Fibre art exhibit opening Friday
After an open call for artwork, the Fort Frances Museum and Cultural Centre has 50 pieces from 27 artists in its latest exhibit entitled Community Ties & Tapestries: Fibre Artists of the Rainy River District.
Museum Curator Danielle Marshall says the work is diverse across a range of different media. She did her best to describe some aspects of the exhibit and didn’t want to leave any out, though she didn’t get to all of the pieces. "We have a wide variety of pieces. We have a really cool one where a lady brought in baby booties that were knitted by her grandmother for her father and then she brought a pair that she knitted for her grandson. So we have a pair of booties knitted for the same family throughout three generations,” Marshall said. “We have some really beautiful traditional quilts and then we have some more abstract quilts where a man has quilted a whole scene with a castle and dragons. We have some really fun [stuff], I'm calling it my corner of whimsy where we are going to have some more “folkarty” pieces that have been felted so we have a beautiful bird feeder that has little frogs and birds, felted around it as well. Then we've got some beautiful traditional rug hooking, that's an art form that's really beautiful. We've got some beautiful clothing as well. People knitted or crocheted some really beautiful pieces of clothing some toques, some mittens, and someone knitted their own wedding shawl so we’re going to have that.”
This is a taste of what will be on display in the exhibit, Marshall says through curating the exhibit she’s discovered just how many talented fibre artists there are in the area.
“There's a lot of really talented people in the district,” Marshall said. “I've always had a really big appreciation for fibre art, but it was really neat to see the variety of people that submitted objects, as well as the age range as well. We had someone who was in high school submit something and it's stunning, and someone who's only been working in the field for a year and a half, she said and her stuff is beautiful as well. So it's really interesting to see the age range of people who submitted and the diversity of not only the fibre art but also the people.”
In conjunction with the exhibit the museum will also be hosting a couple of events to highlight fibre arts and artists in the area. Five of the featured artists will be on site at the museum to demonstrate how they create their artform. The Fabulous Fibres Demo Day will take place May 11 and featured weaving artist Simone LeBlanc will also be hosting From Warp to Weft: Learn to Weave Workshop on May 4. Next week’s Times will feature more on those events.
Community Ties & Tapestries: Fibre Artists of the Rainy River District opens this Friday with an opening reception on Friday, Apr. 26 from 5-8 p.m. The exhbit will be on display until the end of June. All are invited to “Join us in celebrating the threads that connect us all, weaving together a vibrant tapestry of culture and creativity.”
Allan Bradbury, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Fort Frances Times
