Another 'Della' Adventure!

     Della had a busy summer - making a guest appearance at a juried show at the Argyle Fine Art Gallery in Halifax. The theme of the show was "Canadiana" so she got all dressed up in her Canadiana finery to impress everyone. Happy to say that she found someone who loved her and they took her home. What will she be up to next time!

Momma always said....you need to dress up for the party!

Where did summer go?

     Seems like a long time since June when I last made some notes here on my blog - now it is time to get back to work, do some catch-up and fill in the blanks.
     In August, my friends Les Hookeuses du Bor'de'lo, and I had a very successful show at the World Acadian Congress in Edmundston, NB.  Eighteen of us transposed designs of Acadian artist Claude Roussel's early work and the show (Les Hookeuses du Bor'de'lo et Roussel) was part of the celebration to honor his fifty years as an artist. The show is now coming to Moncton and opening on the 22 October. It will also be in Saint John in the new year.

 

      My piece for the show was originally designed to be a continuous scene that could be mounted around a large round pillar. My friend Nicole Butler and I each took a portion of this original  design for our mats. We needed to maintain the lines and colors that Claude had used; the texture and method of interpreting his design was up to us. I called my section "Forty Fathoms".   

Forty Fathoms © 2014       (33" by 45")

     In addition to our individual mats we also collaborated on a mural that again was a transposition of a Roussel painting. Fourteen individual pieces make up the mural - again keeping to the lines and colour of the original - but with different materials and techniques used by the hooker. Despite the fact that there was very little collaboration between each person as we worked on our individual sections, it is amazing how the sections fit and blend together to make a lovely rendition of this original work. The finished mural measures 212" by 51" and pretty well fills a wall at the Moncton show.
 

Claude Roussel ©1954

     This is the section that I did - can you see where it fits in?

A part of "Les sou-bois du Madawaska" © 2014

Remembering To Create Beauty Every Day

    

A Carpet of Forget-Me-Nots

      After leaving our rug hooking gathering that I talked about last time at the Bell Inn in Dorchester, NB, I merrily made my way to visit Deanne Fitzpatrick's rug hooking shop/studio (www.hooking rugs.com) in Amherst, NS. I didn't need a thing but always love to shop, browse, stand or sit inside and take in all of the colour and joy that fills Deanne's space.
     Deanne has a frame set up in her shop where you can try different hooks and fibres so I played a bit with the new, lightweight, wool knit fabric that she now stocks - and found that it works up beautifully, just as she said.

     Deanne's motto is to 'create beauty every day' and for all of us in our community that Wednesday evening, beauty was temporarily taken from us with the shooting of five police officers, leaving three dead and two wounded. Everyone was asked to go home and stay inside until the shooter was apprehended. This lasted until midnight the following night. 

     Over a week has now passed, the tri-community of Riverview, Moncton and Dieppe is mobile again and three young families are left to mourn. Banners, signs and notes are up everywhere thanking our police for keeping us safe. Everyone is struggling to recapture some of Deanne's beauty - and my way is through a new rug.

     All of my flower beds are now beginning to burst into colour with the warm weather. To try and capture some of this beauty, I have started a new mat that is also a 'plein air' exercise.

  The design is a crazy quilt pattern that divides the mat into many sections. I began with my hostas just as they were coming up and starting to unfurl - and interpreted them in various variegated greens and white. Next were the tulips and the forget-me-nots and next to come are the irises. I plan to move around the mat - hooking three areas for each flower or plant - and by the end of the season - hopefully the mat will be finished. 

     Each area takes a short time to hook. The process involves looking carefully at the flower or plant, choosing the colours and then sitting on the deck or front step to keep the plant in view for hooking. My forget-me-nots carpet a small grove of trees at the back of my yard in a blue haze and individually are so small, I needed to get up very close to count the petals and look at the centres for the colours. 

     To get the design for each section I cut a 1" square out of the centre of a sheet of paper. This hole became my viewfinder for looking at the flower. I moved in very close for the larger flowers, moving the viewfinder about until I had a composition of line and colour that appealed to me. For the small forget-me-nots, I found a dense patch that gave the most concentration of colour.
     To outline the sections in the pattern I'm using various colours of knit velour which make a nice contrast in texture. Traditionally, crazy quilts are made of scraps so I plan to use whatever I have in my left-overs stash to get the effect that I want in my rug. Here is one section that I'm working on.

Gathering at the Bell Inn in Dorchester, NB

The Welcome Mat is out at the front door of the Bell Inn, Dorchester, NB

The Bell Inn, Dorchester, NB

     One of the oldest buildings in New Brunswick is still a popular gathering place for locals and tourists alike, just as it was in the early 1820's. According to oral tradition, the Bell Inn in Dorchester was built in the late 1600's and when it was sold in 1821 it was noted as being a private dwelling and a small inn.

      Sold again in 1858 to a local ship builder and stage coach operator, the inn became the stop-over place for passengers as the coach travelled between Amherst, NS and Moncton, NB.
      After the Intercolonial Railway was completed in 1872 and the stagecoach was discontinued, the inn became the home and head office for the owner and his ship building business. 
      Years passed, ship building also declined and the Bell Inn eventually became the property of the Westmorland Historical Society.
     Restored as a wonderful restaurant, under the new management of co-chefs/co-owners Andrew Harrison and Sara Craig, the Bell Inn hosted our group of fibre artists - also known as hookers - for a whole day of hooking (and lunch!) this past week. 
     Here are some photos of the wonderful mats being made at the gathering.

     

Part of the natural rock wall behind the Bell Inn - maybe a design idea for an abstract mat?

 

(Many thanks to W. Eugene Goodrich for the historical information about the Bell Inn.)

According To Della....

"Momma always said.... a little chocolate cupcake will fix everything!"

Della is back - and for this hooked piece I tried something a little different. I wasn't happy with the way the edge of the linen backing showed when it was hanging. I borrowed a tip from Rachelle LeBlanc and crocheted (with a fine hook) right next to the border through the linen to make a row of chain stitches that covered up the edge of the linen.

Now, when you look at the piece from the side the pink crocheted line is what you see next to the grey velour lining - not the linen.

More from Della to come!

Finding the Story between Patching and Dancing

Here it is the end of May and the sun has finally warmed the deck enough to sit outside and enjoy the yard! Frost has come most nights - so as yet the bedding plants still make their nightly trip to safety in the shed. Maybe by the weekend they will make it to the planters and begin their lives on my deck!

To celebrate International Museum Day in May, the Acadian Museum on the campus of the University of Moncton recently featured an interesting workshop for all fibre artists. Annette Léger White, who is a recognized textile conservator and restorer, included in her workshop "Every patch tells our story: darning, mending, patching and renewing techniques" all the different ways that you can creatively darn, patch or mend.

We were shown articles of clothing and other household items from the Acadian Museum's collection where creative and thrifty hands and minds had either extended the life of an early ladies cap with a little patch or reconstructed a christening dress from a mothers wedding dress.

The Little Red Patch

Annette Léger White at the Acadian Museum workshop

Also on display was a rug c.1905 that was still being used when it was recently donated to the museum. The green dyed mat is made from strips of frayed burlap that are sewn onto a burlap backing. The burlap came from old fertilizer sacks and all of the printing can still be seen on the backing. It's sewn to a piece of heavy clear plastic for display so that you can see both sides.

Front and back of Green Mat

Something else that the Acadian Museum recently acquired is a rug hooking/quilting frame (c. late 1930's )

that was made by Pierre à Fabien Léger, Breau Village, NB. Two sets of interchangeable side pieces make the frame adaptable for either a mat or a quilt.

So, how did I make the leap from patching to dancing? On May 28th I had the wonderful experience of watching the Atlantic Theatre Ballet perform their newest production "Piaf" at our restored historic Capitol Theater in Moncton, NB. It's all about creativity and taking a leap - for Edith Piaf to begin again after many set-backs, for the dancers to dance as a troupe and to literally catch each other while interpreting Piaf's story, to the pioneer women who used what they had to make the everyday beautiful.

On With the Show!!!!

Here's More Information About Our Upcoming Rug Show

This summer, between June 9 and September 13, 2014 everyone is invited to our hooked rug exhibition at the Lutz Mountain Heritage Museum which is located on the outskirts of Moncton, NB. Featured in the display are two large rugs hooked by Rachelle LeBlanc - one of Canada's best known fibre artists. Although she now lives in Alberta, Rachelle's roots are in Bouctouche, a small village a few miles north of Moncton. This summer in June she is returning to New Brunswick for two workshops - one at the Lutz Mountain Heritage Museum and another at a private studio in Bouctouche. Take a look at her web page to see the dates - one of the workshops is full but there are still a few spaces left in the other one!

Rachelle LeBlanc's Rugs for our Show

 An update on Della!

A second mat featuring my fiesty friend Della is in the works - this one may be submitted for a juried group show at the Swoon Gallery in Halifax later in July. Artists from all mediums are being challenged to submit a piece of art that "celebrates the sweet tooth" and to think "outside the cake box". The title for the show is "How Sweet It Is". Hmmm - wonder what Della can come up with!

This past spring artists were asked by Swoon to go to their website, view the displayed art and find inspiration to create a new piece for a group show. My choice was the abstract painting "Emerging" by Monika Wright. I was drawn to the colours that Monika uses in her beautiful work and the freedom of the shapes. Once finished, I chose to call my piece "Firestorm" - as it brought back memories of seeing on the news the red hot eruptions of lava from Mount St. Helens.

"Firestorm"  by P. Winans ©

Detail of edge of "Firestorm" by P.Winans ©

Both pieces displayed together at the Swoon Gallery Halifax