Surfacing

This past weekend marked a highly anticipated event in the Beehive calendar. It was the opening of Surfacing: contemporary textile and craft objects at James Buttrum & Son gallery on James Street North. Comprised of the work from eleven graduating students of Sheridan College's Textile program, this show aimed to illustrate and encourage discussion on the topic of contemporary crafting; specifically in regards to textiles and fibres.
 
I had some downtime during my own art crawl preparations at White Elephant (which never happens) and I knew I wouldn't get the chance to check the show out later in the evening, so I stopped by Friday afternoon, camera in tow. As each of these artists studied under one of our very own Bees at Sheridan - Thea Haines - I knew that this show would not disappoint. 

Sabrina Parrish

Katherine Cordero

Katie Walker

Keiley Stewart

Left: Rachel Morrison   Right: Melodie Flook

Barbara Romanovsky

The students demonstrated a wide and impressive range of skills from hand-stitching to quilting to paper-making to machine embroidery thread drawing and natural dyeing. Keiley Stewart's wet and needle felted animal heads provided an interactive and amusing element to the show. Her partner, Owen, was nice enough to take an instant photo of Jane, my sister Nicole and myself, and he would continue to do so all night of patrons trying on the heads, as a part of the piece. It's funny because afterward we all discussed how all three of us each had huge grins on our faces as the camera snapped, realizing after that our faces were totally obscured.

Being a part of a craft collective, I may be biased in thinking that this was one of the best shows I have seen in recent history as a part of the art crawl. I think that a lot of times people equate crafting or fibre art with folk art (which is not necessarily a bad thing) and Surfacing served to redefine that view, exemplifying that textiles can be exquisite and delicate and detailed and fantastic and fun all at the same time.  Beautiful work, beautiful show. I can't wait to keep an eye on each of the artists involved in the show as they continue to grow and fine-tune their respective crafts.