. Toronto artist Janet Morton’s hand knitted sculptures and installations tell stories of such traditions and symbols, and Nova Scotia’s Nancy Edell intermingles the craft of rug hooking with painting and drawing to produce ‘fantastic’ images of fictionalized female heroines.
Many of Canada’s artists have an international profile: Kai Chan’s bamboo, toothpick and thread sculptures; Dorothy Caldwell’s indigo-dyed, discharged, pieced and stitched painterly, abstracted landscapes; Mindy Yan Miller’s site-specific installations of worn clothing; and Marcel Marois’s labour intensive narrative tapestries whose images are frequently derived from the fast-paced and ephemeral electronic news world are critically recognized on many continents.
Sensuous and tactile, the physical qualities of textiles evoke memories and associations for many of us – the material’s daily familiarity shapes the Canadian artistic landscape. As the foregoing examples indicate, many artists who work with textiles are difficult to categorize. The diverse approaches of this country’s artists and craftspeople blur distinctions between makers of craft, designers, and visual artists. I have chosen a small selection of Canadian practitioners, with the hope that their products and contributions will enrich understandings of the diverse approaches to contemporary textiles in Canada.
Sarah Quinton
Contemporary Curator, Textile Museum of Canada
The Book Arts Scene
The Canadian book arts scene is lively, creatively stimulating, and enjoyable fulfilling. The book arts are traditionally associated with bookbinding, fine printing and typography, papermaking, calligraphy, paper decorating, box making, book illustration/printmaking. To these have been added artists books and livres artiste, which mean different things despite their literal translation. Artists' books are those conceived as a work of art in their entirety, with all of their components integral to the artist's vision. Livres d'artiste may fit this definition or may be books illustrated by an artist or may be those with one 'editeur' who designs, performs selected tasks, and chooses and supervises collaborators.
Many artists work in all of these book arts fields across Canada. Most of them utilize several of the disciplines, and many combine old and new technologies very successfully. The quality of the book arts is very high and constantly rising exemplified by the works of Bronfman Award recipients Louise Genest and Michael Wilcox. Development in the past 10 years has been astounding.
Interest in book restoration/conservation and artists books is rapidly growing. Calligraphy is widely practiced with dedicated societies in most provinces and many cities. Among the exceptional Canadian private presses are Aliquondo Press, Barbarian Press, Loco's Press, Church St. Press and many others. Distinguished artists in handmade paper coast to coast include Susan Warner Keene, Wendy Cain, and Brian Queen, among others.
Books arts courses are taught at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Sheridan College, Haliburton School of Fine Art, Red Deer College etc. and individual ateliers in Montreal which also teach bookbinding. The Canadian Bookbinders & Book Artists Guild (CBBAG) offer teachers a structured bookbinding curriculum, as well as letterpress printing, in short segments, and has a Home Study bookbinding programme in process. CBBAG organizes exhibitions, publishes a newsletter, suppliers list, directories of book artists and educational opportunities, and exhibition catalogues, organizes and participates in public events.
Shelagh Smith
Managing Director,
Canadian Bookbinders & Book Artists Guild
Canadian Metalworking - Diversity & Strength
Canadian metalsmiths cover a wide spectrum of making. Some, like Janis Kerman of Montreal, work as fine jewellers and use precious metals with gems in one-of-a-kind pieces. Others like Diane Hanson of Toronto, call themselves production jewellers or fashion jewellers and use silver, copper, brass, or anodized aluminum to produce lines of jewellery. Makers of holloware, like Karen Cantine of Edmonton, raise cups and vessels usually from silver or copper. Others, like Dominique Bréchault of Vancouver, British Columbia, reject traditional designations and simply call themselves artists. They may use a variety of metals in mixed media formats.
The imagery and inspiration for Canadian metalworking is equally diverse, but geography is a constant. Jewellers in the Maritimes often refer to its seascape as being conducive to art making. In the North, Inuit makers reflect their arctic culture and West Coast jewellery shows a strong affinity with nature. The urban environments of Calgary and Toronto are also represented.
Because it is a craft-based art, the physical properties of the materials themselves often provide stimulus. Finally, however, it is the imagination of the well-educated Canadian metal artist that is turning bits of gold and titanium into multi-layered objects that may or may not function as jewellery or tableware. The work appears in international exhibitions and the most risk-taking is shown in a few galleries across the country. It combines old and new materials with ideas about love, war, family, and the act of crafting with metal.
Anne Barros
Silversmith
Canadian Glassworks
Canadian artists working with glass are as diverse in their approach as they are in their intent. Raw, gutsy, multi-media sculptural work has been exhibited with extraordinarily refined all-glass vessels in many international exhibitions.
Since the late eighties Canadian artists have enjoyed the attention of gallery dealers, collectors and artists in several countries following the 1989 Glass Art Society conference, held in Toronto, which produced an exciting series of concurrent exhibitions. Over the last fifteen years, galleries in Germany, Finland, France, China, Mexico, Singapore, and many parts of the United States have presented this country's finest talent and collectors are responding by avidly seeking this distinctive work.
Although the Canadian studio glass movement is relatively young, beginning in the late 60s with a glass programme at Ontario's Sheridan College School of Crafts and Design, it continues to gain momentum. Studios at Sheridan, the Alberta College of Art in Calgary, and Espace Verre in Montréal, Québec annually present exciting work from a strong contingent of emerging artists.
As these artists mature in their careers, several have shared studios and have collaborated in exhibitions. Over the last decade, Espace Verre has been the studio of Ronald Labelle, Johanne Boivin, Jean-Marie Giguëre, Maude Bussiëres, and John Robinson. Two collectives in particular have received much attention from the public and media alike. Ten North a well-established exhibiting collective with many exhibitions in the United States includes Daniel Crichton, Laura Donefer, Claire Maunsell, Irene Frolic, Susan Edgerley, Donald Robertson, Jeff Goodman, Susan Rankin, Brad Copping, and Kevin Lockau. An energetic group who banded together in British Columbia to develop a provocative marketing thrust for their work is V6. Artists Joanne Andrighetti, Lisa Samphire, Morna Tudor, Gary Bolt, Naoko Takenouchi, and Jeff Burnette continue to expand their North American exhibition schedule.
The future looks promising. 2003 will be a particularly exciting year with an upcoming conference hosted by the Glass Art Association of Canada, May 7 - 10, and a series of exhibitions to be held in Toronto. Visit the CCF/FMCA events page and "http://www.craft.on.ca" for upcoming details.
Rosalyn Morrison
Executive Director, Ontario Crafts Council
and curator of Canadian Glassworks 1970-1990
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