The UNB Art Centre opens its doors and welcomes you back to in-person exhibits and programs with the first exhibition of 2021. Vita Plume: Patterns & Portraits opens Friday, Sept. 10 at 5 pm. This exhibit will run until October 29, 2021.
Patterns & Portraits features several bodies of work produced over three decades by master weaver Vita Plume. Working with a digital Jacquard loom, pieces are woven then dyed using a technique known as Shibori, an ancient Japanese method for hand-dyeing fabric.
The West Gallery will present the penetrating series Fallen Soldiers, USA/Canada (2010). In the exhibition catalogue Commemorations produced by the New Brunswick Museum exhibition in 2019, curator Peter Larocque observes that this work "bear silent witness...to the devastating realities of war."
The East Gallery will commemorate the special relationship of women to craft. Featured will be weavings from the Alice Lusk Webster Suite—based on a portrait of one of the New Brunswick Museum's early champions—and the Doris Ullman Project—which portrays textile workers of the Appalachian region of Kentucky along with earlier work honouring the artist’s Latvian roots. Plume's portraits of faces and hands created using subtle shifts of light and colour tell the story of forgotten makers who devoted their lives to the art of weaving and textiles.
Born in Montreal of Latvian refugees, Vita Plume has a Master of Fine Art from NSCAD University in Halifax. She has taught at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design in Fredericton, NSCAD, Concordia University, Montreal and the University of North Carolina in Raleigh. She has work in collections across the globe and has exhibited throughout Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia. She remains engaged in the dissemination of ideas regarding the history, socio-cultural, political and technical applications of textiles. Vita Plume is a currently based in Jemseg, New Brunswick.
Listen to Vita Plume's Interview with CHSR Program Director, Mark Kilfoil.
Fallen Soldiers commemorates the thousands of soldiers who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan and all soldiers who have fought and died in service to their country. These ghostly portraits remind us that war is not only measured by words, like democracy and freedom, but also by all the lives that were and could have been...this is the true cost of war.
On display are the eyes of approximately 2% of U.S. casualties who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom + Operation Enduring Freedom / Afghanistan and 98% of the Canadian casualties in Afghanistan.
Each panel shows the eyes of the soldier and their initials. A key to the exhibition provides their full name, rank, place of birth, and date of death.
This work is dedicated to the memory of Canadian Captain Jefferson Francis who was killed in Afghanistan in 2007 by an improvised explosive device. He was a young man of 36, with a six-month old baby, who dropped out of PhD program to become an unlikely soldier.
This piece is woven in memory of all soldiers who have been injured or have given their lives fighting wars and to their families and friends for the tears they have shed.
As current events in Afghanistan unfold, we acknowledge that these soldiers contributed to 20 years of education for girls and women and improved social conditions. We also must acknowledge the loss of life of Afghan civilians and security forces and the dislocation of refugees. How this will be seen historically has yet to be determined.
The young dead soldiers do not speak.
Nevertheless, they are heard in the still houses:
who has not heard them?They have a silence that speaks for them at night
and when the clock counts.They say: We were young. We have died.
Remember us.They say: We have done what we could
but until it is finished it is not done.They say: We have given our lives but until it is finished
no one can know what our lives gave.They say: Our deaths are not ours: they are yours,
they will mean what you make them.They say: Whether our lives and our deaths were for
peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say,
it is you who must say this.We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.
We were young, they say. We have died; remember us.
*Supported by: North Caroline Arts Council, College of Art & Design, North Carolina State University, Cotton Incorporated.
Studio Assistants: Gabrielle Duggan, Jenna Eason, Katelyn Sexton
My parents emigrated from Latvia to Canada after WWII and I was the first in my family to be born in this country. My first language was Latvian and our household was steeped in that culture. My parents always hoped that Latvia would one day be free of Soviet rule and we could return to live there. While I have visited Latvia on several occasions, my parents never were able to return.
In this series, looking through the eyes of a second generation Canadian/Latvian, I considered the issues of shifting identities and divided cultures. Themes such as loss of culture, tradition, and the instability of identity and memory were preoccupations. I explored the effects of displacement from family and culture, as well as the experience of existing in dual cultures: Latvian // Canadian.
Based on photographs of Appalachian women working with fibers: weaving, spinning, basketry, stitching, and caning, etc. The original glass negatives and photographs are housed in the Berea College Art Collection in Kentucky.
During the 1920's and 30's Doris Ulmann (1882-1934) travelled from New York City to the Appalachian regions of North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and South Carolina making a photographic record of the people who lived lifestyles that she believed were disappearing. She took thousands of photographs. Her interest in documenting the people of the Southern Highlands stemmed from her belief in the worth of all people without regard for their socioeconomic background. She did not view her work as a commentary on social status, but rather as a record of a way of life that was being lost.
Supported by: United Arts Council of Raleigh & Wake County, College of Art & Design, The Oriole Mill, North Carolina State University, Cotton Incorporated.
Studio Assistants: Gabrielle Duggan.
Born in NY to a wealthy family, Alice de Kessler Lusk Webster (1880-1953) moved to Shediac in the 1920.s with her husband who was a surgeon. In 1935, she established the Department of Arts and Industries in the recently formed and newly built New Brunswick Museum (NBM) and was designated its "Honourary Curator". This series is informed by Lusk Webster's own sketches, writing, family photographs, as well as a collection of woven and embroidered textile fragments dating between 1350 and 1800 that were acquired by Alice Lusk Webster for the NBM in 1945.
The civilization of people finds expression in its art - and its art is the mirror in which each stage of its development is reflected. History is not a succession of names and dates, but rather the evolution of man.s mode of life, his ideas and attitudes towards his fellow man (Lusk 1940).
