Fredericton’s Fibre Arts Network (FAN) will feature their latest group exhibit entitled Craft 2020: Reflections at the UNB Art Centre from Nov. 1 - Dec. 13, 2020.
Craft 2020: Reflections features work juried by FAN members and presents 40 works by 21 fibre artists. Works included employ a unique range of fibres from wool, silk, cotton and even cassette tape! A variety of techniques are presented in both two and three-dimensional design including quilting, rug hooking, felting, thread painting, weaving, basketry, millinery as well as other wearable and usable artforms.
FAN is based in Fredericton and meet monthly to share ideas, conduct workshops, provide annual student scholarships and professional development awards, and organize exhibits and craft sales. They are regulars at various Christmas Craft markets where their highly crafted fibre works are in high demand.
In 2009, the Fibre Arts Network morphed from the Fredericton Designer Weavers established in 1972. This group provided its members with discounts from local yarn suppliers, organized exhibitions and sales, as well as demonstrations in a variety of dyeing, spinning and weaving techniques. In 1991, the group established an award to be given to an outstanding textile student at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design. Today, with a membership of about 25 fibre and textile artists, the Fibre Arts Network continues this tradition but now incorporates a wider variety of textile practices in its membership. In 2014, the Fibre Arts Network created a professional development award for FAN members to attend workshops or courses to advance their skills.
While the office of the UNB Art Centre is currently closed, the Memorial Hall galleries are open on Sundays from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m., by appointment.
Marie E. Maltais
Director, UNB Art Centre
This piece is made to resemble a tree trunk and what can be found on a tree created using a stitch and slash technique, embroidery, felting, free motion embroidery, and beading.
The artist’s mother’s grandmother was a midwife in the early 1900s. Known as the “pelle à feu (sage-femme)”, she would help deliver hundreds of babies during her lifetime and help in the mother’s recovery with concoctions she harvested from the forest and her garden. Her bag was always filled with natural remedies to heal whatever ailed the body.
Denise Violette Michaud is a self-taught artist from Drummond, NB. Her interest in creativity began at a young age and was greatly influenced by her mother, who was a very talented and avid seamstress, embroiderer, and crocheter. Her love for textiles was reawakened when working in earthenware clay while making art dolls. Through this she discovered a way to express her emotions, and a way through very difficult periods in her life. As a Craft NB juried member, she has participated in several exhibitions throughout the province. Enjoying the challenge of learning new techniques to incorporate in her work, her goal is to continue to convey her ideas and feelings through her art.
This piece honours the artist’s matriarchal lineage by incorporating the favourite flowers of her mother, grandmothers, and great-grandmother into the design. They were all strong and creative women. The white daisies symbolize her mother because she always adored them. The pink daisy is the artist’s favorite. The violets symbolize her paternal grandmother who died when the artist was only 7 years old but taught her to hand sew and quilt. The nasturtiums symbolize her maternal grandmother, who not only loved nasturtiums but shared with the artist her great love of colour. The geraniums harken back to the red geraniums on the covered porch windowsill of her great-grandmother’s farmhouse. The butterfly represents the diving, the mystery, and the magic of life.
Donna Mulholland creates happy, expressive, and colourful art. She currently works primarily in acrylic, mixed media, and fibre. She has studied with artists and coaches across Canada and the United States, and has taught locally, provincially, and online. Donna’s work has most recently been exhibited online on ArtBomb (formerly www.artbombdaily.com) and physically at the Sunbury Shores Arts and Nature Centre in St. Andrews, the Charlotte St. Arts Centre in Fredericton, and the Blue Crow Gallery in Toronto. A former civil servant, Donna has spent time on the boards of the New Brunswick Museum and the Charlotte St. Arts Centre. She lives and creates in Fredericton, with her husband and three sons. Her work can be found in private and public collections across North America, Europe, and Oceania.
This is a circular weaving using hand spun, roving, and manufactured yarns in yellows, blues, greens, whites, and black to create what looks like concentric circles with interruptions. The artist reflects back on her education program practicum, where the lessons did not go as well as hoped.
This circular weaving uses hand spun, roving, and manufactured yarns in yellows, blues, Greens and white, moving in a spiral interrupted with braids. This work reflects back on the artist’s education program practicum, where the lessons went as hoped.
This circular weaving uses hand spun, roving, and manufactured yarns in yellows, greens, black, blues, and white, moving in a spiral, twisted together, and interrupted with braids. This work reflects on the artist’s education program practicum, where the lessons went better than they had before.
Grace Nickerson is a textile designer. She studied photography at NSCAD and later studied textiles at NBCCD as part of the BAA program. In the last 2 years, Grace has had her work exhibited in six shows in New Brunswick and was part of the Hoyt House Summer Residency Program at King’s Landing in 2019. Grace is currently working on completing her Bachelor of Education at UNB. She is influenced by the natural environment around her and is interested in using locally sourced and homespun yarns and materials.
This wooden chair is embellished with wool fibre.
Tracey O’Brien is a graduate of NBCCD with a Textile Design Diploma. She creates unique textile pieces using techniques such as weaving, knitting, hand spinning, dyeing, embroidery, and felting, and is interested in colour, texture, and pattern as a means to convey a feeling.
This work meditates on the capacity of a Jacquard loom to weave text as well as pattern – shibori explores constantly changing colour iterations.
This piece uses the technique of overshot – the dyed pattern is in fact the blue overshot pattern but rendered in shibori technique. The red shibori thread is still visible – if you look closely.
Vita Plume holds a Masters of Fine Arts degree from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, NS. Plume is currently an Assistant Professor Emerita at the College of Design at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC. She has also taught in the Textiles Studio at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design (1999-2001) and in the Fibres Program of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University, Montreal (1995-1998). She currently resides in Jemseg, NB, and serves on the Board of Queen's County Heritage and is currently Past President of the Textile Society of America. She has exhibited her work throughout Canada as well as in the U.S., Poland, Latvia, Japan, and Finland.
Thinking about how I liked the pillowcases at Windsor House in St. Andrews, I considered the subject matter and was inspired to draw and hook my rendition of them. People of St. Andrews brought me clothing and a sofa cover which I have used in this process.
Lucie Quintal was born in Montreal and has been living in New Brunswick since 1981. She has been creating and exhibiting her work since 2015. She finds inspiration in exciting forms, textures, and colours. Her works have been acquired by the Province of NB. She has also sold to collectors in Ontario and the Yukon. She is an Emerging Artist with Craft NB.
This fabric collage with machine embroidery was inspired by the advice given by the artist’s doctor to write down her thoughts at night.
Tina Sharapova was born in Moscow, Russia. She grew up in a big family where everybody was able to make something with their own hands – embroider, carve wood, knit, or sew. She tried different handicrafts as a child and decided to become an artist and an artisan to make beautiful things. Her formal art training took place at the Moscow College of Arts and Crafts with majors in carpets and tapestry making. After graduating, she worked several years as a designer in a carpet company, then she took part in organizing a small tapestry studio “Donegal”. For a number of years, she taught both children and adults to paint, sew, felt wool, and work with paper. Not only a handicraft, and a way to decorate with unique items, it was also a way to express inner feelings through colours and forms. In 2016, Tina decided to continue her education in Canada and came to Fredericton, New Brunswick to get a diploma in Textile Design at NBCCD. There, she learned weaving and pattern design which has enriched her art and brought her new possibilities in textiles.
This is an octagonal hassock, made from upcycled leather with a hand hooked top. The hooked top was done in memory of Linda MacDonald, a well-known rug hooker and vender who, for many years held the copyright to the famed Bluenose patterns. She died suddenly in 2019, and rughookers from around the Atlantic provinces were invited to choose one of these Bluenose patterns to hook in her memory. The sides and bottom of the hassock are cut from an old leather coat that once belonged to Louise Warman, who for many years supplied untold numbers of delicious pies that were served up at Joe’s Diner, a Fredericton Northside institution.
This piece was created using wool, silk and mixed fibre yarn hooked into a linen backing. The image can be interpreted in two ways: a) to the outside world, we may think we look a certain way, but really, we are all beautiful inside and out; b) crows are acquisitive and attracted to shiny bright objects, and sometimes people who are similarly attracted to glitter talk about their “inner crow” making itself known.
Caroline Simpson is a full-time fibre artist working primarily in rug hooking, but also knitting, embroidery, and beadwork. Raised in Ottawa and the UK, she moved to Fredericton in the late 1980s, where she was introduced to traditional rug hooking. Since then, she has been designing and hooking contemporary versions of a time-honored craft that embodies creativity, beauty, practicality, and an inherent concern for the environment through upcycling. She is a juried member of Craft NB, and an Associate Member of the NS Rug Hooking Guild’s Teachers Branch.
Calyx is another name for the rose hip, and it carries the seeds and genetic material necessary for the next generation of roses. It also provides a food source for birds and bears. The Calyx was inspired by the roses that grow on the shores of the Atlantic ocean where I lived as a child. They are rugged bushes and can grow where little else can. They produce pink flowers and lots of rose hips or calyxes.
This large basket reflects the trees in New Brunswick’s Acadian forest from which the fibres were collected. The inspiration for the piece came from the various fibres that I had collected and my desire to weave them together. This basket started with a square bottom and ended with a round top. The warp is eastern white cedar and the weft is a variety of bark – cedar, willow, butternut, and spruce root. I also incorporated some black mulberry paper string embellishment. The rim is secured with waxed linen and the method of weaving is French rand and twining in “z” and “s” formats.
Ralph Simpson was born in Hillsborough, New Brunswick. He was employed as a Forest Research Biologist and, after retirement, he decided to study Aboriginal Visual Art at NBCCD. While his focus now is artistic, he maintains an interest in the forest and spends many hours in the woods exploring the potential of plant and wood fibre to create baskets and sculpture. In collecting wood and plant fibre found in New Brunswick, he uses harvest principles that embrace environmental integrity and sustainability. Ralph combines a deep respect for traditional weaving techniques with his own innovations and enjoys incorporating a wide variety of materials and techniques into his artistic practice. He creates work that focuses on natural form, process, and materiality.
This wall quilt features golden autumn leaves in a forest setting based on the artist’s photo taken at Mount Royal, Montreal.
This wall quilt features the close-up bark from my maple tree created on a hand painted background. On this tree, I hung leaves in different colours from different tree species representing diversity. I included words as well as photo transfers of Willie O’ Ree, Betty Lee, the Honourable Graydon Nicholas, Jeremy Dutcher and Mary Ann Limpert to highlight 5 prominent Frederictonians of different race.
Kathy Tidswell is an artist and a teacher of fibre arts. She has taught extensively throughout Canada, the UK, and in Luxembourg. She developed her own methods of painting on fabric and uses free motion machine embroidery to produce thread-painted works of art as well as quilted wall hangings and wearable art. Her wearable art has received the Award of Excellence and Honourable Mention at the Canadian Quilters’ Association National Juried shows. Her wall quilts have been accepted into Grand National Juried Quilt exhibitions, Studio Arts Quilting Association regional shows, and Canadian Quilters’ Association National Juried shows. Her thread paintings have been shown in solo and group exhibitions locally and nationally.
This piece is made from cassette tape and deconstructed found Christmas ornaments. I’ve been wanting to play with cassette tape for a while now but haven’t been sure how to go about it. The stuff is slippery, stretchy, curly, and mostly brown! I like brown. And it breaks. I don’t like that so much! Quite a few years ago, I saw an exhibition which included a child-sized sweater knit from video tape. The idea has been percolating since then. I’m just at the beginnings of my exploration with this material. I have a feeling it will be a years-long process. I certainly have enough material on hand to keep me occupied. I grew up in the 1980s after all! But these cassettes are now trash – or something to play with in my fibre arts practice. The reflection is two-fold: in the thought evolution from elusive idea to the creation of an object, and in the material itself.
Kim Bent has been enamoured of the fibre arts from a very young age. As a child, she learned how to knit and crochet from grandmothers and caregivers. She has played around with rug hooking, string art, and felting. She is madly in love with weaving and with spinning yarn. Play is a huge part of her practice and she only ever rarely makes the *same* thing twice.
This work is made by stitching on silk noile. Lines are cradling spheres while not confining them.
This series of flags are stitched together on a cord, much like prayer flags. Each one is an answer to the question “How are you?” So often, when we see someone, the automatic question that is asked is “How are you?” So often, the person who is asking the question does not have the time, energy, or interest to actually listen to the truth in the answer. This piece is an exploration of answers to that question that are deflective, humourous, and sometimes painfully truthful.
Jacqueline Bourque has been working with textiles for over 30 years. She has explored many different aspects of textiles and her latest obsession has been stitching. She is an instructor at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design.
This is the second piece of the series “Marked”, a collection of items that represent the challenging relationship between humankind and nature through mark-making. This piece was created using the map of Fredericton as inspiration for the stitching, as well as residual materials gathered from Odell Park and surrounding area. The marks on the fabric were created with printing techniques using rusted objects found on the streets of Fredericton.
Three Eco printed silk panels in the shape of a prism are hung from the ceiling. They protect the centrepiece, which is a sphere made of threads, naturally dyed scrap fabric, yarn, and organic materials such as moss and dead leaves. Free motion embroidery techniques are used to create the sphere. The centrepiece is hung from the ceiling and has an LED light inserted inside to create shadow effects projected on the silk panels. The viewer can experience the centrepiece through the small gaps between the three panels, as well as in the shadows cast on the silk panels. The gaps promote the sensation of “peeking” to discover the deepest layer. The experience of “peeking” and taking the time to fully appreciate the work correlates to human interactions, as it takes time to fully understand and reveal human nature.
Renata Britez is a textile artist originally from Brazil and now based in Fredericton, NB where she graduated from the Textile Program at NBCCD. Her interest in traditional printing methods and natural dyes led her to follow the path of textile design. Renata’s goal is to explore and share traditional textile techniques using natural dyes and fibres. She is a LEAP (Lifelong Learning with Artistic Purpose) Instructor at the NBCCD and she travels to teach textile workshops around the region. In 2019, she taught in various festivals and events, including the Nova Scotia Fibre Arts Festival, EdVentures, and NBCCD Summer Workshop Series at King’s Landing.
This piece is a random woven sweetgrass basket on granite.
This piece presents a random woven white willow basket on granite.
This piece is made from Dogwood branches shaped and tied on granite.
Jasmine Cull is a Newfoundland-born artist. She works in various mediums with a particular passion for working with natural fibres. Jasmine holds a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and has been teaching courses and workshops for over 20 years.
In today’s era of social media and instant connection, writing and reading hand-written letters have become rare rituals. However, both receiving and crafting a good letter can still bring about huge delight. This cloth-covered box is designed to house just such letters, including the more private ones that need a secret place to hide. This piece was created as part of a class project on symbols and rituals. It is inspired by the act of letter writing and the symbols (created both by the artist and her classmates) were inspired by the Adinka symbols of the Asante people.
This piece consists of a cloth die in the shape of an icosahedron, one of the five platonic solids. Each face of the die consists of a stitched vignette depicting a news story or trending social media post relating to the first two weeks of the pandemic lockdown. Many of the stories are serious, some are warnings, and others still are lighthearted and show our tendency towards warmth and humour, even in trying times. The piece communicates a glimpse of our reality at that time, and is also an attempt to distill the chaos and information overload into something more manageable and orderly. The form of this piece is inspired by the tradition of using stitching and quilting as a means of communicating via cloth.
Caoife Garvey grew up in Galway City on the west coast of Ireland. Previously, she taught English as an Additional Language and also in the field of endangered language revitalisation. Later, after discovering NBCCD, she enrolled in the Foundation Visual Arts Program and moved to Fredericton. Now beginning her second year of the Diploma in Textile Design, she is learning about many different cloth-making techniques. She is especially drawn to weaving.
This original design on hand-painted linen uses various textiles to depict a pile of leaves being whipped up into the air by the wind.
Mary Grant has been rug hooking for 18 years and as a certified instructor for 8. She has memberships in the Heritage Rug Hooking Guild, the Rug Hooking Guild of Nova Scotia, its Teachers’ Branch, and the Fibre Arts Network. She has a Masters in Industrial and Vocational Education with a focus on teachings skills. She enjoys shading, sculpting, and depicting historical events in her mats. Mary came late to rug hooking following a fulfilling career in long-term care nursing, education and administration.
Chiffon silk is fused with raw merino to make the felt. Ropes of wool are felted then pulled into the underside of the hood to sculpt the roots of trees on a forest floor. The pinecone is modeled after the white pine tree’s cone. Its scales are each wired so that the cone can be opened or closed. Horsehair is bound to the stem of the cone, and the wire from the cone is wrapped in the silk that is used to create the felt. The underside of the hat is lined with the same silk fabric, but with a different effect, as it hasn’t been shrunk by the felting process.
Trish Hirschkorn is a felt maker living in Fredericton with a unique perspective of blending the line between felting and millinery. She pays homage to designs of the past while using modern techniques and upcycled materials. Her millinery education involves travel to Ireland, Toronto, and Tennessee. Untouched was recently featured in Fibre Arts Now magazine (2019) and won an Honourable Mention in an international millinery competition in London in 2019. Trish is inspired by fashion of the 1920s, and from the upcycled fabrics themselves. She spends much of her spare time in nature, walking in the woods, or swimming in local lakes and rivers.
This art quilt was creating using hand-dyed fabrics, along with some batiks and commercial fabrics. Lace and cheesecloth are used for the waves in the water. The background was stitched first, and then the blue heron was added, and it was then thread painted.
There’s nothing prettier than a full moon reflecting on the snow on a clear winter night. This piece was created using hand-dyed fabrics, batiks, and commercial fabrics, and thread painting.
This is a depiction of the shores of the Kennebecasis River in Rothesay, New Brunswick. While on a quilting retreat, the artist walked down to the shore and discovered 50 to 60 rock cairns and inukshuks that had been created by some previous artists on retreat.
Darcy Hunter, a fibre artist, began quilting approximately 17 years ago by making quilts for her babies. Gradually, she began to devote more time to her passion and discovered her love of creating art quilts with fabric and stich. She began Darcy Doodle Quilts in 2014. She also opened a shop at the Riverside Resort in Mactaquac, New Brunswick and shared the space with other artists until March 2020, when the hotel closed indefinitely. In winter 2017, her quilted postcards were featured in two magazines by Stampington & Co and her art quilts were featured in the Spring and Summer 2019 editions of Art Quilting Studio. This year, her bird series will appear in the August edition and her 6 large art quilts will be featured in the Autumn edition of Art Quilting Studio.
In 2017, the artist and her siblings went salmon fishing for the first time on the famous Miramichi River in New Brunswick, Canada. As a New Brunswicker, this was the first time in her life that she had fished salmon, so with her camera she recorded she documented this eventful trip.
The 8 participants started off in two trucks with a long drive to a rustic fishing camp accessible only by canoe on the McKiel Pool in the Southwest Miramichi River. This is a jacquard weaving of a silhouette of the artist fishing. The image captures the misshapen hat she wore, the trees, woods, and river in the background, and the rocks and water in the foreground.
This piece is created using stainless-steel and silk yarn with very fine wool boucle. The fine stainless-steel yarn creates a curly fringe at the bottom which move like the waves of the sea, similar to that of a feather star’s movements. This piece is wrapped loosely around the driftwood so that it moves and sways slightly with the spinning of the driftwood.
I have been working on a “broken heart” series in memory of my son, Patrick, who passed away 15 years ago. I lost a piece of myself and my being that day. My heart strings were hidden for a long time. Maybe this warp was therapy for my broken heart, or maybe it was just my way of expressing how our heart strings can be exposed. For these pieces, I used 4/8 red cotton for the warp and two-ply yarn for the weft. I wanted to expose some of the red warp threads as part of the series. My perception is that a heart can feel like it’s made of strings at times. Emotions pull on our hearts. We can feel the tug of sorrow or sadness on our heart strings, but we can also feel joy and happiness pull on our heart strings. Music can also play on our heart strings, as can emotional responses to friendships, learning something new, art, fine food, travel, playing games, watching a movie and much more! What tugs at your heart?
Karen LeBlanc is a fibre artist and weaver who focuses on two distinct streams: one is traditional, functional, and practical, woven on a four or eight-harness loom, and the other is innovative, contemporary tapestry pieces. In February 2020, Karen participated as one of the NB representatives in the Collect 2020 Educational Mission with Craft Alliance in London, UK. She has exhibited internationally, nationally, regionally, and locally and participated in residencies in Fredericton and Toronto. She is a member of several professional organizations including American Tapestry Alliance, Complex Weavers, Handweavers Guild of America, Craft NB, Guild of Canadian Weavers, Craft NS, and many others. She is the past President of the Fibre Arts Network and the Treasurer of the NB Crafts Foundation.
This work is part of the “Mumma Mantles” series which explores strength, vulnerability, and defiance in a world that tries to be prescriptive for mothers. On one shoulder, the mantle is made of layered and pleated “pinwheel” quilt blocks of different scales, mixed with doilies and unraveling hand spun yarn, counterbalanced with vintage crochet lace on the other shoulder.
Rachel A. MacGillivray is a multi-disciplinary textile artist originally from Glengarry County, Ontario, now based in Fredericton, NB. She competed a Bachelor in Fashion Design from Ryerson University and a Diploma in Fine Craft Textiles, as well as Advanced Studio Practices form NBCCD. She is currently an instructor at NBCCD in the Textile Design Studio. Guiding others in discovering and developing their own language and voice through the material inspires her and fuels her own studio work. Working with natural materials, especially wool, is a cornerstone of her artistic practice, and she and her husband, along with their newborn son, are working toward building their own small sheep farm. She has exhibited her work in museums and galleries, including the Louvre, Canadian War Museum, Andrew & Laura McCain Gallery, and Okanagan Heritage Museum.
This is a rectangular wall quilt in portrait orientation presenting a figure on white background with stitched words on a free-hanging tulle layer. This work reflects upon the sense that we become less visible, disappearing as we age.
A quilt maker for over 20 years, Lee McLean has been consumed with creating strong, original designs in fabric. She has recently completed the Foundation Visual Arts program at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design, and is currently participating in their Advanced Studio Practice program.
